The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler Read Free Book Online Page B

from Arcady, his song was of love and death and birth, so it seemed a good idea to tell Mitchell about a baby with Pan in the background.
    It is only an hour and ten minutes since I called Mitchell. An hour on the weekend is more elastic than an appointed time in the week. He isn’t really late yet.
    A nanny appears with a little girl walking demurely at her side. It’s a Saturday—do her parents work so hard they can’t even play with her on a Saturday? The little girl is in a cream wool coat with big buttons, and suede boots. She looks very well-to-do, a little New York princess.
    Children are not in my purview. I feel a stab of fear. If I did this, I would be in a world where I would have to buy children’s coats and boots, and it isn’t time for that yet. I am twenty-three. I want to buy fancy boots for myself.
    When they have gone, there is only me. I am so still that when a raccoon comes, nosing around the trash bins, he doesn’t notice me. He is enormous, as big as a dog. How does such a creature live wild in Manhattan?
    Mitchell strides up, and the raccoon is gone in a streak of gray.
    He sits down next to me on the bench. He has a cardboard tray with two coffees and a paper bag.
    “I brought a selection. Just in case you were hungry again.”
    “I am.” I open the bag. “Oh, pain au chocolat ! Lovely. How come the bagels are still warm? How did you get here?”
    “It’s a chocolate croissant in these parts, and I took a cab.”
    “There was a raccoon! I think so, anyway.”
    “No, they’re nocturnal. It was probably a rat. So what’s the matter? Hurry up, because I have to call my mother at ten.”
    “What do you have to call your mother for?” I say, momentarilydistracted. He has mentioned her once in all the time I have known him.
    “I always call her at ten on Saturdays. And she always says, ‘What occasions your telephone call?’ as if I always have a different reason for calling at ten on a Saturday. Sometimes we’ve had conversations that have lasted—oh, minutes. Especially if one of the horses has thrown a shoe.”
    “Don’t you like her?” I ask. Mitchell laughs into the autumn air. I sip the coffee.
    “Mitchell,” I say, and stare at the statue that isn’t Pan. “Mitchell,” I say again. “I’ve got something to tell you, and I don’t really know how to say it.” I turn to look at him.
    Mitchell was all smiles a second ago and now is not. He looks back at me intently. Across his face comes a kind of withdrawal, as if a blind is coming down. A second later he is as closed as a wardrobe.
    “If whatever you have to say is hard for you, I should maybe go first,” he says. His words are cold.
    “No,” I say, alarmed at the new shut-down Mitchell I have in front of me. “I can say it—it isn’t that bad—”
    “Esme, we’ve been seeing each other for a little while now—a few weeks.”
    “Yes.”
    “And I think you’re terrific. You’re a joy to be around.”
    He seems entirely devoid of joy.
    “But I think we both know that it isn’t really working out. Sexually, it hasn’t been all that wonderful, has it?”
    I am silent. A tiny beam of merriment sparks in me, so that I want to say, Really? Even the time with the goose quill and the blindfold? But the beam dies, vanquished by the overwhelming message.
    “Look—there has to be—there has to be—lust. Pure and simple. And for me, when I have sex with you—there is no lust. At all.”
    I say nothing. There is nothing to be said.
    He looks earnestly at me. He says, “I am sorry, Esme. That must hurt.”
    I smile.
    “But I feel as if I have to be honest.”
    I nod. Does the nodding imply forgiveness, understanding, agreement? Does it say, Yes, how could there possibly be lust when you are sleeping with me?
    I think back—flip-book style—to the sex I have had with Mitchell. He isn’t like a Borgia prince or anything, waking me up five times in the night, but there has been some . There was some last