In late June, when Alice arrived at the bindery to collect her first batch of finished books, there were real live customers in the store. On her past two visits, she’d never seen another patron. Now four people browsed the paper goods, their arms full of journals, wrapping paper, and overpriced pens. One woman twirled a strand of blond hair as she asked Duncan if he could bind her a journal in gold-plated leather. Another interrupted them to see if he had any chartreuse ink. “It’s my favorite color,” she giggled, although Alice couldn’t tell what was funny.
“Did you put an ad in the paper or something?” she asked when Duncan finally found a moment to retrieve her books from behind the counter.
“Maybe it’s international stationery day?” Duncan posited.
“Is that a thing?”
“There’s a day for everything else, why not stationery?” He handed her one book to inspect. Alice turned it over. Her customers were right to want red. Everything about this book screamed love.
“It’s perfect,” she said, causing him to blush. The pride he took in his work made him someone else, someone bashful, someone he’d been before his heartbreak. Alice felt a pang of sympathy for this version of Duncan, for his loss, for how much happier he must have been.
Duncan piled the books into a Willow Bindery tote bag. “Figured you had graduated to the VIP clients who get their books delivered in a tote. Just bring it with you when you come back to get the next batch. VIP or not, I only have so many totes to go around.”
“I will guard it with my life,” she teased.
“Let’s not get dramatic,” Duncan warned, raising an eyebrow.
Alice held out the flash drive with the next batch of books, four this time. She’d cut back to one catering shift, which allowed her to complete two to four stories each week. With the steady income from her stories, she did not need to keep catering, but she wasn’t prepared to quit. She felt indebted to Caroline, who had given her a job when she desperately needed it. And it was a good safety net so she didn’t have to rely entirely on her writing, which seemed reckless to Alice, even though the requests kept coming, the stories kept pouring from her, most of the time anyway.
Even if she committed all her energy to writing, she could not keep pace with the waitlist. Each story, she was coming to learn, had its own timeline. Some were swift, the entire process, from meeting the client to uploading their story for Duncan, occurring in the space of an afternoon. Most took longer, even when the clients were not evading her. The more she studied her clients, the more she realized that while people’s problems were obvious, they were also nuanced. Not all low self-esteem was the same. Not all loneliness had the same tenor. Often weaknesses were also strengths; they just needed to be reimagined. As with any skill, she was honing her craft.
After twenty-nine stories, she was getting better at plot and characterization, at writing stories that were uniquely suited to each of her clients, so much so that she was fairly certain they would not be able to share the stories with anyone, even if they wanted to. Alice never questioned the visions she got for her stories. She followed them wherever they wanted to go, across as many words as they needed to arrive at some unpredicted conclusion. Once she reached the end, she never read over her stories, which truly made her feel like the vessel, not the architect.
The woman who had asked for the chartreuse ink held up a note card and waved it at Duncan. “Can I order a box of these?”
Duncan nodded at Alice as he excused himself to see which cards she meant. Alice watched for a moment as he inspected the card and told the woman that if she wanted to order them in bulk, he could give her a discount.
The woman giggled as though he was making her a different kind of proposal. “I’m a party planner, and I think I need you on speed dial.”
“Isn’t everyone on speed dial these days, with numbers saved to cell phones?”
This got her laughing even harder. Duncan looked over at Alice, who shrugged.
“Happy Stationery Day,” she called as she headed toward the door. This caused him to smile. He had an array of smiles, she was coming to learn. This one was new, wider, exposing deep dimples on both cheeks.
“Same time next week?” he called to her before she walked out. It took Alice a moment to realize that he meant to pick up her books. While she was touched that he was turning their exchange into routine, it disappointed her that the routine was solely about other people’s love stories.
As Alice stepped onto the sidewalk, she glanced back through the picture window and watched the woman continue to chat with Duncan. He looked up and saw Alice, rolling his eyes quickly before returning his attention to the customer. Alice wasn’t aware that she was smiling until her cheeks started to hurt. Her chest tightened. Her stomach grew nauseated as she recognized her body’s cautionary responses to getting in too deep. Much to her dismay, she found herself desiring Duncan.
This discovery should not have been so alarming. She was attracted to men all the time and knew how to detach desire from relationships. What alarmed her was that since she’d begun writing her stories, she’d unconsciously divided men into two categories, clients and potential suitors for her clients, leaving herself no room to be attracted to any of them. Now, here she was, her body warning her to back off. Their fingers hadn’t even grazed as Alice’s books exchanged hands, much less intentionally touched. She was getting completely ahead of herself, something she never did, yet she felt it clearly throughout her body, the need to be protective.
“Well?” Gabby asked, leaning up on her elbows on the massage table. Her bare torso and perky breasts were exposed when she looked over at Alice, who remained supine, her body tightly cloaked under the sheet, only her head angled toward her best friend. “What’s so bad about getting ahead of yourself?”
Gabby subscribed to a weekly massage the way women in the fifties got their hair done every Friday. It was her therapy, spiritual as much as physical. Alice got a massage once a year, just enough to remember why she didn’t like them. Her body always stiffened as she anticipated where the masseuse’s hands might land. Once they were rubbing her, every inch of skin animated like a pressure point.Relax, the masseuses would tell her, shaking out her arm to make it go limp. Alice had assumed she was relaxed. The fact that she wasn’t only made her tense up even more.
“That’s half the fun of falling for someone,” Gabby continued, “letting your mind get ten steps ahead, imagining everything that could happen between you. Occasionally it happens in real life, and then it’s glorious.” Gabby lay back down, nestling into the headrest. Obviously she was not the right person to talk to about Duncan. She was too in love.
“I’m not falling for him,” Alice protested, wishing that their masseuses would arrive already and put an abrupt end to the conversation. They were at a salt cave spa, Gabby’s latest obsession. In addition to walls fabricated from large rocks of pink Himalayan salt, sandy granulated salt covered the floor. The air was infused with microscopic salt particles that Gabby insisted she could feel breaking down the toxins in her lungs. Oliver was supposed to be getting this couples massage with Gabby, but inspiration had struck him that morning and he couldn’t tear himself away from his jokes. “Who knew I’d have so many artists in my life,” Gabby had said when she called to ask Alice to take his place at the massage table.
“You mean you won’t let yourself fall for him,” Gabby corrected. “Okay, let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario where you and Duncan date. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
Alice was about to remind her of all the times her body had revolted during a relationship. It was too much stress for her system. Her constitution wasn’t made for it. It was like a food allergy. Gabby hated this analogy. “You aren’t allergic to love,” she’d argue, “you’re afraid of it.”
Alice did not present this familiar refrain to Gabby. Instead she positioned her head into the cradle, which offered her a view of the sandy salt floor. She breathed in the iron-and calcium-rich air and thought of Duncan, his array of smiles, how he seemed to be two men at once, cut in half by the kind of heartbreak Alice never let herself experience.
“He’s still getting over his ex-wife,” Alice said. She told Gabby what she knew about the ex’s cheating, about how he had to leave his work, his home, start over somewhere new. “Even if I wanted to, he isn’t ready. He’s too broken.”
“Okay, so maybe it’s a rebound thing. That’s more in your wheelhouse anyway, isn’t it?”
