And more chimes as she enters the bookstore, which Toby takes no notice of, as usual. If he’s been waiting for her, he doesn’t show it, everything between them as strange and awkward as it’s ever been, except it’s even stranger, because Toby is in on it, too, and he’s just as bewildering to her as she is to him, or as she is to herself,for that matter. It’s like trying to find your way in the dark, and this is the case, quite literally, as Toby arrives in the aisle where Clemence is sorting Anita Brookner, taking her hand, leading her around past Literature all the way to the closet under the staircase with the cryptic sign on the door, the remnant of some long ago attempt at order:Ursa Major—Asia Minor. The closet serves as a storage space for (guess what) more books, except the light bulb burned out years ago, and no one has replaced it, so what any of those books might be is a mystery.
Their redolence, however, is overwhelming, the rich and pulpy smell of cheap mass-market paperbacks, pages with an edge of mildew, but in a good way, in that way that smells like coming home to people like Clemence and Toby who discovered themselves through books and reading. Clemence is leaning back against these books and while she can’t see the stacks of them, she knows them, the same way she knows Toby standing in the dark before her, with breath that smells like toothpaste. It’s obvious to Clemence where all this is leading, but Toby still has to check. Because he’s the opposite of smooth, instead a strong proponent of friction, which is to say consent. Turns out spending a lifetime as a misfit with an utter lack of guile has left Toby especially aware of how a person might be taken advantage of. He doesn’t want to be that guy.
“Can Ikiss you, please?” he asks, the tension between them mounting, because they’ve been standing there in the dark, just breathing, staring in the direction of each other, but also into the abyss. Truthfully, at this point,Clemence would have consented if Toby had asked to devour her whole. She feels as though every nerve in her body is alert and reaching for him, and it’s been so long since she’s been this close to anyone. And even longer since she was and it was absolutely where she wanted to be.
When Clemence breathes a yes, Toby draws nearer, and it’s in the darkness where everything between them makes sense. That she’d be tasting him, his tongue in her mouth, his soft lips meeting hers, and this is the first time she’s experienced Toby approximating anything close to physical fluency, because he knows what to do. She reaches out to pull him closer, to stroke the untrimmed hair growing thickly from his temples. Toby’s hair is lush—who would have thought it? And all she wants, based on the strength of his kiss, is to feel his hands all over her body, but his hands are nowhere. Hanging still by his sides, she presumes, because she cannot see them, but she’s also distracted by his mouth, the way his tongue is tracing her lips. Opening her mouth wider, she can’t help emitting the smallest of moans, despite herself. Placing her hands on his chest, to feel his body, too, to show him what she wants him to do to her. And he’s all bones, skin and bones, presumably, under his shirt and his sweater, and she wants to be tearing the clothing off him now. Feeling like a dam has burst, and there’s no stopping the flow, because water will go where it wants to.
She tells him, “Touch me.” Awhisper. His shoulders are wide, but his frame is so delicate.Hollow bones, she thinks. She doesn’t want to break him, but also she reallywants to break him, and she wants to have him break her, too. She needs him to touch her, finally.
He asks her, “Can I?”
She says, “Yes,” the word trailing long, like something aching, and it is. He lays his hand against her hip and she gasps at the electricity, the darkness concentrating every sensation, and she wonders if he feels it, too.
He moves his hand up her body, as she reaches under his sweater, his shirt. To feel his skin, and his body is so warm. That part surprises her—Toby is dyspeptic, allergic, and so vulnerable that she hadn’t supposed it would be welcoming to touch him, the soft hair on his stomach, and she can tell by his stiffening muscles that he’s conscious of her there. She can feel it in the way he holds his breath. Following his example, she asks, “Is this okay?” Both of them proceeding, step by step, ever so slowly, and she’s overwhelmed by the eroticism of this. That they are both consumed, because he can barely nod against her neck and breathe, “Uh-huh.” This is tantalizing, agonizing, and wonderful, to feel so slowly his hand tracing the edge of her left breast, through her clothes and everything.
He stops. “Does that feel good?” And of course it does, because why else would she be melting into a puddle, but he needs to hear her say it, so she does.
“So good.” And you might think that this is the most ridiculous intimate scenario in which Clemence has ever found herself, necking with Toby the pale book man in the darkness of the musty closet, likely exposing herself to tuberculosis, but then you’d be forgetting about Clemence and Larry and Lisa next door. Larry withthe receding hairline and the long, grey ponytail, and maybe Clemence has a thing for men with untidy hair, this is true, but she really (promise) never had a thing for Larry at all. Although if that’s true, why is she thinking about Larry right now, as she’s gently biting Toby’s lip, careful not to draw blood, because she remembers what happened when he hit his head? Because of the distance from there to here is the answer to that question, how absolutely at home Clemence feels at this moment, in her body. It’s so different in every way, and not because it’s dark, because her vision has never been so clear.
