Page 3 of Comfort Read

“Yes,” Kit says directly into the counter, and then, rolling his head to look at her, “I mean—no. I don’t know. It was fine. Okay, it was horrible, but the woman I talked to wasn’t a monster or anything. They’re just… not interested.” He sighs. “I almost wish she had been horrible, or threatened my cat, or whatever. I’d be more justified in moping.”

“Yeah, and God help anyone who has to face the wrath of Throgmorten,” Allison says, shaking her head. “He nearly took my hand off while you were out of town last month and he likes me. You should send him down to the bank. He’d make them give you the loan.”

“Oh, right. I’ll just send in my attack cat; why didn’t I think of that? Works every time!” Throgmorten, as if summoned by this description, leaps up onto the counter, slips his head under Kit’s hand, and starts purring. Kit lets out a laugh, but it’s more despairing than anything. “I don’t mean to sell you short, Throg, you are my strange, violent son and I love you, but I don’t think there’s much you can do for me on this one. Not unless you robbed a bank and stashed the cash somewhere.”

Throgmorten lets out a sound somewhere between a meow and a growl. Kit can’t help but get the sense he means that he does have the money, but he’d never give up its location to anyone. This is absurd, because he’s a cat, and Kit’s embarrassed about it until Allison says, “Was that weirdly suspicious, or is it just me?”

“Weirdly suspicious,” Kit agrees with a ghost of a grin, which firms up slightly when Allison nods, picks up a dry-erase marker, and makes a tally on the board labeled, Incident Tracker: Weirdly Suspicious Cat Behavior. The bottom of the board has an area for people to guess what they think Throgmorten’s behavior is suspicious of, and various hands have written things like Trapped warlock, or Plotting government overthrow, or General evil.

“You should add ‘larceny,’” Kit suggests. Allison nods and Throgmorten purrs loudly, which makes Allison narrow her eyes and then add not only the word, but another tally to the board.

“On the topic of money,” she says as she caps the marker, “I’m not sure how much it will help, but: While you were out? We got a Hollywood call.”

One of the questionable perks of owning a bookstore as old and iconic as Sawyer’s: Occasionally, you get a Hollywood call. This is the name Kit’s given to the requests that come in, once in a while, to use the store as a set or a backdrop. There’s always some sort of fee negotiated for use of the space, higher if they have to shut down during the day and lose business, so Kit’s always said yes.

As a result, in the last year Sawyer’s has served as a setting for scenes in two television shows, one major motion picture that never made it to theaters, three photo shoots, and a surprising number of corporate welcome and policy videos. With the money he’s been paid for the time, Kit’s managed to fix some of the building’s smaller issues. Nothing they’ve made off of a Hollywood call has come close to touching even the down payment he’d need to start on the structural repairs, or the electrical work that needs doing, or whatever is going on with the pipes. It’s not a lifeline—more like a high five as he drowns.

Still, money is money, so Kit calls the number Allison left for him and agrees to the terms and conditions laid out. The woman he talks to, a publicist called Frankie, is nonchalant to a degree that makes Kit nervous. She’s sparse with the details, but after a few minutes of wheedling, he learns the shop will be serving as the backdrop for a filmed interview. With whom, apparently, is need-to-know, but barring a few notable exceptions, Kit doesn’t care who it is. He’ll get a decent payout, and Sawyer’s will only need to close for the morning.

Out of paranoia, he does go ahead and ensure that whoever is coming to the shop isn’t one of those notable exceptions. The last thing he wants is to open his doors to someone famous for bigotry, or sex crimes, or being a notorious serial killer who specifically targets bookstore owners. Kit’s never heard of a serial killer like that, but it’s the kind of thing that would happen to him, especially this week.

“No, all above board, I promise,” the publicist assures him, laughing as though she thinks Kit is a riot. “But don’t mention the interview to anyone, all right?”

“Just noting for the record: That’s also what a serial killer would advise,” Kit says.

