“This... is very good, Merritt. You may have a future in book staging.”
“Thanks,” Merritt said, holding back her sarcasm as she manned the register. “Huong helped.”
“Yes, and good for her,” she called to thememoirsection, where Huong was reshelving go-backs. Diana tended to treat Huong, a twenty-two-year-old college graduate, like a child learning to ride a bike.She’s doing great, Diana mouthed, and Merritt nodded, smiling in a way that genuinely pained her jaw.
Diana joined Merritt at the desk, raising reading glasses on a pearled string to her eyes and wiggling her fingers to indicate that Merritt should slide down and relinquish the computer. While Diana began working at a rate of one click orhmmevery ten seconds, Merritt set about applying a large rubber stamp to the brown paper totes they gave out as shopping bags.
“I really thought we’d be moving more of those Graydon Lyons books,” Diana said, causing Merritt to fumble the stamp and drawing Diana’s eyes her way. “Oh, do that one again, dear.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looks like a kindergartener did it with her eyes closed.”
Merritt assessed the bag and found Diana’s characterization unduly harsh, but that wasn’t the point. “I meant about the books.”
“Oh, just look at that pile—a very good pile, by the way.Brava.”
“But how many have we sold?”
“All right, nosy little you,” Diana laughed. Merritt’s skin rankled as the older woman clicked and tapped away. “None today, one yesterday, and... two over the past week. I have a crateful in the back that the publisher will be none too happy to see again. I just can’t believe more people aren’t reading it.”
“Like, in the world?”
“What?” Diana asked, moving her glasses back to their resting place on her chest.
“Aren’t people reading it?”
Merritt had refused to googleSerious Gamesand had avoided her mother’s copy ofThe New York Times Book Reviewon Sunday. A hope crept into her chest that maybe the novel’s performance at Goodenough Books was representative of a national trend—
“Oh yes,” Diana said, cutting that hope in two. “It’s on all the bestseller lists. Just not in Whelk Harbor. Odd, isn’t it?”
“So odd.”
“Well, now that one looks like someone’s bled all over the bag, dear. Perhaps you should take a break.”
“I think I will, thanks.”
Merritt went to the back room and slumped into a chair. She was tired of this—the way the book seemed to haunt her and weigh her down. Either she needed to give it up and read the thing or she needed to move on.
Okay, she decided.I will let myself feel however it is I feel about this thing for five more minutes. And then I will move on. Graydon Lyons does not get to have a hold over me anymore. Do you hear that, Graydon? I relinquish you.
Ten minutes later, Merritt stood by thenew releasesdisplay, holding the book in her hand, thinking that maybe reading just the first chapter wouldn’t be a total rejection of her principles, when the bell over the door rang. It was Moishe, a kindly bald man Diana’s age who worked the afternoon shift. It was time for Merritt to leave.
“Hello, Diana, hello, Merritt.Don’tread that, Merritt, it’s just dour and self-serious, and I wasted my weekend on it.”
Moishe’s literary frame of reference was mostly gay historical romance, but Merritt still fell a little bit in love with him for a moment.
“Noted.” She smiled, and then she set about gathering her things.
In her parked car, Merritt ticked boxes in her head, making sure she remembered where she and Whit had left off so she could spend the drive going over her plans for the day. How quickly she was able to mentally leave behind the bookstore and Diana and Graydon and jump back into it with Whit. She had even begun humming a self-satisfied, ad-libbed tune... until her car refused to start.
She sat listening for anything happening under the hood—as if she would know what that meant. After about two minutes of sitting and thinking, the door to the bookstore opened. Huong walked out and came over to peer through the windshield. Merritt stepped out of the car.
“I thought you might have died,” Huong said as she stood there in her oversized cardigan covered in comically large crocheted daisies.
“I did not die,” Merritt groaned, “but my car did. Do you think you could give me a jump?”
“Do you know how to jump a car?”
