The door chimes.
“Son of a bitch,” announces Bea, slamming her satchel down on the counter. “Ostrich-minded motherfucker.”
“Customers,” warns Henry, even though the only one currently nearby is a deaf older man, a regular named Michael who frequents the horror section.
“To what do we owe this tantrum?” asks Robbie cheerfully. Drama always puts him in a good mood.
“My asshole adviser,” she says, storming past them toward the art and art history section. They share a look, and trail after her.
“He didn’t like the proposal?” asks Henry.
Bea has been trying to get a dissertation topic approved for the better part of a year.
“He turned it down!” She whips down an aisle, nearly toppling a pile of magazines. Henry follows behind her, doing his best to right the destruction in her wake.
“He said it was too esoteric. As if he’d know the meaning of the word if it blew him.”
“Use it in a sentence?” asks Robbie, but she ignores him, reaching up to pull down a book.
“That closed-minded—”
And another.
“—stale-brained—”
And another.
“—corpse.”
“This isn’t a library,” says Henry as she carries the pile to the low leather chair in the corner and slumps into it, startling the orange lump of fur from between a pair of worn pillows.
“Sorry, Book,” she mutters, lifting the cat gingerly onto the back of the old chair, where he does his best impression of an inconvenienced bread loaf. Bea continues to emit a low stream of curses as she turns the pages.
“I know just what we need,” says Robbie, turning toward the storeroom. “Doesn’t Meredith keep a stash of whisky in the back?”
And even though it’s only 3 P.M., Henry doesn’t protest. He sinks onto the floor, sits with his back to the nearest shelf, legs stretched long, feeling suddenly, unbearably tired.
Bea looks up at him, sighs. “I’m sorry,” she starts, but Henry waves her away.
“Please, continue trashing your advisor and my art history section. Someone has to behave normally.”
But she closes the book, adds it back to the pile, and joins Henry on the floor.
“Can I tell you something?” Her voice goes up at the end, but he knows it’s not a question. “I’m glad you broke it off with Tabitha.”
A lance of pain, like the cut across his palm. “She broke it off with me.”
Bea waves her hand as if that small detail doesn’t matter. “You deserve someone who loves you as you are. The good and the bad and the maddening.”
You want to be loved. You want to be enough.
Henry swallows. “Yeah, well, being me hasn’t worked out so well.”
Bea leans toward him. “But that’s the thing, Henry, you haven’t been you. You waste so much time on people who don’t deserve you. People who don’t know you, because you don’t let them know you.” Bea cups his face, that strange shimmer in her eyes. “Henry, you’re smart, and kind, and infuriating. You hate olives and people who talk during movies. You love milkshakes and people who can laugh until they cry. You think it’s a crime to turn ahead to the end of a book. When you’re angry you get quiet, and when you’re sad you get loud, and you hum when you’re happy.”
“And?”
“And I haven’t heard you hum in years.” Her hands fall away. “But I’ve seen you eat a shit ton of olives.”
Robbie comes back, holding the bottle and three mugs. The Last Word’s only customer toddles out, and then Robbie shuts the door behind him, turning the sign to CLOSED. He comes and sits between Henry and Bea on the floor and uncorks the bottle with his teeth.
“What are we drinking to?” asks Henry.
“To new beginnings,” says Robbie, eyes still shining as he fills the cups.
VI
New York City
March 18, 2014
The bell chimes and Bea strides in.
“Robbie wants to know if you’re avoiding him,” she says, in lieu of hello. Henry’s heart sinks. The answer is yes, of course, and no. He cannot shake the look of hurt in Robbie’s eyes, but it doesn’t excuse the way he acted, or maybe it does.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” says Bea. “And where have you been hiding?”
Henry wants to say, I saw you at the dinner party, but wonders if she has forgotten the entire night, or just the parts that Addie touched.
Speaking of. “Bea, this is Addie.”
Beatrice turns toward her, and for a second, and only a second, Henry thinks that she remembers. It’s the way she’s looking at Addie, as if she is a piece of art, but one that Bea has encountered before. Despite everything, Henry expects her to nod, to say, “Oh, good to see you again”—instead, Bea smiles. She says, “You know, there’s something timeless about your face,” and he’s rocked by the strangeness of the echo, the force of the déjà vu.
But Addie only smiles, and says, “I’ve heard that before.”
As Bea continues to study Addie, Henry studies her.
She has always been ruthlessly polished, but today there’s neon paint on her fingers, a kiss of gold at her temple, what looks like powdered sugar on her sleeve.
“What have you been doing?” he asks.
She looks down. “Oh, I was at the Artifact!” she says, as if that’s supposed to mean something. Seeing his confusion, she explains. The Artifact is, according to Beatrice, part carnival and part art exhibit, an interactive medley of installations on the High Line.
As Bea talks about mirrored chambers and glass domes full of stars, sugar clouds, the plume from pillow fights, and murals made of a thousand strangers’ notes, Addie brightens, and Henry thinks it must be hard to surprise a girl who’s lived three hundred years.
So when she turns to him, eyes bright, and says, “We have to go,” there’s nothing he’d rather do. There is, of course, the matter of the store, the fact he is the sole employee, and there are still four hours until closing. But he has an idea.
Henry grabs a bookmark, the store’s only piece of merchandise, and begins writing on the back side. “Hey Bea,” he says, pushing the makeshift card across the counter. “Can you close up?”
“I have a life,” she says, but then she looks down at Henry’s tight and slanting script.
The Library of The Last Word.
Bea smiles, and pockets the card.
“Have fun,” she says, waving them out.
VII
New York City
September 5, 2013
Sometimes Henry wishes he had a cat.
He supposes he could just adopt Book, but the tabby feels indivisible from The Last Word, and he can’t shake the superstitious belief that if he tried to extricate the ancient cat from the secondhand shop, it would turn to dust before he got it home.
Which is, he knows, a morbid way of thinking about people and places, or in this case pets and places, but it’s dusk, and he drank a little too much whisky, and Bea had to go teach a class and Robbie had a friend’s show, so he’s alone again, heading back to an empty apartment, wishing he had a cat or something waiting for him to come home.
He tests out the phrase as he walks in.
“Hi, kitty, I’m home,” he says, before realizing that it makes him a twenty-eight-year-old bachelor talking to an imaginary pet, and that feels infinitely worse.