Henry will stand at the counter, and she will ask his order and his name (even though he has been coming here six days a week for the last three years, and she’s been there for two of them), and from the time she punches in his flat white to the time she writes his name on the cup and calls out for the next order, she will never look at him. Her gaze will flit from his shirt to the computer to his chin, and Henry will feel like he isn’t even there.
That’s how it always goes.
Only, today, it doesn’t.
Today, when she takes his order, she looks up.
It’s such a small change, the difference of two inches, maybe three, but now he can see her eyes, which are a startling blue, and the barista looks at him, not his chin. She holds his gaze, and smiles.
“Hi there,” she says, “what can I get you?”
He orders a flat white, and says his name, and that is where it ends.
Then it doesn’t.
“Fun day planned?” she asks, making small talk as she writes his name on the cup.
Vanessa has never made small talk with him before.
“Just work,” he says, and her attention flicks back to his face. This time he catches a faint shimmer—a wrongness—in her eyes. It’s a trick of the light, it must be, but for a second, it looks like frost, or fog.
“What do you do?” she asks, sounding genuinely interested, and he tells her about The Last Word, and her eyes light up a little. She has always been a reader, and she cannot think of anywhere better than a bookstore. When he pays for the order, their fingers brush, and she cuts him another glance. “See you tomorrow, Henry.”
The barista says his name like she stole it, mischief tugging at her smile.
And he can’t tell if she’s flirting until he gets his drink, and sees the little black arrow she’s drawn, pointing to the bottom, and when he tips it up to see, his heart gives a little thud like an engine turning over.
She’s written her name and number on the bottom of the cup.
At The Last Word, Henry unlocks the grate, and the door, while finishing his coffee. He turns the sign and goes through the motions of feeding Book and opening the store and shelving new stock until the bell chimes, announcing his first customer.
Henry winds through the stacks to find an older woman, toddling between the aisles, from HISTORICAL to MYSTERY to ROMANCE and back again. He gives her a few minutes, but when she makes the loop a third time, he steps in.
“Can I help you?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she murmurs, half to herself, but then she turns to look at him, and something changes in her face. “I mean, yes, please, I hope so.” There’s the faintest shine to her eyes, a rheumy glow, as she explains that she’s looking for a book she’s already read.
“These days, I can’t remember what I’ve read, and what I haven’t,” she explains, shaking her head. “Everything sounds familiar. All the covers look the same. Why do they do that? Why do they make everything like everything else?”
Henry assumes it has to do with marketing and trends, but he knows that’s probably not helpful to say. Instead he asks if she remembers anything about it.
“Oh, let’s see. It was a big book. It was about life and death, and history.”
That doesn’t exactly narrow it down, but Henry is used to the lack of details. The number of people who’ve come in, looking for something they’ve seen, able to supply nothing beyond “The cover was red,” or “I think it had the word girl in the title.”
“It was sad, and lovely,” explains the old woman. “I’m sure it was set in England. Oh dear. My mind. I think it had a rose on the cover.”
She looks around at the shelves, wrings her papery hands together. And she’s clearly not going to decide, so he does. Desperately uncomfortable, he tugs a thick historical from the nearest fiction shelf.
“Was it this?” he asks, offering Wolf Hall. But he knows the moment it’s in his hand that it’s not the one. There’s a poppy on the cover, not a rose, and there’s nothing particularly sad or lovely about the life of Thomas Cromwell, even if the writing is beautiful, poignant. “Never mind,” he says, already reaching to put it back when the old woman’s face lights up with pleasure.
“That’s it!” She grabs his arm with bony fingers. “That’s exactly what I was looking for.” Henry has a hard time believing it, but the woman’s joy is so clear that he begins to doubt himself.
He is about to ring her up when he remembers. Atkinson. Life After Life. A book about life and death and history, sad and lovely, set in England, with a twinned rose on the cover.
“Wait,” he says, ducking around the corner and down the recent fiction aisle to retrieve the book.
“Is this it?”
The woman’s face brightens, exactly as it did before. “Yes! You clever thing, that’s just the one,” she says, with the same conviction.
“Happy I could help,” he says, unsure if he did.
She decides to take both books, says she’s sure that she will love them.
The rest of the morning is just as strange.
A middle-aged man comes in searching for a thriller, and leaves with all five titles that Henry recommends. A college student comes looking for a book on Japanese mythology, and when Henry apologizes for not having it, she practically trips over herself to say it’s not his fault, and insists on letting him order it in for her, even though she isn’t sure about the class. A guy with a model’s build and a jaw sharper than a penknife comes to peruse their fantasy section, and he writes his e-mail on the receipt beneath his signature when he pays.
Henry feels off-balance, the way he did when Muriel told him he looked good. It’s like déjà vu, and not like déjà vu at all, because the feeling is entirely new. It’s like April Fool’s, when the rules change, and everything’s a game, and everyone else is in on it, and he’s still marveling over the last encounter, face a little flushed, when Robbie bursts in through the door, chime ringing in his wake.
“Oh my god,” he says, throwing his arms around Henry, and for a moment, he thinks something awful must have happened, before realizing that it already happened to him.
“It’s okay,” says Henry, and of course it’s not, but today has been so weird that everything before it feels a little like a dream. Or maybe this is the dream? If it is, he’s not all that eager to wake up. “It’s okay,” he says again.
“It doesn’t have to be okay,” says Robbie. “I just want you to know I’m here, I would have been there last night, too—I wanted to come over when you didn’t answer your phone, but Bea said we should give you space, and I don’t know why I listened, I’m sorry.”
It comes out in a single stream of words.
Robbie’s grip tightens as he talks, and Henry savors the embrace. They fit together with the familiar comfort of a well-worn coat. The hug lingers a little too long. Henry clears his throat and pulls back, and Robbie gives an awkward laugh and turns away, his face catching the light, and Henry notices a fine streak of purple along Robbie’s temple, right where it meets his sandy hairline.
“You’re glittering.”
Robbie scrubs halfheartedly at the makeup. “Oh, rehearsal.”
There’s an odd shine in Robbie’s eyes, a glassiness Henry knows too well, and he wonders if Robbie’s on something, or if it’s simply been awhile since he slept. Back in college, Robbie would get so high on drugs or dreams or big ideas that he’d have to burn all the energy out of his system, and then he’d crash.