The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler Read Free Book Online

right lets her hand drop onto his inner thigh. Mitchell looks down at the hand and then looks appreciatively up at me.
    “She means that your table’s ready,” he says as a waitress heads towards their empty table. He picks the girl’s hand up and deposits it back in her own lap. “Have a lovely evening, ladies.”
    “See you on Facebook!” says Caddie or Tania over her shoulder, with a seaside-postcard burlesque of a seductive glance.
    I sit down. I know this role now.
    “ ‘See you on Facebook’?” I say to Mitchell. “You’ve been here two minutes and it’s ‘See you on Facebook’?”
    Mitchell stretches contentedly. “Yep. That one was Tania, right?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “It doesn’t matter. I got them both.”
    “So how many friends is that now?”
    “One thousand four hundred and fifty-one. All of them very dear, close friends. But the one who was on my left—guess what she is called.”
    “No.”
    “Eden.”
    “Oh.”
    “Oh? It’s funny, Esme. Don’t you get it, scholarship girl?”
    “I don’t want to get it.”
    “I’d be in paradise . . .” My sour expression amuses him. “Come on, you know I don’t mean it. It’s just our shtick, it’s what we do.”
    “Yes. I know. I am not sure that I like it that much.”
    “Those girls—they were just—nothing. They’re just sexual objects.”
    “I want to be a sexual object.”
    Mitchell, laughing, raises his eyes to the heavens. “Your Cambridge professors would be very proud.”
    “You know something? First, they weren’t nothing, they were women . To them, you’re probably an object too.”
    Mitchell looks pleased. “I’ve got no problem with that.”
    “Second, I think it is really bad mannered to talk about being sexually attracted to other women in front of me.”
    Mitchell leans back again. Satisfaction seems to be flooding his whole body.
    “Bad mannered?” he says. “Ouch.”
    I lean my chin in my hand and look the other way.
    “But do you really? You don’t think it adds an extra . . . capacity to our intensely erotically charged relationship?”
    “No.”
    “I like it when you’re mad at me. It means I get to look at your profile, which is stunning. And your neck, likewise. Stay mad for a couple minutes, Esme.”
    I don’t say anything. Mitchell sighs.
    “What can I say? I look at women who look like that. And I’ve been looking since I was twelve years old.”
    “Why are you going out with me?”
    “For your mind, sweets.”
    “Do you divide women into Madonnas and whores, Mitchell?”
    He cranes to look past me, over to the dining area. “Caddie? Where are you? Tania? Come back, come back . . .”
    “Very funny,” I say. The waitress comes over.
    “I’ll have another merlot,” says Mitchell, “and the same for . . .” He does not call me anything, just indicates me.
    “I’ll have soda water with ice and lemon,” I say to the waitress. The same obscure idea of honor is at work. As she turns away, Mitchell says, “Esme, you are no fun tonight.”
    Outside Trebizond, with Mitchell full of wine and me full of water, I turn to him and say good night. He says, “Good night?”
    “I’m really tired,” I say, “too tired even to walk home. I’m going to get a cab.”
    “You can’t go home yet. I want to show you the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, and it’s just near here.”
    “It’s dark,” I say.
    “By moonlight is the point. Come on. You won’t regret it.”
    He has hold of both my hands, he is pulling me around the corner towards West End Avenue, and I am letting him.
    “I should go home,” I say.
    “Come down here,” he says, and whirls me down a step into a doorway. He pushes my shoulders hard against the wall and kisses me.
    “I told you I wanted you,” he says into my ear.
    “I can’t . . . ,” I say.
    “I know, your period,” he says. He puts his hand up my skirt and his fingers slide into my underwear. “But you can do this. Just—enjoy it. Just my