“I’ll have to get you some,” he says.
“What if I love it?” she asks.
“I’ll probably think less of you.”
“Well, I won’t lie just to get you to like me, A.J. One of my best qualities is my honesty.”
“You told me you would have faked a seafood allergy to get out of eating here,” A.J. says.
“Yes, but that was only so I wouldn’t hurt an account’s feelings. I’d never lie about something important like Turkish Delight.”
They order food and then Amelia takes out the winter catalog from her tote bag. “So, Knightley,” she says.
“Knightley,” he repeats.
She breezes through the winter list, ruthlessly flipping past the books he won’t go for, emphasizing the publisher’s great hopes, and saving her fanciest adjectives for her favorites. With some accounts, you mention if the book has blurbs, those often hyperbolic endorsements from established writers that appear on the back cover. A.J. is not one of those accounts. At their second or third meeting, he had referred to blurbs as “the blood diamonds of publishing.” She knows him a little better now, and needless to say, this process is less painful for it. He trusts me more, she thinks, or maybe it’s just that fatherhood has mellowed him. (It is wise to keep thoughts like this to yourself.) A.J. promises to read several of the ARCs.
“In less than four years, I hope,” Amelia says.
“I’ll do my best to have them read in three.” He pauses. “Let’s order dessert,” he says. “There must be a ‘whale of a sundae’ or something.”
Amelia groans. “That is truly an awful wordplay.”
“So if you don’t mind my asking, why was The Late Bloomer your favorite book from that list? You’re a young—”
“I’m not that young. I’m thirty-five.”
“That’s still young,” A.J. says. “What I mean is you probably haven’t experienced much of what Mr. Friedman describes. I look at you, and having read the book, I wonder what made you respond to it.”
“My, Mr. Fikry, that’s a very personal question.” She sips at the last of her second Queequeg. “The main reason I loved the book was the quality of the writing, of course.”
“Of course. But that isn’t enough.”
“Let’s just say I’d been on many, many bad dates by the time The Late Bloomer came across my desk. I’m a romantic person, but sometimes these don’t seem like romantic times to me. The Late Bloomer is a book about the possibility of finding great love at any age. Sounds cliché, I know.”
A.J. nods.
“And you? Why did you like it?” Amelia asks.
“Quality of the prose, blah blah blah.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to say that!” Amelia says.
“You don’t want to hear my sad stories, do you?”
“Sure I do,” she says. “I love sad stories.”
He gives her the Cliffs Notes version of Nic’s death. “Friedman gets at something specific about what it is to lose someone. How it isn’t one thing. He writes about how you lose and lose and lose.”
“When did she die?” Amelia asks.
“A while ago now. I was a little older than you at the time.”
“That must have been a long while ago,” she says.
He ignores the barb. “The Late Bloomer really could have been a popular book.”
“I know. I’m thinking of having someone read a passage from it at my wedding.”
A.J. pauses. “You’re getting married, Amelia. Congratulations. Who’s the lucky fellow?”
She stirs the harpoon around the tomato juice-tinted waters of her Queequeg, trying to recapture a shrimp that’s gone AWOL. “His name is Brett Brewer. I’d about given up when I met him online.”
A.J. drinks the bitter dregs of his second glass of wine. “Tell me more.”
“He’s in the military, serving overseas in Afghanistan.”
“Well done. You’re marrying an American hero,” A.J. says.
“I guess I am.”
“I hate those guys,” he says. “They make me feel totally inadequate. Tell me something shitty about him so that I feel better.”
“Well, he’s not home much.”
“You must miss him a lot.”
“I do. I get a lot of reading done, though.”
“That’s good. Does he read, too?”
“No, actually. He’s not much of a reader. But that’s kind of interesting, right? I mean, it’s interesting to be with someone whose, um, interests are so different from mine. I don’t know why I keep saying ‘interests.’ The point is, he’s a good man.”
“He’s good to you?”
She nods.
“That’s what counts. Anyway, nobody’s perfect,” A.J. says. “Someone probably made him read Moby Dick in high school.”
