Snow is beginning to fall, and the flakes catch in Maya’s whiskers. He wants to take a picture, but he doesn’t want to do the thing where you stop to take a picture. “Whiskers become you,” A.J. tells her.
The compliment to her whiskers sets off a stream of observations about the recital, but A.J. is distracted. “Maya,” he says, “do you know how old I am?”
“Yes,” she says. “Twenty-two.”
“I’m quite a bit older than that.”
“Eighty-nine?”
“I’m . . .” He holds up both his palms four times, and then three fingers.
“Forty-three?”
“Good job. I’m forty-three, and in these years I’ve learned that it’s better to have loved and lost and blah blah blah and that it’s better to be alone than be with someone you don’t really fancy. Do you agree?”
She nods solemnly, and her mouse ears almost fall off.
“Sometimes, though, I get tired of learning lessons.” He looks down at his daughter’s puzzled face. “Are your feet getting wet?”
She nods, and he squats on the ground so that she can get on his back. “Put your arms around my neck.” Once she is mounted, he stands, groaning a little. “You’re bigger than you used to be.”
She grabs his earlobe. “What’s that?” she asks.
“I used to have an earring,” he says.
“Why?” she asks. “Were you a pirate?”
“I was young,” he says.
“My age?”
“Older than that. There was a girl.”
“A wench?”
“A woman. She liked this band called The Cure, and she thought it would be cool if she pierced my ear.”
Maya thinks about this. “Did you have a parrot?”
“I didn’t. I had a girlfriend.”
“Could the parrot talk?”
“No, because there wasn’t a parrot.”
She tries to trick him. “What was the parrot’s name?”
“There wasn’t a parrot.”
“But if there was one, what would his name have been?”
“How do you know it’s a he?” he asks.
“Oh!” She puts her hand to her mouth, and she begins to tip backward.
“Hold on to my neck or you’ll fall off. Maybe she was called Amy?”
“Amy the parrot. I knew it. Did you have a ship?” Maya asks.
“Yes. It had books on it, and it really was more of a research vessel. We studied a lot.”
“You’re ruining this story.”
“It’s a fact, Maya. There are murdering kinds of pirates and researching kinds of pirates, and your daddy was the latter.”
THE ISLAND IS never a popular destination during the wintertime, but that year Alice is exceptionally inclement. The roads are an ice rink, and ferry service is canceled for days at a time. Even Daniel Parish is forced to stay at home. He writes a little, avoids his wife, and spends the rest of his time with A.J. and Maya.
As do most women, Maya likes Daniel. When he comes to the store, he does not talk to her like she is a simpleton just because she is a child. Even at six, she is sensitive to people who are condescending. Daniel always asks her what she is reading and what she thinks. Furthermore, he has bushy blond eyebrows and a voice that makes her think of damask.
One afternoon a week or so after New Year’s, Daniel and Maya are reading on the floor of the bookstore when she turns to him and says, “Uncle Daniel, I have a question. Don’t you ever go to work?”
“I’m working right now, Maya,” Daniel says.
She takes off her glasses and wipes them on her shirt. “You don’t look like you’re working. You look like you’re reading. Don’t you have a place you go where you have a job?” She elaborates, “Lambiase is a police officer. Daddy is a bookseller. What do you do?”
Daniel picks Maya up and carries her to the local author section of Island Books. Out of courtesy to his brother-in-law, A.J. stocks Daniel’s entire body of works, though the only book that ever sells is that first one, The Children in the Apple Tree. Daniel points to his name on the spine. “That’s me,” he says. “That’s my job.”
Maya’s eyes grow wide. “Daniel Parish. You write books,” she says. “You’re a”—she says the word with reverence—“writer. What is this about?”
“It’s about the follies of man. It’s a love story and a tragedy.”
“That is very general,” Maya tells him.
“It’s about this nurse who has spent her life taking care of other people. She gets in a car accident, and people have to take care of her for the first time in her life.”
“That does not sound like something I would read,” Maya says.
“Bit corny, eh?”
“Nooooo.” She doesn’t want to hurt Daniel’s feelings. “But I like books with more action.”
“More action, huh? Me too. The good news is, Miss Fikry, all the time I spend reading, I’m learning how to do it better,” Daniel explains.
Maya thinks about this. “I want this job.”
“Many people do, my girl.”
“How do I get it?” Maya asks.
“Reading, as aforementioned.”
Maya nods. “I do that.”
“A good chair.”
“I have one of those.”
“Then you’re well on your way,” Daniel tells her before setting her back on the ground. “I’ll teach you the rest later. You’re very good company, do you know that?”
“That’s what Daddy says.”
“Smart man. Lucky man. Good man. Smart kid, too.”
A.J. calls Maya upstairs to dinner. “Do you want to join?” A.J. asks him.
“Bit early for me,” Daniel says. “Plus I’ve got work to do.” He winks at Maya.
AT LAST IT is March. The roads thaw, turning everything to muck. Ferry service resumes, as do Daniel Parish’s wanderings. Sales reps come to town with their summer offerings, and A.J. goes out of his way to be hospitable to them. He takes to wearing a tie as a way of signaling to Maya that he is “at work” as opposed to “at home.”
Perhaps because it is the meeting he is most anticipating, he schedules Amelia’s sales call for last. About two weeks before their date, he sends her a text: Pequod’s OK with you? Or would you rather try something new?
Queequegs on me this time, she replies. Did u watch TRUE BLOOD yet?
The winter had been particularly inhospitable to socializing, so at night, after Maya had gone to sleep, A.J. had plowed through four seasons of True Blood. The project hadn’t taken him long since he’d liked it more than he expected —a cross between Flannery O’Connor southern gothic and The Fall of the House of Usher or Caligula. He’d been planning to casually dazzle Amelia with his True Blood knowledge when she came to town.
You’ll have to find out when you get here, he writes, but does not press Send because he decides this text sounds too provocative. He hadn’t known when Amelia’s wedding was supposed to be, so she could already be a married woman now. See you next Thursday, he writes.
On Wednesday, he gets a call from a number he doesn’t recognize. The caller turns out to be Brett Brewer, American Hero, who sounds like Bill from True Blood. A.J. thinks the accent sounds fake, but obviously an American hero would have no need to fake a southern accent. “Mr Fikry, Brett Brewer callin’ for Amelia. She’s had an accident, so she asked me to tell you she’ll have to change y’all’s meetin’ time.”
A.J. loosens his tie. “I hope nothing serious.”
“I’m always tryin’ to get her to stop wearin’ those galoshes of hers. They’re fine for rain, but kinda dangerous in the ice, y’know? Well, she slipped on some icy steps here in Providence, which is what I told her would happen, and she broke her ankle. She’s havin’ surgery right now. So nothin’ serious, but she’ll be laid up for a spell.”
“Give your fiancée my regards, would you?” A.J. says.
A pause. A.J. wonders if the phone has cut out. “Will do,” Brett Brewer says before hanging up the phone.