Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

“Like he’s right here, in the space between us, trying to tell us something.”

Both looked at the empty cushion between them, then quickly at the floor. Lydia rolled her shoulders and began to flip through the little notebook where she’d kept track of Joey’s books, misplaced labels, and transcribed messages. She came upon a page she’d scrawled the other night in Joey’s apartment: CODVR?

Lyle leaned forward.

“Codur? Was that one of Joey’s messages?”

She held the notebook toward him. “C-O-D-V-R,” she said. “Not a message. It was printed on an envelope.”

“Just any old envelope?”

“One that Joey had burned in his apartment,” she said.

“Of course Joey would burn his mail,” Lyle said. “He probably had a special mail burner, ordered from the back of Close Encounters magazine.”

“Any idea what it stands for?”

Lyle shook his head and grew serious. “C-O-D . . . it has to be Colorado Division of Something Something. Or Department. Something sponsored by the state. Which could be anything, knowing Joey, with his parole and prison time and his foster families and group homes and social programs.” He pointed to a nearby desk. “Phone book?”

Within seconds, Lydia was sitting at the desk, thumbing through the blue pages of the phone book, the section reserved for government entries. Lyle stood behind her, hands behind his back, breathing loudly through his nose. He smelled like moldy lotion. It took her only a minute to find the right entry.

“Colorado Department of Vital Records,” she said. “Any idea what they do?”

“Keep records on things that are vital, apparently,” Lyle said with a shrug. “Things you can’t live without. Like books. Whiskey. Waffles. Film noir.”

As Lydia scribbled down the address of the Vital Records office in her little notebook, she could hear Lyle wandering away from the desk and into the depths of the store.

“Ice cream,” he said to no one in particular. “Trombones. Peter Falk.”

And he continued to murmur his list of vital things—

“Corn nuts. Hot lava. Hitchcock.”

—even without Joey at his side.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


The clerk behind the counter at the Colorado Department of Vital Records was in his late forties, a bald burnout with furry eyebrows and a handlebar mustache. A few Star Trek action figures sat atop his monitor, and a Koosh ball, and a sticker that said Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys. Off to the side of his keyboard sat a microwaved tray of mac ’n’ cheese, half-eaten.

“If I give you someone’s name,” Lydia said, drumming her fingers on the counter, “can you tell me what records he’s requested?”

The man looked up from his tray and sniffed. He folded his hands over his belly and bobbed in his swivel chair.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“He was a good friend.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He killed himself. I’m just trying to figure out why.”

“Yeah?”

“And he had some correspondence from this office. Only he burned it.”

“Okay,” he said. “You’re not kidding.” He leaned toward the button for the numbers board, ready to move on: Next.

“Wait,” she said. “How about I give you my friend’s name, and you give me whatever records you have for him. Just whatever you’ve got. Can we do that?”

“Just anything?”

“Just anything.”

“Listen,” he said. “Here’s what I can do. If you go up to Broadway, then head just a few blocks south, you’ll see the Denver Public Library. It’s under renovation, like everything else in this godforsaken city, so you can’t miss it. Go inside and ask at the reference desk if they can point you to a copy of the Constitution. The United States Constitution. That might be a good place to start.”

Lydia slapped her hands on the counter. “I happen to own a Bill of Rights T-shirt!” she said.

The man twirled his mustache. “You free for drinks later?”

Lydia marched off in a huff, but when she reached the bulletin boards by the door his voice stopped her.

“You have to be someone,” he said, so she turned and walked back to the counter with her hands at her sides. “Legally speaking. A relative or a spouse or his lawyer—but someone. You can’t just be you.” And then he mumbled, “Adorable though you are.”

“What was that last part?” she said, eyes wide, leaning forward, past the point of being patronized.

“Nothing,” he blurted, then he pointed at the board hanging from the ceiling behind him. In little plastic numbers and letters, the board listed the documents that the CODVR office could provide, as if they were milkshake flavors at a burger joint. “If you tell me what you want, I can tell you what paperwork you’ll need in order to get it. We’ve got all kinds of certificates and documents, cradle to the grave. Birth, death, adoption, marriage, divorce, dissolution, some immunization and genealogy. A few others too, but they’re pretty uncommon.”

“My friend killed himself and left me all of his belongings,” she said.

“Okay, so maybe a birth and death certificate will be a good start,” he said, nodding along, “because you need those for a lot of things. Bring in the paperwork—his will or a copy of his living trust to show you have a right to his records. If you have the notarized original it saves time.” He paused, nibbled his mustache. “From the way you’re looking at me I’m guessing you don’t have anything like that.”

“I have a Post-it note with my first name on it, written in pencil,” she said. “His landlady pulled it out of her bra.”

“Okay,” the clerk said, and bit his lips. “Probably not going to cut it.” Then he explained that she could always fill out the application request for, say, Joey’s birth and death certificates, and she could explain on the application why she needed them, and if she didn’t have the right paperwork or legal credentials, then sometimes, rarely, one of the clerks would contact her and suggest a different avenue for finding out the information, or even encourage her to apply for a waiver.

“But for a waiver you have to have a good reason,” he said, “and it helps to know what you want. And sorry about the whole—you know, earlier.”

“You mean the whole asshole thing? Or the whole Kafka thing? Which one?”

“Please,” he said, “just one drink.”

“I’d prefer not to,” she said, then spun around and disappeared into the chilly Denver dusk. The clerk was right about one thing, she thought: it really does help to know what you want.



Matthew Sullivan's books