Amelia stabs her shrimp. “Caught it,” she says. “Your wife . . . was she a reader?”
“And a writer. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. Reading’s overrated. Look at all the good stuff on television. Stuff like True Blood.”
“Now you’re making fun of me.”
“Bah! Books are for nerds,” A.J. says.
“Nerds like us.”
When the check comes, A.J. pays despite the fact that it is customary for the sales rep to pay in such situations. “Are you sure?” Amelia asks.
A.J. tells her that she can pay next time.
Outside the restaurant, Amelia and A.J. shake hands, and the usual professional pleasantries are exchanged. She turns to walk back to the ferry, and one important second later he turns to walk to the bookstore.
“Hey A.J.,” she calls. “There’s something kind of heroic about being a bookseller, and there’s also something kind of heroic about adopting a child.”
“I do what I can.” He bows. Halfway through the bow, he realizes that he is not the type of man who can pull off bowing and quickly rights himself. “Thank you, Amelia.”
“My friends call me Amy,” she says.
MAYA HAS NEVER seen A.J. so occupied. “Daddy,” she asks, “why do you have so much homework?”
“Some of it’s extracurricular,” he says.
“What’s ‘extracurricular’?”
“I’d look it up if I were you.”
Reading an entire season’s list, even the list of a modestly sized house like Knightley, is a major time commitment for a person with a chatty kindergartner and a small business. After he finishes each Knightley title, he sends Amelia an e-mail to tell her his thoughts. In his e-mails, he cannot bring himself to use the nickname “Amy,” though permission had been granted. Sometimes, if he really responds to something, he calls her. If he hates a book, he’ll send a text: Not for me. For her part, Amelia has never received this much attention from an account.
Don’t you have any other publishers to read? Amelia texts him.
A.J. thinks a long time about his reply. None with sales reps I like as well as you is his first draft, but he decides this is too presumptuous for a girl with an American hero fiancé. He redrafts. It’s a compelling list for Knightley, I guess.
A.J. orders so many Knightley titles that even Amelia’s boss notices. “I’ve never seen a little account like Island take so many of our books,” the boss says. “New owner?”
“Same guy,” Amelia says. “But he’s different from when I first met him.”
“Well, you must have really done a number on him. That guy doesn’t take what he can’t sell,” the boss says. “Harvey never came close to these kinds of orders with Island.”
Finally, A.J. gets to the last title. It’s a charming memoir about motherhood, scrapbooking, and the writing life, written by a Canadian poet that A.J. has always liked. The book is only 150 pages, but it takes A.J. two weeks to get through it. He can’t seem to read a chapter without falling asleep or being distracted by Maya. When he finishes it, he finds himself unable to craft a response. The writing is elegant enough, and he thinks the women who frequent his store could respond to it. The problem, of course, is that once he replies to Amelia, he’ll be done with the Knightley winter catalog, and he’ll have no reason to contact Amelia until the summer list hits. He likes her, and he thinks it’s possible that she might like him, despite that horrendous first meeting. But . . . A. J. Fikry is not the kind of man who thinks it’s okay to try to steal another man’s fiancée. He doesn’t believe in “the one.” There are zillions of people in the world; no one is that special. Besides which, he barely knows Amelia Loman. What if, say, he did manage to steal her and it turned out they weren’t compatible in bed?
Amelia texts him, What’s happening? Didn’t you like?
Not for me, unfortunately, A.J. replies. Looking forward to seeing what’s on Knightley’s summer list. Yours, A.J.
The response strikes Amelia as overly businesslike, dismissive. She thinks about picking up the phone but doesn’t. She texts back, While you’re waiting, you should definitely watch TRUE BLOOD. True Blood is Amelia’s favorite television show. It had gotten to be a kind of joke with them that A.J. would like vampires if only he would watch True Blood. Amelia fancies herself a Sookie Stackhouse type.
Not gonna happen, Amy, A.J. writes. See you in March.