Don’t think of Larry, Clemence reminds herself. She’s never been very good at keeping her mind in one place, because it prefers to take off on meandering journeys. Clemence has to rein it in, think of Toby. The toothpaste taste of Toby, and she wonders if he’d brushed his teeth with intention. If he’d been planning this, or it was spur of the moment, the way he’d waltzed up the aisle and led her to this private place, Ursa Major—Asia Minor. And his face is stuck in her neck now, and she’s inhaling his hair, Head & Shoulders shampoo, and she’s running her hand up and down his spine, fingers a whisper on his vertebrae, and his bones are so protruding that it’s a wonder he doesn’t snap. What a thing to wonder so much about someone and then finally to be touching their body.
He stops. “This is okay?”
“Okay,” she confirms, urging him back to the matters at hand, as he kisses her collarbone. His hand on her breast is still tentative, so she pulls it closer to affirm things, and starts sucking on his earlobe, her yearning building atthe touch of his fingers, and it’s been a long time for her since an encounter had built up so slowly. The intensity so concentrated. It might be possible to be satisfied if this was all there was … but no. Clemence wants it all.
“We should stop.” He steps back.
She says, “No,” the word trailing like something out of a tragedy, or perhaps just in the way of a whining child, and reaches to pull him closer, knocking a precarious stack of paperbacks to the ground with her elbow. They both ignore this, returning to kissing, until Toby pulls away again.
“We can’t lose our heads,” he says.
“Why not?” But he’s right. One thing leading to another. What would Jillian say? Although Jillian these days might say anything. “What would Jillian have said before she’d become unhinged?” might be the most appropriate question of all to consider at this moment, and here she and Toby would be in agreement. Time to step back, but metaphorically, because there’s not enough room in the closest, and to take a deep breath, also a metaphor, because the air in the closet is too stuffy for that. Jillian would probably recommend they get out of the closet altogether, and they do, emerging into the light with blinking eyes, and the bookshop really does not seem so dim after you’ve been snogging in a cave.
Instead, the space is almost luminous, the two of them standing around, adjusting their clothes, smoothing their hair, untucked and rumpled by the books about gardening and hedgerows, and Gertrude Jekyll, whom Clemence likes to imagine as Mr. Hyde’s far more salubrious sister.Bookstores are so distracting. She has always found it difficult to have conversations in these spaces, to not be looking over someone’s shoulder at the beautiful book on peonies high up on the shelf, but Clemence is a far cry from Toby, who struggles with conversations everywhere. Get him in a closet, though, and he really comes to life.
Clemence puts her hand on his shoulder, imploring him to wait for a moment. Otherwise, he would have walked away from her without a word. “That was nice,” she says. “Ilike you, Toby.” It will be complicated to process their encounter now that they’re standing in the daylight.
“Thank you,” he says. He doesn’t look at her. Out here, he’s lost all his verve, his instincts. It’s like they’re back to their very first meeting again, and all he wants to do is hide behind a book.
Which only makes her want him more.
And what kind of game is this? What has Toby done to her, to Clemence, who had been determined to never again want anybody ever, when she’d specifically chosen him for his lack of desirability? Because someone like him should not be able to reduce Clemence to jelly, but this is what he’s done.
Eighteen
Mrs. Yeung puts Clemence in put in charge of promoting the jumble sale, and Clemence has ideas about social media and email marketing. About targeting local influencers, and everybody on the committee humours her in this respect, but they insist that she has to do posters, too. The church has a laser printer, they keep reminding her, which must have been remarkable once upon a time. Reverend Michelle prints the posters using last year’s template with the dates adjusted, and Clemence walks around the neighbourhood with a big roll of packing tape on her arm like a bangle, sticking those posters to poles and fence posts and community boards. She convinces Crampton to stick one in the window at the grocery store, though she has to clean away the grime with a wet cloth before the poster can be visible through the glass. In addition to being sensitive about her windows, Crampton isn’t crazy about the cause—she’s been furiousat St. Saviour’s since she was a child and made to feel unwelcome at the Sunday school picnic on account of her father being Jewish.
Which Clemence understands entirely. “But Idon’t think they do that anymore,” she says.
“They had Neapolitan ice cream,” says Crampton, not listening, still far away in her memory. “I’ve always had an affinity for stripes. Iwanted to try it, but the other mothers made me leave. They said it wasn’t appropriate.”
“Neapolitan isn’t very good.”
Crampton eyes snap back open. “It would be years before Iknew that for myself.” Clemence struggles to imagine Crampton as a child, or eating ice cream for that matter. Surely she was born wearing a tweed suit with her grey hair closely cropped. She explains, “It was our neighbour who brought me to the picnic. Iused to hang around her place, because my father was always working, and my mother had just died. I’m sure Iwas a nuisance, but she was kind, and after what happened that day, she was mortified, though I’m not sure if it was for my sake or her own.”
“And what did your father think?” They are standing outside, looking in through the window, and out in the fresh air, Crampton is most forthcoming. As though leaving her shop has broken the spell that Clemence has long suspected Crampton lives under, the kind that freezes time entirely.
Crampton dismisses Clemence with a wave. “My father didn’t care. He hated the church. He told me Iwas a fool to bother with them, anyway. And Ivowed to neverhave anything to do with them again. So Ihaven’t. Until you came along and started pilfering my books for your jumble.”
