Merritt dropped to her knees and began slowly gathering bookmarks. She sensed Ian move behind her to hand his books over to Huong, who immediately began talking at a rapid clip about how she’d overheard him mentioning Amazon, and was hesurehe didn’t want her to place the order for him here? It would only take a minute, and he’d be supporting his local bookstore rather than a mega-capitalistic enterprise bent on denying its warehouse workers basic rights.
She jabbered on in that way until the man left with a haphazard “Thank you.” Merritt made short work of the remaining bookmarks and popped up to look at Huong.
“You saved my life.”
Huong laughed aloud—a rare occurrence.
“You had suffered enough.”
“Seriously.” Merritt stared up at the ceiling. “I think he was about to ask me out.”
“Not on my watch.”
Merritt smiled gratefully at Huong before she returned to the cart with the go-backs, thinking about the difference between Graydon and this man. His barely hidden condescension made picturing his classes at the college easy. She took pleasure in imagining the course catalog listing classes with names like “Cormac McCarthy and Friends” and “Norman Mailer Was Good Actually.” Graydon, on the other hand, exuded natural, authentic modesty and championed the work of women and minority writers, whether they were his students or authors whose books were to be used as mentor texts. It was a quality that hadkeptMerritt in love with him, even when the cracks (his self-centeredness, his wandering eye, the way he mocked her when she mentioned the possibility of writing a children’s book) began to show. Standing inscience fictionnow with an Octavia Butler book in her hands, she felt the familiar pang of shame for her blind spots. At least Ian was transparent in his efforts to turn her life into content and profit.
She shook away her thoughts and moved with the empty cart back to the register, where Huong was packing up.
“Where are you headed after work?” Merritt asked, more to distract herself than because she thought Huong would have an interesting answer. “Some fun Halloween party?”
“I’m taking an art class. At the Whelk Harbor Art Collective.”
“Oh,” Merritt said, then immediately realized her mistake. Of course the girl somehow looking cool in an overall dress and tights was on her way somewhere noteworthy.
“What?”
“Nothing, I just—”
Huong narrowed her eyes.
“Do you want to come?”
Merritt smiled, appreciative, as an idea solidified in her mind.
“No,” she said, “but thank you. I have something else I need to do.”
But Huong wouldn’t let her off that easy. The bell tinkled at the entrance of Moishe, their evening replacement, and after their hellos, he walked off to drop his things in the break room, and Huong still waited.
“Well?” she said. “What is it?”
“What?”
“The something else?”
“Oh,” Merritt said, now packing her own bag in the space where Huong had stood. “You’ve inspired me. I’m going to go write.”
“With that sad dad you work for?”
“No,” Merritt said, a little too intensely. She softened her tone. “With myself. For myself.”
Huong smiled.
“Good.”
“Yeah. It is.”
From where Merritt sat writing in Carafe, she could see the street slowly begin to fill with costumed kids and their parents, all on their way, she knew, to trick-or-treat. She wondered if Whit and Annie were out there, with his sister, and then she went back to typing.
The document she was working in was so old that she’d almost expected moths to scatter from behind the file name after shedouble-clicked it. It was her unfinished manuscript. The words came surprisingly easily after so many stagnant months of doing things that were decidedly not writing. Writing with Whit, she realized, had been good practice.
