Page 65 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
He loads a clean sheet of letter paper into the typewriter and types out everything he knows about the CIA’s surveillance program and everything else he suspected. The typewriter is loud in the nighttime hush, and part of him wishes that Patrick would wake up and ask him what he was doing. But Patrick, who’s as miserable a sleeper as Nathaniel, chooses tonight to sleep like the dead.
Written out, it’s as much an indictment of Nathaniel as it is of the CIA: three pages of facts that Nathaniel could have inferred years earlier if he’d paid attention, if he’d been willing to see the organization for what it was. It was his job to analyze facts, and if he’d treated what he knew about his employer as carefully as he treated intelligence about foreign enemies, he’d have known which way the wind blew as early as the Bay of Pigs.
Back upstairs, he spins the lock on the safe in the combination Patrick never bothered trying to conceal from him. He slides the typed pages into the manila envelope and puts it back into its hiding place.
Then, feeling like a burglar, he lets himself into the apartment and climbs into bed. Patrick reaches out, the way he often does in the middle of the night when Nathaniel is lying there, restless. His fingers slide under the hem of Nathaniel’s shirt, hot against his skin.
“I’m awake,” Nathaniel whispers. Patrick takes this as the invitation it unfortunately is.
* * *
“Settle down,” Susan tells Patrick on the day of the gig, when Patrick can’t stop pacing the shop. “I’ve done this hundreds of times. It’s a coffeehouse. Not Shea Stadium. Not even theFillmore East. We’re just dropping by to play a few songs. Stop being sweaty.”
“I can stay home with Eleanor,” Patrick offers.
“Iris is babysitting,” Susan says, after she finishes rolling her eyes. “She’s thrilled to have my telephone to herself for a few hours.”
Susan wears jeans and a white oxford straight out of Nathaniel’s closet. Nathaniel, at her direction, wears jeans and a t-shirt. “It’s a small venue,” she says. “Bigger venue, bigger outfit.”
The Gaslight is a filthy, smoky basement with no ventilation and no liquor license. The walls are rough brick and the ceilings are so low Patrick nearly walks into a light. Every seat in the place is occupied, and there are people standing around the edges of the cramped room.
As soon as Susan sits on the stool at the front of the room—there’s no actual stage—you could hear a pin drop. They open with the murder ballad that they turned into a protest song. It’s catchy, and it’s angry, and the crowd eats it up.
Between songs, Susan leans toward the microphone and chats with the audience as she tunes her guitar. “This winter,” she says, “my husband died in Nha Trang. He really liked this song.” The crowd is quieter than Nathaniel would have thought possible. They launch into “Take Me Home.”
After, they’re both a little giddy. Susan goes off to talk to a couple of men who Nathaniel is sure he ought to recognize. Nathaniel makes a beeline for Patrick.
“There’s a bar upstairs, isn’t there?” Nathaniel asks.
“There sure is.”
Maybe spending the past half hour playing music that’s a giant middle finger to everything Nathaniel used to stand for has made him brave. He straightens Patrick’s collar, letting his knuckles brush against Patrick’s neck. He leaves his hands there,resting on Patrick’s shoulders for a moment. “How about you buy me a drink.”
20
At the sound of his name, Nathaniel pries open his eyes, expecting to find Patrick on the other side of the bed. But when he reaches out, Patrick’s side of the bed is empty, the sheets cold.
“Sorry to wake you up,” Patrick says from the doorway, “but Maud Dempsey died. I need to go to uptown.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nathaniel says, trying to remember if he’s supposed to know who Maud Dempsey is. He sits up, and Patrick hands him a cup of coffee.
“I never met her. She was a Whitman collector. She’s been collecting since Whitman was alive. Her lawyer just called. I want to see if it’s worth making an offer for the lot. I could use a second set of hands, if you’re interested.”
Nathaniel could not be less interested in Whitman collections, but Patrick looks like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin. “Of course.”
“Wear professional drag.”
Nathaniel finally notices what Patrick’s wearing: a shirt, a tie, and pants that aren’t jeans. He does a double take. Patrick doesn’t even wear a tie to book auctions.
“Where are we going?” Nathaniel asks.
“Sutton Place. 56th Street, maybe 60th—something like that—all the way on the East Side.”
Nathaniel sighs. Manhattan has such a nice, sensible grid system with predictable numbering, but at the edges it allunravels and you never know where you are. The entire Village is an exercise in frustration. Jones Street is a single block long, which should be illegal.
“I can open the store at ten,” Susan says when they run into her on the stairs. Patrick thanks her, then goes back up a few steps to kiss Eleanor. Nathaniel catches Susan’s eye and doesn’t even care that she can tell how smitten he is.
“Look,” Patrick says when they’re on the subway. “I wasn’t looking forward to her death or anything, but I’ve definitely been looking forward to getting a look at her books, and so have a whole lot of other booksellers and collectors.” And the lawyer thought to call him first, is what Patrick isn’t saying. He wipes his hands on his trousers, clearly nervous.
