He tried again. “Your shelves are wicked high, mister. You sure you don’t want us to move ’em down? Most people want the shelves, like, in the middle.”
Mr. Mooney spoke, “The boy and I have a lot of work to do.”
The driver nodded. “You can get a shit ton of birds in here. Pardon my French.”
After they left, Mr. Mooney locked the shop and told me the delivery dolts were no better than the wealthy sadists who keep birds in cages. “There’s no such thing as a flying cage, Joseph,” he said. “The only thing crueler than a cage so small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so large that a bird thinks it can fly. Only a monster would lock a bird in here and call himself an animal lover.”
Our cage was only for books and Mr. Mooney wasn’t kidding. We did have a lot of work to do. Workmen installed sealant in the walls that rendered the entire basement soundproof. More workmen came and built and expanded the back wall of the shop so that the door to the basement opened first into a vestibule that contained the real door to the basement. We were building a top secret, soundproof clubhouse in the earth and I woke up so excited every day. I assisted Mr. Mooney as he wrapped dust jackets in custom-fit acrylic cases (gently, Joseph), before placing the jacketed books into acrylic boxes with air holes (gently, Joseph). Then he put that box into a slightly larger metal box (gently, Joseph), with a label and a lock. When we had ten books or so, he would climb a ladder in the cage and I would pass him the books one at a time (gently, Joseph), and he would set them on those wicked high shelves. I asked him why we had to go through so much trouble for books. “Books can’t fly away,” I said. “They’re not birds.”
The next day, he brought me a set of Russian nesting dolls. “Open,” he said. “Gently, Joseph.”
I popped one doll in half and got another doll and popped that doll in half and got another doll and so on until the final doll that could not be popped in half, the only whole doll in the bunch. “Everything valuable must be hidden,” he said. “Or else.”
And now you pop into my head and you’re more beautiful than a doll and you’ll love it in here, Beck. You’ll see it as a refuge for sacred books, the authors you love. You’ll be in awe of me, the key master and I’ll show you my remote control that operates the air conditioners and humidifiers. You’ll want to hold it and I’ll let you and I’ll explain that if I wanted to, I could jack up the heat and cook these books and they’d turn to mold and dust and be gone, forever. If there’s any girl on Earth who would appreciate my power, it’s lovely, unpublished you in your little yellow stockings with your dream of writing something good enough to get you inside this cage. You’d drop your panties to get in here, to live in here, forever. I drop my own drawers and cum so hard that I go deaf.
Fuck. You are good. I try to stand. I am dizzy. Gently, Joseph.
It’s almost time to open and I catch my breath and I go upstairs. There are only two of us who work here now that Mr. Mooney is retired. There’s Curtis, a high school kid, kinda like I was back in the day. He does stupid stuff just like I did. Heck, when I was sixteen years old, Mr. Mooney gave me a key, and of course, one night I forgot to close the cage.
“You failed, Joseph,” said Mooney when he was younger but still old, the kind of guy who was never young, not really. “You failed me and you failed the books.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But we never shut cabinets or doors in my house.”
“That’s because your father is a pig, Joseph,” he said. “Are you a pig?”
I said no.
A few days later, I snuck into the cage and took out a new, old Franny and Zooey, a signed first edition. I decided to like it more than Catcher in the Rye just to be unique. And I loved it, Beck. What a book! Sometimes I flipped back to the beginning just to rub my finger on Salinger’s signature. You had to pay $1,250 to do what I did. But I didn’t pay. And neither did the woman who stole it from the desk at the register.
I would recognize her anywhere. She had reddish hair and a paisley scarf, and was thirty, maybe thirty-five. She paid cash. I told Mr. Mooney I’d work extra to make up for it and I promised I would find her. I cut school and skulked the streets until my toes were bleeding. But it’s hard to find a woman when you don’t know her name or where she lives. Mr. Mooney ordered me to go into the cage and close my eyes. I was scared. When I heard him lock the door I knew I was locked inside.
I didn’t have a ladder so I couldn’t reach any of the books; you can’t walk into the Louvre and kiss the Mona Lisa. I had no phone, no sunlight, no darkness. All I had was my brain and the buzz of the AC unit and the daily slice of pizza (cold because steam is no good for old books), and coffee (lukewarm in a cup from the Greek diner), both of which Mr. Mooney slipped to me through the drawer. The days and nights got lost. Mr. Mooney cared enough about me to teach me a lesson. I learned.
He let me out of the cage on September 14, 2001, three days after September 11. The whole world was different then and Mr. Mooney said my father had never called; he probably thought I was dead. “You are free, Joseph,” he said. “Be wise.”
I didn’t spend as much time at home after that. It wasn’t hard to slowly disappear. My mom left when I was in second grade so I grew up knowing that it was possible to leave people, especially my dad. I don’t feel sorry for myself, Beck. Lots of people have shitty parents and roaches in the cabinets and stale, raw Pop-Tarts for dinner and a TV that barely works and a dad who doesn’t care when his son doesn’t come home during a national disaster. The thing is, I’m lucky. I had the bookstore.
It doesn’t take a fucking village to raise a child. Mr. Mooney was the boss now, the dad I wanted to do right by. I kept hunting for the Franny and Zooey thief and right after 9/11, I wasn’t alone. Everyone was like me, searching the streets. People wanted to find their families; I wanted to find the thief. There were flyers for missing people all over the city. I thought about learning to draw and plastering the city with drawings of the thief. I could pretend she was my mother. I didn’t go through with it and sometimes I think the thief died in one of the Towers, karma. But most of the time I think she’s probably out there, alive, reading.
I am in the L–R Fiction stacks when the doorbell chimes and I am ready. You told your girlfriends you would come by around this time. I know this because I have your phone and you are not the kind of girl who locks her phone with the four-digit password. I have been reading your e-mails. I have taken pictures of the passwords you keep in your password folder. This way, when you change your password, if you change your password, I’ll know the possibilities. You are not the kind of girl who comes up with new passwords. You have three in rotation:
ackbeck1027
1027meME
1027BECK$Ale
It gets better. You don’t want to tell your mother that you lost another phone. You went and got a new phone with a new number and a new plan. I know all this because your old phone is still active. So I read the mass e-mail you sent to your friends announcing your new phone number because I can read all your e-mail! Chana was mortified:
WTF? Tell your mother you lost your phone and get that shit shut down. Identity theft! Perverts! Beck, seriously. Tell your mom you fucked up. She’ll get over it. People lose phones. Get the phone shut off. It’s not that dramatic.
You wrote back:
Phone is probably in gutter; so yes, it’s really not dramatic. If someone does have it, I’m a poor MFA candidate with debt. Who’s stealing that identity? And if someone thinks I’m pretty enough to put my selfies all over the Internet, well then I’ll feel pretty. Just kidding. But seriously, it’s all good. I wanted a new phone anyway! I love my new number!
Chana would not relent:
YOU GET A NEW PHONE WHEN YOU TELL THEM YOU LOST YOUR OLD PHONE. Your mother will know you lost your phone because of your NEW PHONE NUMBER. Also: $$$$$