Frankie laughs again. “My client is not a serial killer, Mr. Forrest. Honestly, I’m sorry to be so cloak-and-dagger about it; I’m sure it’s annoying for you. It’s that we’ve had some issues with the press recently, and what we’re filming will be embargoed content the minute we’re done making it, so it’s all a little delicate. You understand.”

Kit doesn’t, but he offers her a murmur that might be mistaken for agreement, and they settle on the following morning as a good time to film. It’s not, actually—Kit would have preferred a week’s notice, which he usually insists on—but the publicist offers him an additional fee to compensate for how last-minute it all is, and Kit’s not in a position to turn that down.

“Thanks again,” Frankie says at the end of the call. “We’ll see you tomorrow, and I promise, if nothing else, that you’ll survive the encounter.”

“If you say so,” Kit says, amused in spite of himself, having warmed to her slightly over the course of the call. “But I’m holding you to that—if I do die, you’d better prepare to be haunted.”

“I’ll make you a nice little spooky corner in my closet,” Frankie says, without missing a beat. “You’ll hardly even miss your old life. ’Til then!”

She’s joking, of course. Kit was joking, too. But the following morning, when Sage actual Ballard walks through the bookshop’s front door, Kit’s heart immediately starts pounding so fast he’s afraid he’ll have to take her up on it.

TWO

Everybody in the greater Ithaca area knows who Sage Ballard is.

No, that’s not broad enough—surely everyone on earth knows who Sage Ballard is, or at least everyone with a television, a movie theater, a local purveyor of tabloids, or access to the internet. Sage Ballard is everywhere. Sage Ballard has been everywhere for so long that he’s become a fixture of modern entertainment, part of the fabric of culture itself. It’s like seeing Tom Hanks step into the shop.

Actually, it’s worse: Sage Ballard is especially well-known around Ithaca, and that’s because he’s from here. Sure, his family moved away when he was five, before Sage got his breakout role on Good Fences and was launched into child stardom—that doesn’t matter. He was born in Ithaca, welcomed into the world by the staff at Cayuga Medical Center like practically everyone else in the area, and so he’s been proudly touted as a hometown hero for the last twenty-odd years.

Or he was. Sage’s fame hasn’t seemed to do him any favors recently. These days when his name comes up around town, people usually change the subject.

None of that makes it any less surreal to see the man himself walk through the doors. His slicked-back dark hair, chiseled jaw, sharply cut cheekbones, and ice-blue eyes all belong on posters and movie screens, not here, in Kit’s bookshop. Sage looks so out of place next to the Sawyer’s Community Bulletin Board that it’s all Kit can do to choke down a crazed laugh. He and Allison spent last weekend bedazzling that board with the local dollar store’s finest Halloween decorations, and Kit had been proud of it, at the time. Next to Sage Ballard, it looks more like a hastily made prop than a “critical, centralizing hub of community energy,” which was how Kit described it yesterday, at the bank.

“Hi,” Sage says, approaching the counter. His voice, like his movements, his hair, and even the drape of the jeans he’s wearing, is carefully controlled, bordering on stiff. “Frankie said I should meet her here, but she’s always late, and I didn’t want to stand around in the parking lot. Are you Kit?”

Kit opens his mouth to offer a reasonable reply, such as, “Yes, I am Kit,” or, “Nice to meet you,” or, indeed, “Hello.”

Unfortunately, what comes out is: “Oh my God, it’s you.”

Sage stares at him for a long moment. Then he snorts, and mutters, “Oh, good. This is going to go so well.”

Before Kit can respond to this, a tall salt-and-pepper-haired woman who looks to be in her early forties bursts through the door. She’s dressed in a suit that Kit can tell would be more at home in a boardroom than here in Sawyer’s, where one is never totally safe from an unexpected leak. Trailing her is a younger, shorter, darker-haired woman with a cheerful smile and a bag so large in comparison to her frame that it borders on absurdity.