The Bookish Life of Nina Hill(2)
“Not if you’ve eaten it.” Nina was confident on this one.
“Can I get a store credit at least?”
Nina shook her head. “No, but may I suggest a library card? At a library you can borrow the book, read it, and give it back totally free of charge.” She forced a smile. “There are actually two within walking distance of here.” She was sure Liz would be happy to lose this customer. Pretty sure.
“Walking?”
Nina sighed. “There’s parking at both.” She slid the book back across the counter. “This is still yours. Maybe you could try it again sometime. I’ve read it about twenty times, actually.” (This was a gross understatement, but Nina didn’t want to blow what was left of the customer’s mind.)
The woman frowned at her. “Why?” She looked Nina up and down, not unkindly, just trying to work out why someone would do something so strange. Nina was wearing a pale green vintage cardigan over a blue dress, with a cardigan clip across the collar. Apparently, this clarified things for the customer, because the woman’s expression softened to sympathy. “I guess if you’ve got a boring life, other people’s boring lives are reassuring.”
Nina stepped on her own foot and seethed as the woman dropped Pride and Prejudice carelessly into her fancy handbag, bending the cover and dinging the pages.
Two minutes later, Liz appeared over the top of the graphic novels shelf. “Is she gone?”
Nina nodded, viciously tidying a pile of bookmarks and trying to forget the callous book treatment she had just witnessed. “You’re a craven coward and wouldn’t even emerge to defend your second favorite nineteenth-century writer. For shame.”
Liz shrugged. “Ms. Austen needs no defense. You did fine, and besides, I’ve never forgotten a long conversation I had with that particular customer about LSD and the boundaries of consciousness.” She straightened some copies of Roller Girl. “I thought I was asking about her vacation, but it turned out she’d stayed home and gone further than she ever thought possible.” She tipped her head down to peer at Nina over her glasses, her short, dark hair barely touched with gray, despite the several careers she’d had, and the many cities and lives she’d been part of. “There was a long portion about the deep inner beauty of yogurt when viewed through the lens of hallucinogens that put me off Yoplait for life.”
Nina regarded her carefully. “I find that story almost impossible to believe.”
Liz turned and walked toward nonfiction. “I should hope so, seeing as I completely made it up.”
Nina looked down and smiled. She’d never felt more at home than she did at Knight’s, with the plentiful sarcasm and soothing rows of book spines. It was heaven on earth. Now, if they could only get rid of the customers and lock the front doors, they’d really be onto something.
As the only child of a single mother, Nina’s natural state was solitude. Growing up, she saw other people with fathers and brothers and sisters, and it looked like fun, but generally she thought she was better off without a crowd. That might be overstating it; sometimes she’d ached for them, especially in middle school. There were lots of kids who had older brothers or sisters in the high school, and those kids had a protective glow around them she envied. Older siblings would wave at recess, or even stop by to chat and confer greatness. Then, in high school, Nina would listen to the kids with younger siblings complain about them but wave, or go over and chat. She saw the relationship, the shared address, and wondered about it.
Nina’s mother, Candice, had had her after a very brief liaison with some guy she met in those strange times before Google (1988 BG?), where all you had to go on was what someone told you in person. Nina often shook her head over the crazy risks those Gen X-ers took. No online database of criminal records, no checking social media for wives and children, no reading back through months of feeds looking for clues. They would have to physically talk to a stranger without knowing any backstory. They could pretend to be a whole new person for everyone they met, without the effort of creating a matching online profile; the potential for dishonesty and deceit was shocking. Anyway, Nina’s mom wasn’t even sure of the guy’s name and wasn’t worried about it. She was a news photographer; she traveled the world and took lovers whenever they presented themselves, without guilt or complications. I knew I wanted you, she would say to Nina. God only knows if I would have wanted him.
At first, Candice had taken Nina everywhere with her, carrying her under one arm and putting her to bed in hotel room drawers. After a year or two, however, Nina got inconveniently big and wriggly, so Candice found a nice apartment in LA, and an even nicer nanny, and left Nina to get on with the business of growing up. She’d show up three or four times a year, bringing gifts and strange candy and smelling of airports. Nina had never really gotten to know her, though Candice had loomed large in the child’s imagination. When Nina first read Ballet Shoes, as a child, she’d realized her mother was Great-Uncle Matthew.
Her nanny, Louise, had been a wonderful parent; funny and interested and bookish, loving and gentle. She’d created a peaceful life for Nina, and when she’d come to Nina’s college graduation, she’d hugged her, cried a little, then moved back South to help her own, older daughters raise their children. Nina had been far more devastated by Louise’s departure than she’d ever been waving good-bye to her own mother. Candice had started the race, but Louise had carried Nina over the finish line.