THE REST of the day is busy for Mike. He has the usual people who come in to casually browse (they are the ones who touch the titles on the shelves with vague interest and leave without buying a thing), the people who come in only to chat (“Everything okay?” they ask, and by the end of the day, Mike is really rather tired of the question), and the people who come in to buy (Pride and Prejudice, the Iliad, The End of the Affair, The Maltese Falcon, and the new Philip Marlowe mystery The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler—Mike hasn’t read that one yet).
It’s how it is most days. People come in and people go out. There are usually always at least one or two people in Bookworm, and he knows all of their names. All of their faces. Some come in on their lunch breaks. Others come in on their way to work. The elderly crowd comes in throughout the day. The ladies in the book club giggle at him when they appear, sometimes together and sometimes by themselves. They wear their brightly colored dresses, cinched at the waists. Their hair is done up in large buns or fat curls tight against their faces. They are the epitome of modern women, with their bright red nails and expertly applied lipstick.
When he isn’t being talked at, he is in the back, sorting through the shipment of new books, scanning over the manifest, trying to remember when he saw the delivery driver. He doesn’t think on it too hard, because there is his signature at the bottom of the invoice, clear as day. He tells himself he’s just getting older, and they say that memory is the first thing to go. There’s no date on the invoice next to his signature, but it must have been yesterday. He remembers yesterday being very busy, so it would be easy to have forgotten new books being delivered. No matter. The shipment was on time, and people are loving the new Chandler. It’s a good thing he thought to order more.
The afternoon passes quickly, and it’s half past five when he flips the sign on the door to Closed, the bell still tinkling slightly overhead as he sees his last customer out. He’s in his back office with the till from the register, depositing the money in the safe. It’s almost unnecessary, the safe, because nothing bad ever happens in Amorea. People don’t steal. People don’t break in anywhere. It’s why they all leave the doors to their homes and businesses unlocked. If someone needed something after hours, you could bet your fur there’d be a note and the payment left on the counter down to the cent.
Sure, they have a constable, but Willy Foreman is more apt to fall asleep in his old chair with his feet up on his desk than he is to solve any crimes. Not that there is any real crime to solve. People in Amorea don’t have to worry about that. It’s safe here. Everyone knows that.
It was a good day for sales, Mike thinks as he makes a note of the tally in the ledger he keeps in the safe. A little bit better than yesterday. That’s what he likes to see.
He puts the ledger back in the safe and spins the dial after closing the door. It’s locked now, and he stares at it for a moment, trying to remember a time when he’s ever heard of any type of crime in Amorea. He can’t remember a single instance.
It’s remarkable, really. Amorea really is one of the greatest places in the world.
IT’S GOING on six by the time he’s out of the bookstore. The sky is starting to streak a little pink and orange, and it’s cooler than it was earlier that afternoon. Most of the shops along Main Street are closing down. The dress shop. The men’s suit and clothing shop. The malt shop that serves the best chocolate shakes in Amorea, even though Oscar would beg to differ. Some of them stay open later on the weekend, when people feel like an evening out. The neon marquee of the theater is already lit up and flashing, the block lettering advertising From Here to Eternity. Sean mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. Maybe Mike could ask him if he wants to go see it.
Since the stores are closing, the sidewalk is a little more crowded than usual. The townsfolk greet Mike, the men tipping their hats at him, the women tittering like little birds as he passes them by. He grins easily at each of them, but no one stops him for a chat because they know where he’s headed. If they wanted to talk to him, they’d come by the bookstore during the day. They smile at him knowingly. It’s not much of a secret in Amorea where Mike goes in the evenings.
It only takes him five minutes to make his way down and across the street to the diner. Inside looks bustling, the tables filled as people eat an early dinner or smoke their cigarettes over cups of coffee that always seems to taste a little burnt, no matter what Oscar does to it. He can see two of Oscar’s girls inside, Wanda and Mary, working quickly and efficiently between the tables. They usually come in and work the dinner rush so Sean can start winding down to leave for the day. Oscar’s usually still in the kitchen, though he’s hired on Walter to help out so he could start leaving earlier in the day or even take a day or two off during the week. Or so he’s claimed. It isn’t uncommon to see Oscar there from open to close every single day, eyeing Walter like a hawk, critiquing every little thing he does until he’s certain Walter’s got it right.
Mike can’t see Sean, though. Which means he’s either in the kitchen or in the back office.
