Crampton behind the counter. “Igather the two of you have met?”
“Iwas in the other week,” says Clemence. “We spoke.”
“Toby, well done,” Crampton calls across the shop, and then says to Clemence, “He usually has a hardtime talking to girls.” At this, the pale book man turns bright red and knocks down a tower of mass-market paperbacks—and then Crampton has an idea. Her face enlivened, and she’s standing up taller, and Clemence can almost see the wheels in her head turning.
Crampton says to Toby, “She’s come about the books, Clemence. Miss Lathbury—itis‘miss’?” she asks, checking. Clemence nods. “She doesn’t like the way we put them in order, and I’ve got to tell you, Clemence, Miss Lathbury, Ihave neither the time nor inclination to do anything about it. The books are books, and there are books behind the books, plus upstairs, and changing everything around would give me a lot more trouble than the status quo has ever provided, if you know what I’m saying.
“But I’m wondering, seeing as you seem pretty free and easy, shopping at all hours when everybody else is working, and seeing as the notion of women’s fiction bothers you so much, if you might be want to be one to take on dealing with the problem. Sorting, organizing, you know. Putting our shelves more in alignment with your politics. Could you spare the time? I’d pay you. Not much, but a fair wage. For you to come in here a couple of hours a week and move the books around. To talk to Toby?”
“Are you offering me a job?” Clemence asks.
“If you’d consider.”
“Iwould. Idid.”
“And I’d say that Toby could help, but he’s got a bad back, and shoulders. He can’t lift much, but you appear to be a remarkably sturdy young woman—and no, don’tmake that face. There’s nothing wrong with sturdy. Poor Toby, here, he gets knocked over when the wind blows. We can’t have that. You’re robust. Ilike robust. Iadmire your gumption. Idon’t understand why you think women’s books ought to be stuck among all those others, books about spies and soldiers, and oil barons. Wasn’t it Virginia Woolf herself who said what a woman needs is a room of her own?”
“Idon’t think she meant it like that.”
“They’d be tainted by association, Ishould think. But no matter. You’re never going to finish the job, but maybe you’ll make a start, and Ido need the place tidied up. And you can talk to Toby.”
“Does Toby want to talk to me?” Clemence is embarrassed by the quaver in her voice. Toby has disappeared down the far aisle, surely to hide.
“Toby will do what Itell him to,” says Crampton Goldberg. “Iwrite his paycheques, after all. We’re closed Monday, for Labour Day, but could you start Tuesday?” But Tuesday morning, Clemence is going to meet with her professor, to begin her new career as an indexer. So they agree on Thursday, and the matter is set.
Eight
So explain this,” says Naomi, whose mouth is currently stuffed with French bread. She takes a moment to swallow. “The desire for an unsuitable attachment. How that’s going to fit into your overall scheme. And why you just can’t lust after the hot guy.”
“Naomi is trying to project-manage me,” Clemence says to Jillian. “This is what you do,” she says to Naomi, who shakes her head. Naomi has no idea what Clemence is talking about. And Jillian is laughing at both of them, sitting back against the railings on Clemence’s balcony, against the purple golden sunset, the dazzling colours even more so when refracted through the bubbly wine in the stemmed plastic glass she is holding aloft.
Clemence is drunk. Clemence is happy.
Clemence says, “Ifear sometimes Imay have bitten off more than Ican chew.” It is an evening for disclosures, one more link on a chain stretching back overthe decades, since they first became friends when they were still teenagers, Clemence’s current circumstances taking them back to those days of material impoverishment. There are only two chairs at her table, and it’s too hot to sit inside, and so she’s spread a blanket on the balcony, covering up the detritus from the tree, and she’s called it a picnic. Springing for the fancy cheeses at the fromagerie and the bread that’s almost cake from the boulangerie, and she’s feeling Parisian, sophisticated. Her friends have brought wine that probably cost even more than everything else in her elaborate spread, but Clemence is glad. She hasn’t been drinking much since beginning her new life. Drinking is not the same without company.
Down below them, Charles Yeung has just finished mowing the lawn, and Clemence is explaining why he can’t be the object of her affections, no matter how attractive he appears in the soft evening light.
Clemence tells her friends, “The point is not to have any significant attachment at all, which is a definition of freedom, you know? To be accountable to nobody but myself, and to travel, to discover who Ireally am by where Iended up.”
“Like a tumbleweed,” suggests Jillian.
“But not in the middle of a dust bowl. And I’m not saying there is anything wrong with ties and connections. Ithink connections are the basis of a meaningful life. You know Iknow that, Imean—here you are! But after so long being tied to something—to Toad, to Toad and me and our marriage, to theinstitution,”—her tongue tripsover the consonants—“Iwanted to try being untethered in that fundamental way.”
“And how’s it going?” asks Naomi.
Clemence says, “Well, okay, it’s kind of lonely. I’ve learned I’m not cut out for hermeticism.” She stops Jillian before she can say what’s next. “And Iknowyou told me. Iknow you knew, but that’s not the point. Ihad to find out myself.”
“You need the love!” exclaims Jillian, triumphant. “Because what’s eating and praying without it? Like a two-legged table, your spiritual quest. It will topple over.”
“And he likes you,” says Naomi. “Lawn mower man. The way he looked up and waved. I’d let him hold up my table.”
But Clemence disagrees. “What Ineed is like a placeholder,” she says. “An object of fixation, but one that’s never going to go anywhere. Something inconsequential.” She notes the skepticism on her friends’ faces. “And I’ve thought about this a lot.”
“Well, why not try an app, then?” suggested Naomi. “For something casual. Say ‘no strings’—they love that.”
“But it’s not even about sex,” says Clemence. “Imean, Ialready tried that, supposing that meaningless sex might be the solution to what ailed me, but it didn’t fill me up at all.”
Jillian says, “Imean …”
