Page 34 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“What’re they doing?” Patrick asks. It’s a Sunday morning, and Hector’s sitting on the floor at the back of the shop, surrounded by the remnants of some old contraption the twins found in the basement. Iris is lying on her stomach, her chin in her hands, giving unsolicited advice.
“Whenever I ask what they’re building, they get shifty,” Nathaniel says.
“Is it for science class?” Patrick asks them.
“No,” Iris says without elaboration.
“Very shifty,” Nathaniel mutters.
“Nothing they do,” Patrick says low, leaning close to Nathaniel’s ear, “could be half as bad as what Susan, Michael, and I got up to, and we turned out—”
Patrick breaks off and Nathaniel winces. They really didn’t turn out fine, did they. One dead, one still crying every day, and Patrick—Patrick is lonely for reasons that Nathaniel can’t make sense of.
“What does ‘turned out all right’ even mean?” Nathaniel asks. “You had a family tragedy. It isn’t a moral failing.” He pushes an irritating strand of hair behind his ear—god, he needs a haircut—and when his arm drops, his knuckles brush against the back of Patrick’s hand. It wasn’t on purpose, but he keeps his hand there for a moment before sticking it in his pocket. On the radio, Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” is playing.
“Nobody took your stupid wire,” Iris says.
“It isn’t a wire. I keep telling you, there aren’t wires. It’s a clamp.”
“Nobody took your clamp either.”
“I know! I didn’t say they did.”
“Well, find it, then.”
Hector sighs, put upon, and hauls himself to his feet. He glances around the room, then crouches down and pulls something from behind the radiator. Hector has eyesight like a cat. “There it is. Somebody must have kicked it there. Oh—but this isn’t what I need after all.”
“There used to be radio supply stores,” Patrick says. Both the twins jump, like they hadn’t noticed him and Nathaniel standing there. “Downtown.”
“That’s what our dad said,” Hector says. “Radio Row. They’ve all been knocked down to build that bank.”
“It isn’t a bank,” Iris says. “It’s the World Trade Center.”
“Sounds like a bank to me.”
“Also, we don’t need radio supplies, because we aren’t making a radio.”
It doesn’t look like a radio, that’s for sure. It’s made of dirty black metal, and the bulk of it is shaped like a barrel with a crank. Nathaniel’s certain he’s seen something like it, but he can’t imagine when or where.
“Do you have a better idea?” Hector asks.
“Where did all those stores go, though?” Patrick asks.
Nathaniel gets the Yellow Pages and finds a radio supply store on Fourteenth Street, but when they call, nobody answers. There’s another store on Laight Street, which nobody in the room has ever heard of. When they consult the road map that Patrick keeps by the cash register, it turns out to be near the Holland Tunnel. There’s another store near the South Street Seaport.
“I’ll be down there tomorrow,” Patrick tells the twins. There’s a huge old used bookstore near City Hall that Patrick periodically combs for anything he can resell at a profit. “I’ll swing by Laight Street. If it’s nice out, I could walk across town to the other store, too.”
The twins look genuinely surprised, like Patrick’s an ogre who’s never done a single nice thing for them, rather than the man who’s been buying them pizza and sharpening their pencils and proofreading their essays for the past two years.
“I’ll come with you tomorrow,” Nathaniel says when they’re getting ready for bed. Whenever he steps outside, he feels like he’s being plunged directly into the abyss, but each time it gets slightly easier. Or maybe he’s just getting used to the contents of the abyss.
In the morning, they leave Susan in charge of the shop. After a cold and rainy April, May finally feels like spring, and they both wind up carrying their jackets.
“How far is it?” Nathaniel asks.
“Two subway stops.”
Nathaniel has been on the subway, of course, when he visited New York years ago. But that was back when he was compos mentis. They’re still on Jones Street and his hands are already sweaty. He resists the urge to hide in a doorway.