March is four and a half months away. By then, A.J. feels sure his little crush will have gone away or at least resolved itself into a more tolerable dormancy.
March is four and a half months away.
Maya asks him what’s wrong, and he tells her that he’s sad because he’s not going to see his friend for a while.
“Amelia?” Maya asks.
“How do you know about her?”
Maya rolls her eyes, and A.J. wonders when and where she learned that gesture.
Lambiase hosts his Chief’s Choice Book Club at the store that night (selection: L.A. Confidential), and after that, as is their tradition, he and A.J. share a bottle.
“I think I’ve met someone,” A.J. says after a glass has mellowed him.
“Good news,” Lambiase says.
“The problem is, she’s affianced to someone else.”
“Bad timing,” Lambiase proclaims. “I’ve been a police officer for twenty years now and I’ll tell you, pretty much every bad thing in life is a result of bad timing, and every good thing is the result of good timing.”
“That seems terribly reductive.”
“Think about it. If Tamerlane hadn’t gotten stolen, you wouldn’t have left the door unlocked, and Marian Wallace wouldn’t have left the baby in the store. Good timing is what that was.”
“True. But I met Amelia four years ago,” A.J. argues. “I just didn’t bother to notice her until a couple of months ago.”
“Still bad timing. Your wife had died. And then you had Maya.”
“It’s not much consolation,” A.J. says.
“But hey, it’s good to know your heart still works, right? Want me to set you up with someone?”
A.J. shakes his head.
“Come on,” Lambiase insists. “I know everyone in town.”
“Unfortunately, it’s a very small town.”
As a warm-up, Lambiase sets up A.J. with his cousin. The cousin has blond hair with black roots, overly plucked eyebrows, a heart-shaped face, and a high-pitched voice like Michael Jackson. She wears a low-cut top and a push-up bra, which creates a small, sad shelf for her name necklace to rest. Her name is Maria. In the middle of mozzarella sticks, they run out of conversation.
“What’s your favorite book?” A.J. attempts to draw her out.
She chews on her mozzarella stick and clutches her Maria necklace like it’s a rosary. “This is some kind of a test, right?”
“No, there’s no wrong answer,” A.J. says. “I’m curious.”
She drinks her wine.
“Or you could say the book that had the greatest influence on your life. I’m trying to get to know you a little.”
She takes another sip.
“Or how about the last thing you read?”
“The last thing I read . . . ” She furrows her brow. “The last thing I read was this menu.”
“And the last thing I read was your necklace,” he says. “Maria.”
The meal is perfectly cordial after that. He never will find out what Maria reads.
Next, Margene from the store sets him up with her neighbor, a lively female firefighter named Rosie. Rosie has black hair with a blue streak, exceptional arm muscles, a great big laugh, and short nails she paints red with little orange flames. Rosie is a former college hurdles champion, and she likes to read sports history and particularly athletes’ memoirs.
On their third date, she’s in the middle of describing a dramatic section from Jose Canseco’s Juiced when A.J. interrupts her, “You know they’re all ghostwritten?”
Rosie says she knows and she doesn’t care. “These high-performance individuals have been busy training and practicing. When did they have time to learn to write books?”
“But these books . . . My point is, they’re essentially lies.”
Rosie cocks her head toward A.J. and taps her flame nails on the table. “You’re a snob, you know that? Makes you miss out on a lot.”
“I’ve been told that before.”
“All of life’s in a sports memoir,” she says. “You practice hard and you succeed, but eventually your body gives out and it’s over.”
“Sounds like a latter-period Philip Roth novel,” he says.
Rosie crosses her arm. “That’s one of those things you say to sound smart, right?” she says. “But, really, you’re trying to make someone else feel stupid.”
That night in bed, after sex that feels more like wrestling, Rosie rolls away from him and says, “I’m not sure I want to see you again.”
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings before,” he says as he puts his pants back on. “The memoirs thing.”
She waves her hand. “Don’t worry about it. You can’t help the way you are.”
He suspects she is right. He is a snob, not suited for relationships. He will raise his daughter, run his store, read his books, and that, he decides, will be more than enough.
