Words in Deep Blue(21)

I consider leaving but the thought of going back to the warehouse isn’t all that appealing so I decide to lie next to him. His arm touches mine, and there’s that familiar warmth.

I never planned on ignoring Henry forever, just until he wrote saying he was sorry he’d ignored my letter. I just needed him to tell me he was flattered, but he didn’t feel the same way. My plan was to forgive him, as soon as he told the truth.

‘Why?’ he asks again tonight. ‘I mean we were best friends. And I know for a fact that you wrote to Lola.’ He turns his head to the side so our faces are almost touching. ‘Why?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘You didn’t miss me.’

Henry’s a terrible liar and even if he wasn’t, he’s so drunk that only truth is spilling out of him. ‘You didn’t get the letter,’ I say, wondering how that’s possible since he looks in the Prufrock almost every day, and even if he didn’t, I left a note in his book.

‘What letter?’ he asks, and I know that however it happened, that letter went missing. It’s possible Henry picked up his book and the letter dropped out. It’s possible someone took the letter from the Letter Library before he got to it.

He’s drunk and thinking slowly, so it’s not hard to stall for time. I stare at the sky, pick at the grass, all the while I’m thinking of the right thing to say. He wrote me so many letters, long and Henry-like letters, and I wanted to answer every one but I didn’t. Instead I imagined how hurt he’d feel when he found out I was writing to Lola and not him.

‘What letter?’ he asks again.

I almost tell him. I should tell him, so he knows I didn’t forget him. But I have a second chance to save face and it actually doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve moved on. ‘It was just a goodbye letter. I left it for you at the counter of the bookstore but I guess it went missing.’

‘What did it say?’

‘Goodbye, the way most goodbye letters do, Henry.’

‘But, why didn’t you reply to my letters?’

‘I got busy. I met a guy – Joel.’

‘What kind of a name is Joel?’

‘It’s a fairly common one, actually.’

‘And he became your best friend?’

‘Look,’ I say to end this whole line of conversation. ‘I got busy. I fell in love. I was preoccupied with school and new friends. But I should have written, Henry. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’

‘Did you miss me at all?’ he asks.

‘I did,’ I say, and at the same time I tell myself not to do something stupid and cry and tell him how desperate I was to see him at the funeral. I try not to think about how I could have had him there with me if I’d listened to Cal and not been so stubborn.

‘So we’re friends again?’ he asks, and I tell him we are.

‘Good friends?’

‘Good friends,’ I say, and as proof, which he seems to need, I tell him I’m taking the job at the bookstore.

‘For as long as it’s there,’ he says.

I ask what he means, and he tells me that tonight, he voted to sell. ‘It solves all my problems. We sell the shop. I get some money. Amy and I travel, and when we move back I can afford to rent my own place. No more making-out in the self-help section.’

‘You make out in the self-help section?’ I ask.

‘I’ll study and become something.’

You’re something now, I think. ‘Be sure,’ I say, and he says the one thing he’s sure about is Amy.

I know it’s time to get up because Henry starts reciting poetry again. I get my poetry from two places – school and Henry – so I haven’t heard any for a while. The last poem I heard in Henry’s voice was ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. Tonight it’s one I don’t know.

The words drop, drunk and heavy, and I see the poem as Henry speaks it– a raining world, a hiding sun, a person fighting to love the terrible days. He tells me it’s called ‘Dark August’, and it’s by Derek Walcott.

‘Are you still searching for Frederick’s book?’ I ask, and he nods.

Henry believes in the impossible, the same way Cal did. He thinks he can find the copy of that book against all odds.

He recites the poem one more time because I ask him. There’s something in it that I need to find. An answer, maybe, to how it’s done, how a person starts living again. I don’t find it. All the poem does is make me ache, in places unlocatable.

‘I need to go home,’ I say, but Henry’s too drunk for me to explain to him why that’s no longer possible.




There’s still a light on inside the bookstore and it gives the place a soft glow. I’ve always loved it here. I loved the polished floorboards and the deep rich wood of the shelves. I loved the way the spines of the books looked, neatly aligned, one next to the other. I loved it because here I could always find Henry.

I ring the bell and, while I wait, I look at the front window. There’s the seat where George always sat reading with Ray Bradbury on her knee. The books in the window form a new display – Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Safran Foer, Simmone Howell, Fiona Wood, Nam Le – and I’ve read none of them.

I look closely at the book in the centre of the window – Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. At the bottom of the pink cover is a small typewriter with paper flying out, the paper turning into clouds as it rises. I can’t name what it makes me feel; sadness, maybe, at the pointlessness of an atlas for clouds – an atlas for things that move from minute to minute.