“Are you telling me you don’t know who bought the shop and the house?”
“What I’m telling you is they were purchased through the shell company whose name is on the contract, the same company that made the bank transfer, and they were acting as intermediaries. The owner is someone else.”
“Yeah, but who?”
“That’s private. There’s no way of knowing.”
“Can’t you just ask? Have you told them I have very personal reasons for wanting to buy them out?”
“Theoretically, I could try, Harper, but there’s something called confidentiality…”
“What about public records? There must be something on file. They’ll have to pay real estate taxes. There must be a name, an address…”
“I’ve tried. There’s nothing.”
I sighed and sank back in my chair. I didn’t want to lose hope, but there seemed to be no way to find the new owners of the bookstore. Mr. Norris bent over his desk and attempted to look reassuring.
“I’ll keep trying. I promise.”
“Thanks.”
I walked out of his office still clinging to a desperate hope and walked toward the Plateau. My mind was clear, my heart was alive and healed. Or almost. There were still some memories that made it ache. But the ache wasn’t something bad, because it reminded me of the person I loved most in the world. I needed to think of him now and then. The recollection of him made me whole.
I stopped on the sidewalk in front of my grandmother’s old house. Nothing had changed, despite the passing months. It even seemed as if someone was living there. The entryway was clean, so were thewindows, and there were flowering plants on the balcony. Someone had even put up a new mailbox.
I crossed the street, pulse racing, and rang the doorbell. I needed to know who was living there.
I waited.
Nothing.
Silence.
I knocked and knocked again until there was nothing left to do but accept that no one was home. I looked in the mailbox. No letters with the new owner’s name. But I wouldn’t give up. Whoever lived there might be the owner of the bookstore, too, I thought. I sat on the steps, ready to wait as long as I had to.
The hours passed, and the cold sank in. I shivered. All I had on were jeans and a thin jacket over my wool sweater. The temperature was low for the end of April.
I stuck it out until the sun set and I could no longer feel my feet. Then I started worrying I’d catch cold. I got up, numb, and walked off, sad that I hadn’t found what I was looking for, but hopeful, because if someone was living there, maybe I could talk to them, and all wasn’t lost.
I walked to the bookstore before returning home. Someone had painted graffiti on the plywood covering the windows, and some of it had gotten on the frames. I was angry; it was my fault that the place was falling into the ground. I couldn’t understand why someone would buy it and then just leave it abandoned.
I couldn’t take the nostalgia.
The idea that I had lost all that forever.
I spent the next few days trying to find out all I could about the buyer or buyers. I asked the neighbors, dug through the mail a second and third time…and found out nothing. Whoever it was didn’t seemto spend much time at either place. At the bookstore, no one ever answered the doorbell and the lights never came on, and at the house, no one opened the windows or even moved the curtains.
My impatience was killing me.
Luckily, the impulse to write had returned. My head was full of ideas, thoughts, emotions that were begging to be expressed.
I bought a desk at a secondhand shop and set it up under the window at the apartment. Next to it, I placed a bookshelf and an apple-green rug I found at a flea market. That corner, with its views of Baldwin Park, was the nicest spot in my apartment. I spent hours and hours there, typing nonstop. Putting my story on the page. Reliving it from another perspective, with the necessary distance to make it art.
My work was my refuge, and not even the uncertainty about what the future might bring could lessen the pleasure of my newfound freedom. I was living outside of time, paying no attention to the hour, without a routine. It was chaos, and I loved it.
I learned to feel good. To care for myself. To enjoy every last moment.
I learned to think in the now. Not to rush. To be happy.