AT ISMAY’S INSISTENCE, it is determined that Maya should take dance. “You don’t want her to be deprived, do you?” Ismay says.
“Of course not,” A.J. says.
“Well,” Ismay says, “dance is important, not just physically but socially, too. You don’t want her to end up stunted.”
“I don’t know. The idea of enrolling a little girl in dance. Isn’t that kind of an old-fashioned and sexist notion?”
A.J. is unsure whether Maya will be suited to dance. Even at six, she is cerebral—always with a book and content at home or at the store. “She’s not stunted,” he says. “She reads chapter books now.”
“Not intellectually, obviously,” Ismay insists. “But she seems to prefer your company to anyone else’s, certainly anyone her own age, and that probably isn’t healthy.”
“Why isn’t it healthy?” Now A.J.’s spine is tingling unpleasantly.
“She’s going to end up just like you,” Ismay says.
“And what would be wrong with that?”
Ismay gives him a look as if the answer should be obvious. “Look, A.J., you two are your own little world. You never date—”
“I do date.”
“You never travel—”
A.J. interrupts. “We aren’t talking about me.”
“Stop being so argumentative. You asked me to be godmother, and I’m telling you to enroll your daughter in dance. I’ll pay for it, so don’t you fight me anymore.”
There is one dance studio on Alice Island and one class for girls ages five and six. The owner/teacher is Madame Olenska. She is in her sixties and though she is not overweight, her skin hangs, suggesting that her bones have shrunken over the years. Her always bejeweled fingers seem to have one joint too many. The children are both fascinated and frightened by her. A.J. feels the same way. The first time he drops off Maya, Madame Olenska says, “Mr. Fikry, you are first man to set foot in this dance studio in twenty years. We must take advantage of you.”
In her Russian accent, this seems like a sexual invitation of some kind, but mainly what she requires is manual labor. For the holiday recital, he paints and constructs a large wooden crate to look like a child’s block, hot-glue guns googly eyes, bells, and flowers, and fashions sparkly pipe cleaners into whiskers and antennae. (He suspects he will never get the glitter out from under his nails.)
He spends much of his free time that winter with Madame Olenska, and he learns a lot about her. For instance, Madame Olenska’s star pupil is her daughter who dances in a Broadway show and whom Madame Olenska hasn’t spoken to in a decade. She wags her triple-jointed finger at him. “Don’t let that happen to you.” She looks dramatically out the window, then slowly turns back to A.J. “You will buy ad in program for bookstore, yes.” It is not a question. Island Books becomes the sole sponsor of The Nutcracker, Rudolph and Friends, and a holiday coupon for the store appears on the back page of the program. A.J. goes even further, providing a gift basket of dance-themed books to be raffled off with proceeds going to the Boston Ballet.
From the raffle table, A.J. watches the show, exhausted and slightly fluish. As the acts are arranged according to skill, Maya’s group is on first. She is an enthusiastic if not overly graceful mouse. She scurries with abandon. She wrinkles her nose in a recognizably mousy way. She wags her pipe-cleaner tail, which had been painstakingly coiled by him. He knows a career in dance is not in her future.
Ismay, who mans the table with him, hands him a Kleenex.
“Cold,” he says.
“Sure it is,” Ismay says.
At the end of the night, Madame Olenska says, “Thank you, Mr. Fikry. You are good man.”
“Maybe I’ve got a good kid.” He still needs to claim his mouse from the dressing room.
“Yes,” she says. “But this is not enough. You must find yourself good woman.”
“I like my life,” A.J. says.
“You think child is enough, but child grows old. You think work is enough, but work is not warm body.” He suspects Madame Olenska has already tossed back a few Stolis.
“Happy holidays, Madame Olenska.”
Walking home with Maya, he is contemplating the teacher’s words. He has been alone for nearly six years. Grief is hard to bear, but being alone he has never much minded. Besides, he doesn’t want any old warm body. He wants Amelia Loman with her big heart and bad clothes. Someone like her, at least.