Regardless, it’s time for a new strategy, and I have the perfect idea.
I clutch the phone. “I’d love to eat with you, but I’m going to see my lawyer.”
“Oh shit, now we’re talking. See, this is what I mean. We need to share. What did you do? Want me to come with? I’ll be your backup.”
“Nah.”
“What’s it about?”
I stare at the sky and chuckle. Jasper is a nosy son of a bitch. He’s always poking his head in where it doesn’t belong, but his heart is golden.
“I’m planning the future.”
Jasper lowers his voice. “You’re not getting traded, are you? Fuck. If you are, I’m quitting the team.”
I laugh. He’d never. He is worshipped in New York.
“Nah, man, I hate to break the bad news over the phone, but . . .”
“What? Tell me!”
I grin. “I wish I was with you because I’d really love to see your face. I’m getting married, Precious. Don’t be mad. It happens to all of us at some point. See ya later.”
He lets out a vivid curse and yells, “Nooooooo.”
Still smiling, I click the phone off and start the walk to my lawyer’s office a few blocks away.
Chapter 9
EMMY
“Um, book lady on the floor, hello, are you listening?” a voice says behind me, and I start as I look up and see two teen girls, one brown haired, the other a strawberry blonde. I’m literally on the floor as I reshelve books left in the reading area downstairs. I assume the girls tried to get my attention before, but my mind has been distracted since meeting with Graham a few days ago.
“Yes, how can I help?” I brush the dust off my red dress. It’s a little retro number with a black velvet collar and buttons down the front. Sadly, there’s a splash of coffee where my breast is and a hole in my fishnet hose, right on the knee. The coffee happened this morning while serving a customer, and the hole occurred minutes ago. I don’t usually reshelve books, but we’re down three employees.
Magic perks his head out from the top shelf above me. His stubby tail swishes.
The strawberry blonde, maybe fifteen and dressed in a preppy school skirt and blazer, knee socks, and saddleback shoes, steps forward. “Hi, we’re looking for an autographed copy of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.”
I do a little clap. “Oh, wow. Please tell me if you find one.”
She scowls. “Don’t you have those? Any good bookstore would.”
I exhale, not in frustration, but in glee. I live for these bookstore moments. Girls, it’s time for a trip down memory lane . . .
“Well,” I say with a smile. “You’re not the first student to come in and ask for this, but I’ve got some bad news for you.”
“Are you out of them?” asks the other girl as she does a little hair flip. “Do we need to go to Lottie’s Bookstore? They do have better coffee.”
How dare she?
“I assure you, we are the best bookstore in Manhattan, but back to your book . . . Shakespeare doesn’t have any autographed copies in any bookstore, and if he did, they’d be worth about, hmm, six to seven million dollars.” My hand rests on my chest dramatically. “What I’d give to come across one.”
They glance at each other, still confused, then almost in unison say, “But our teacher said to get one.”
“Right. Follow me.” They fall in line behind me as I lead them to the other side of the third floor to the fiction section, my thigh-high heeled boots clicking against the tile. “FYI: there are no original copies of his manuscripts, signed or not. There’s not even a couplet written with his name under it. In fact, there are only about six items in the world with Shakespeare’s signature, and none of them relate to his plays. They’re on things like wills and deeds. What’s really crazy is when we stop and think about the absence of this signature, we have to ask ourselves: What if he wasn’t the author of those plays? Shocking, right?”
“Seriously? We didn’t come for a lecture,” the strawberry blonde says with a long, aggrieved sigh.
I nod and keep going. “I love a good lecture. What we do know about William Shakespeare is he only went to primary school, his parents were illiterate, and so were his children. I mean, why wouldn’t a man who’d written such moving pieces of literature educate his own children? And, when he died, there was no public mourning, even when people had flocked to see his plays. It’s just baffling.”
“I’m not baffled. Are we there yet?” one of them says.
I trudge on. “Almost. If you’re into conspiracies—I am—some believe that Christopher Marlowe, a writer of the same time period, was really Shakespeare. Did you ask how? No? Let me explain. Marlowe was despised because of his antireligious works, and nearly everyone in the late sixteenth century was religious. So, the theory is that Marlowe faked his sudden death—supposedly stabbed in a bar—because he was also a spy for the Tudor court, plus there was a warrant out for his arrest. Marlowe was in deep shit. Then, two weeks after his supposed death, voilà, the first work of William Shakespeare goes on sale. How’s that for intriguing?”
“You need to take a break from Shakespeare,” one of them mutters.
“Right. To each their own. ‘To thine own self be true,’” I say.
“What are you even saying?” one of them says.
I wave her off. It’s over now. The moment has passed. They didn’t get it.
“Anyway, your teacher meant for you to buy one of these. Just a regular copy.” I indicate the correct shelf and grab two paperbacks of Romeo and Juliet off the shelf and put them in their hands. “I hope you learned something today. Enjoy the play. Mercutio is my fav. Oh, and it’s a real tearjerker.”
They smirk. “We know how it ends, book lady. They die.”
“‘Parting is such sweet sorrow.’” And with those words, I mosey away, and Magic meets me at the end of the row. What fresh hell were you spouting? his eyes convey. I give him a pet and head to the staircase as he follows. He’s fit in well in our apartment, and the expression on Londyn’s face when she first saw him was priceless. Pure amazement.
The PA system clicks on, and Babs’s voice blares: “Emmy, we have a cream situation. Emmy to the main floor for the cream.”
Cream? Then it dawns, and I groan. Last month our coffee station got knocked over, and a large plastic container of french vanilla shattered when it hit the marble tile. Sticky, sugary white stuff oozed everywhere, and the floor squeaked for days. It took multiple moppings.
I’ll need the big yellow bucket from the maintenance closet. Magic follows me as I hop on the elevator and take the ride to the basement and grab it. Ugh. The water is murky and hasn’t been changed, so I refill it, wrestle the mop back in, get back on the elevator, and push the button for the first floor.
“Attention, Emmy, please hurry! We need you to see the cream,” Babs says over the loudspeakers.