He pushes open the door to the diner and is immediately hit with the smell of eggs and grease and coffee and cigarette smoke. It’s a smell he’s used to, more so since he and Sean have become… him and Sean. They’ve been friends for a long time, until it started to be something more, and Mike has made sure to be there every day to walk Sean home. The women of Amorea think it is the sweetest thing they’ve ever seen. The men grin at the both of them, but keep their opinions to themselves, at least until they’re out of earshot. Then they show that men can gossip just as much, if not more, than the ladyfolk. Mike knows how remarkably invested everyone seems to be in Sean and him, but rather than feeling overwhelmed, he is comforted by it. Most of the time. Sometimes he just has to roll his eyes at those little laughs and the winks he gets whenever he comes into the diner.
Like now, for instance.
The bell overhead rings out, much louder than the one at Bookworm. The deafening wall of conversation cracks right up the middle as people crane their heads from the booths and the lunch counter to see who’s come in through the door. They smile and wave at him, calling out his name in greeting before turning back to their dinners and coffee. Mary and Wanda swirl up to him in a cloud of pink perfume, snapping bubble gum, and cigarette smoke, kissing him sweetly on either cheek before Oscar hollers at them from the kitchen to get back to work and do their damn jobs.
The din
er itself is narrow but long, with fifteen red vinyl booths and ten stools at the lunch counter. The floor is made up of linoleum that Mike is sure used to be a pristine white at some point, but now is stained a faint yellow due to age and smoke.
The walls are covered in Oscar’s crowning achievement (or so he calls it): photos of almost everyone in Amorea. People eating in the diner. People strolling the streets during Spring Fest. People having snowball fights on Longmark Hill, wrapped up in scarves and wool hats. People tilting their heads back and laughing as they sit on blankets at Honeychuck Park during the height of summer. Happy people, smiling people. Oscar may come across as a bit of a grouch, but he doesn’t fool Mike. He loves as much as anyone in Amorea does. It’s there plain as day in the photographs, of which he’s in a few, his usual scowl on his face.
There’s a handful of Mike up there too. Mike surrounded by townsfolk. Mike surrounded by friends.
It doesn’t matter, though, who else is in the picture, because in every picture of Mike, Sean’s right at his side. Just the way Mike likes him. Sean would probably tease the hell out of him for being so sentimental. “Sappy man,” he’d be sure to say, smiling that smile that’s only for Mike. “Sappy, sappy man.”
Mike grins ruefully at himself and salutes Oscar across the diner. Oscar’s usual glare softens just slightly as he tilts his head toward the back of the diner, where the office is. He taps the side of his head three times.
Mike frowns. He knows that sign, what Oscar’s telling him. He doesn’t dally, walking quickly through the diner. No one tries to stop him, not that he would have let them anyway. He’s out of the main dining room and down a small hallway in a matter of seconds, stopping in front of a closed door with a frosted glass window with black lettering that reads Office.
His knocks are firm but quiet.
“Come in,” a tired voice says.
He pushes open the door.
It’s darker in this room, the shade pulled down over the only window, the lights turned off. A small rusty metal fan sits on the desk, blowing the slightly stagnant air around the room as it oscillates left, then right.
There’s a man sitting on the chair behind the desk, head tilted back slightly, eyes closed. He’s taking deep, measured breaths, in for three seconds and then out for five. It’s something that Mike knows well, something he’s seen him do a handful of times before. It helps, sometimes, with the headaches. They are few and far between, but when they hit, they hit hard.
Sean’s not as pale as he sometimes gets, so it doesn’t seem to be one of the bad ones. The long column of his throat moves slightly as he swallows. He has a slight grimace on his face, the skin around his eyes crinkled up, making him look older than he actually is, older than he has any right to be. And at only twenty-three, Sean Mellgard doesn’t deserve to look like this, his face twisted in a moue of pain.
Mike still feels uneasy, sometimes, about his age. It was a point of contention between them. Sean didn’t let him get that far with it, though, eyes flashing, saying, “Now see here, Michael Frazier,” using his full name to show he meant business. “I don’t give a damn about that and neither should you. I know what I’m doing. I know what I want. I’m not a child, so don’t treat me like one.”
And that was that, though the guilt is still there sometimes, even if he is the only one who feels it. No one in Amorea bats an eye at them, and nothing malicious is whispered behind their backs, as far as he knows. It’s all on Mike. And he doesn’t care, not anymore, not really. Sure, there are those strange little moments where he has actual memories that are older than Sean is, but such thoughts often fade before he can even be bothered with them.