Page 79 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
Mrs. Kaplan hums. “Sometimes you have to give people a chance to let you down.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe he’ll stay, maybe he won’t. But if you act like he already has one foot out the door…” She shrugs. “I take in some kid and he steals my television? I don’t like it, but ten other people don’t steal my television. What’s the use in treating them all like thieves? Did you tell him you want him to stay?”
“He knows.”
She makes a disapproving noise. “Knowing it isn’t the same as hearing it.”
Back inside, he fixes a dripping faucet and a wobbly table leg. On the kitchen table, he leaves the books he grabbed before leaving the shop:The Coney Island of the Mind,BonjourTristesse, andSlouching Towards Bethlehem, books Susan took with her to her parents’ house and left on Patrick’s desk yesterday before everything went to hell.
Nathaniel’s at the cash register when Patrick walks through the door. There are a handful of people browsing, and Patrick has never resented customers more than he does today. Nathaniel, despite the circles under his eyes, chats amiably with each of them as he rings them up.
“Don’t be a hero and decide that you’re going to leave to do me a favor or to spare me some conflict with Susan,” Patrick says as soon as the last of the customers has left.
“I think we’ve established that I’m a lot of things but a hero isn’t one of them. I’ll stick around until you ask me to stop.”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can and I do.”
“Because,” Nathaniel says, his hands in his pockets and his gaze on the ceiling, “it’s too late for you to feel otherwise.”
Patrick winces. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s the truth, though, isn’t it?” Nathaniel looks exhausted. He isn’t sleeping; Patrick sometimes wakes to hear him puttering around downstairs. His lips are pressed together in a miserable little line, and his sleeves are rolled up with merciless symmetry. On his shoulder is a tiny stain that he must not know about, a drip of Eleanor’s mashed vegetables that didn’t come out in the wash. It’s embarrassing how much Patrick loves this man.
“I’m so glad it’s true,” Patrick says. Nathaniel looks confused, so Patrick is going to need to spell it out. “Look. When I think about what would have happened if I’d missed the chance to have this, I feel like I’ve swerved away from oncoming traffic. Do you understand?” Nathaniel doesn’t look like he understands asingle goddamn thing. “Nathaniel, for god’s sake. I can’t stand the idea of not loving you.”
Some of that must have gotten through, because Nathaniel takes his hands out of his pockets and clutches the edge of the desk that’s between him and Patrick. “Me too,” he says, and it isn’t a promise, but it’s something.
* * *
Lunchtime comes and goes, and Susan doesn’t visit the shop. Patrick hadn’t seriously thought that a good night’s sleep would make everything right in the world, but he hoped it might anyway.
But when he stops by her apartment in the afternoon, she takes him up on his offer to take Eleanor. She has to know Nathaniel will see the baby too. That feels promising.
While Nathaniel is minding the shop and the baby, Patrick climbs up to the attic. It had been hot in June, but now it’s sweltering. The air feels solid with humidity. When Susan complained about noises overhead, he’d blamed it on cats or squirrels, but there weren’t any signs of animals in the attic. It only smelled of dust and mildew. The attic door opened suspiciously easily.
He shines his flashlight at the miscellaneous junk on the attic floor: a broken chair, a folding table, some old milk crates. And then, over by the dormer windows, is the contraption Iris and Hector were working on that spring. Iris said it wasn’t a radio, and she wasn’t lying, because Patrick thinks he’s looking at some ancient version of a Ditto machine. God knows where they found it—could have been up here, for all he knows, or in the mess of things on the second story, or in a trash heap somewhere else. The floor around it is neat, but wedged under the machine is a piece of paper. He crouches down and extracts it. It’s a misprintof theLouderzine, the text cut off on the right side of the paper. He folds it and puts it in his pocket, then goes downstairs and shows it to Nathaniel.
Nathaniel huffs out a laugh; it’s the first time he’s laughed in days. “I knew they were up to something.”
“Are they going to get in trouble? With the law, I mean.”
Nathaniel flips through the zine again. “I don’t know. Do you think that would stop them?” He glances up at Patrick. “Do you think itshouldstop them?”
At the idea of Iris and Hector getting questioned, getting arrested, Patrick’s heart races. “No.”
“I gave the files to Beverly.”
It takes Patrick a minute to make sense of this—what files, and who the hell is Beverly? He sits down. “Are you going to be all right?” Nathaniel said he wasn’t worried anymore about the CIA coming to get him, but Patrick is ready to believe the CIA is capable of anything. Even more realistically, there’s no way that sharing classified documents is legal. “Are you going to jail?” he asks, feeling like a kid asking to be told that everything is going to be fine.
Nathaniel sits on the edge of Patrick’s desk. “TheTimeswill keep my name out of it, but the agency will know it was me. Or at least they’ll suspect it. I don’t know what will happen.”
“I want you to be safe,” Patrick says. The way they’re sitting, he has to look up at Nathaniel, and the only convenient place to touch is Nathaniel’s knee, so that’s where he puts his hand.
