“You don’t need stitches,” she tells his again, softly so not to disturb the spell. “You’re just bleeding a lot.” It was starting to let up, she thought, though maybe this was wishful thinking.
“Ihave a clotting disorder,” Toby whispers. “Thankfully mild.”
“Ihave Band-Aids,” she tells him. But Toby is allergicto Band-Aids, it turns out, something in the adhesive that gives him a rash, so she has to get out the first aid kit properly, feeling so capable, unrolling the gauze and cutting off a square with the pair of tiny scissors. Ordinary medical tape will be fine, he says. He tells her that she’s a good nurse, which nobody has said to Clemence in her life.
Once the bandage is sorted, Toby follows her out of the bathroom and perches on the edge of her bed, moving pillows out of the way to make this possible.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
He says, “Dizzy.” He sounds woozy. It was only a surface wound, and if he’d showed up at the hospital for stitches, they would have laughed at him. But now he’s seen his reflection in the mirror, that clean bandage against his pale white forehead, and he imagines himself to have survived great peril. “I’ll have to monitor this. It might be a concussion.”
“It’s not, it’s just a scrape.” Clemence wants to offer him something—a drink? She has milk. Does he want more milk? But he doesn’t. He’s happy to accept a glass of water, though.
“Got to replenish my fluids.” Toby is the most ridiculous human being Clemence has ever known in her life, and she knows her family, so that’s saying a lot. He drinks the water and confesses: “Iknow Crampton is paying you to talk to me. She told me. She isn’t nice, but she’s never sneaky. She thinks Ineed to get out more, that I’m too isolated.”
“Well, maybe she’s right.”
“Idon’t know,” he says. “People aren’t really my thing.”And something in Clemence’s expression must betray the hurt she feels when she hears him say that, after all this trouble, because he rushes to reassure her, a rare display of empathy: “You, well. Imean,you’reactually okay.” Sounding as though this revelation surprises him, too. And then he looks around the room suspiciously. “What Idon’t understand, though—is she paying younow?”
“Now?”
“Your shift is over. You’d left for the day.”
“Well, maybe Ineed someone to talk to, too,” says Clemence. “It’s not all about the profit.”
“Good, since you can’t profit much. Is it even worth it?”
“Ilike the books,” says Clemence. She pulls a chair out from her little table and sits down across from Toby. The bleeding has stopped. The bandage on his head is still pristine, and makes him look more like a tortured nineteenth-century poet than ever. “And getting rid of Women’s Fiction. Iwant to do that. I’m making progress.” She’d already moved over Jane Austen, and was making room for the Brontës after dumping Dan Browns and Michael Crichtons. They were going to be donated to the jumble. Clemence was confused about how they’d ever made it into Literature in the first place.
“Ijust stick them wherever there’s room,” Toby admits. “We don’t get around to organizing much.”
“Ican tell,” Clemence says.
“Ishould probably get back to work, though,” he says. “I’m allowed to take breaks, duck out for a few minutes, but it’s been a while now. Somebody might notice.”
“Nobody will notice.”
“Still.” Toby stands up. “I’m less dizzy.” Shaking his head sideways as though to dislodge something from his right ear. “Thank you,” he tells her.
“I’ll walk you down,” says Clemence, trailing him down the two sets of stairs to the foyer. And just before he opens the outside door, she calls, “Stop!” He turns around, alarmed. “Just, Imean. Hold on a sec.” And then she knocks at Mrs. Yeung’s door across the hall, and her landlady opens it as though she’d been standing there waiting on the other side, which is mostly likely. Clemence says to her, “Iwanted to introduce you. Toby, this is Mrs. Yeung,” and both of them are polite enough, neither seemingly struck by the strangeness of the interaction, because possibly for Mrs. Yeung and Toby, things are weird all the time, particularly where Clemence Lathbury is concerned.
Mrs. Yeung comes out on the porch to wait while Clemence walks Toby down to the sidewalk, and Clemence is conscious of her eyes on them. Silently, she is imploring Toby not to lose his footing, to remain upright and fulfill his part in this role she’s cast him in, which he’s nearly finished performing and he’s done so well.
He stops and turns to her. “This was nice,” he says, as though surprised, and Clemence knows what he means. “Other than the blood.”
“The blood’s never the best part of anything.”
“Thank you for the bandage,” he says, his voice a murmur. Lingering. What is he waiting for? What is Mrs. Yeung waiting for? And what isshewaiting for, Clemence asks herself, for crying out loud, so she follows through.Standing up on her tiptoes to deliver a kiss to those big cushion lips, a quick one, nothing fancy, but still, he stumbles backwards and says, “Whoa.” He doesn’t fall down though. She’ll give him that.
“See you at work,” she says, her voice just low enough that Mrs. Yeung might imagine she’s bestowing an intimacy. And then he turns and flees, and Clemence hopes that from a distance it doesn’t actually look like that’s what he’s doing.
She waits, watching him go, his wild hair flying, his narrow back but large shoulders, getting smaller and smaller. How his pants are too short. If Clemence stands here long enough, will Mrs. Yeung have turned around and gone back inside?
But no, she is waiting, arms folded. She looks delighted. “So that’s him?” she calls. “That’s your boyfriend? Because he looks like a child. And what’s with the bandage?”
“He hit his head.”
“Idon’t like him,” says Mrs. Yeung.
