The Bookseller(4)

“Let’s let her rest now.” I settle Missy under the covers and fetch several picture books from her shelf. She begins paging through Madeline’s Rescue—a volume in that delightful children’s series by Ludwig Bemelmans about a Parisian boarding school student named Madeline and her eleven classmates—the house covered in vines, the girls in two straight lines. Missy’s fingers trace the words on each page as she sounds them out in a whispery, throaty voice.

Lars comes forward and takes my hand. We smile together at our daughter, and with our adorable son beside us, we quietly leave the room.


But then, as suddenly as it happened, the dream is over.

My bedside alarm clock is ringing sharply. I reach over, eyes shut, and press down hard on the button that stops the alarm. I open my eyes, and the room is yellow. I am home.





Chapter 2


Goodness,” I say to myself. “That was quite the dream.” Stiffly, I sit up in bed. Aslan, my yellow-hued tabby, is curled up next to me, purring softly with his eyes half closed. I named him after the lion in C. S. Lewis’s novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—an extraordinary book, especially if one adores children’s fantasy stories. I read each Narnia novel as it came out, and I’ve read the entire series at least half a dozen times since.

I look around my bedroom. The windows are bare, stripped of their curtains and shades. Masking tape still frames the woodwork. My bed and nightstand are the only pieces of furniture in the room; before I began painting yesterday, Frieda and I moved the bureau and hope chest to the living room, to make space and keep splatters off the furniture. The room smells of paint, but the color is extraordinary—it’s the exact color of the sun on a bright day. It’s just what I’d hoped for. With a satisfied smile, I rise and don my robe, padding across the newspaper-covered floor.

Heading to the kitchen to make coffee, I stop to switch on the radio that sits on one of several scratched, tag-sale bookshelves that line my living room, overflowing with books and journals. I twist the knob to turn up the volume and tune the dial to KIMN. They’re playing “Sherry” by the Four Seasons, which I’ve been hearing constantly on the radio this week—I’d put money on it topping the Billboard chart this weekend.

I place my percolator under the kitchen faucet and fill it with water, then pull a can of Eight O’Clock Coffee from an upper cabinet and begin measuring it into the stainless-steel top chamber of the percolator.

“. . . Out tonight . . .” I sing along under my breath as the song on the radio fades away.

“And now here’s an oldie but a goodie,” the disc jockey says. “Does anyone out there remember this one?”

As the next song begins, my hand freezes, my fingertips holding the coffee scoop and hovering midair over the percolator. Rosemary Clooney’s voice fills my small duplex.

“Now that’s just plain eerie,” I say to Aslan, who has wandered in to check whether his morning dish of milk has been set on the floor yet. I finish pouring the coffee and switch the percolator to On.

The song—I remember now that it’s titled “Hey There”—dates back at least seven or eight years. I don’t remember the exact year it was so popular, but I do remember humming it often in those days. I haven’t thought about that song in ages. Not until I heard it playing in my head, in my dream last night.

I recall my dream man’s eyes, piercing and blue, like the water in a postcard from some exotic locale. I remember thinking that I ought to have been frightened, but I was not. Did I look at him with stars in my eyes? I suspect one could say I did.

Well, but how could I help it? The way his eyes gazed into mine. He looked at me as if I were everything to him. As if I were his whole world.

That, to me, was without a doubt exotic. No one, not even Kevin, has ever looked at me like that.

And the way Lars spoke! Katharyn, love, wake up. You must have been in some deep sleep, love. You always know what to do, Katharyn.

No one, here in the real world, says such things to me. And certainly no one addresses me as Katharyn.

There was a brief period, some years ago, when I toyed with calling myself Katharyn. This was right around the time when Frieda and I opened our bookstore. With a new career and a new decade of life—I’d turned thirty a few months prior—I felt it was time for a sea change. Despite my general dislike of the unwieldy Katharyn, I could think of no better way to bring about a grand change of character than to alter my name. Perhaps, I mused, I needed only to get used to it.

And so I charged forward. I had personal stationery printed with the name “Katharyn Miller” on it. I asked Frieda and my other friends to call me Katharyn. I said my name was Katharyn when introducing myself to customers, to the other shopkeepers who we were just getting to know on our little block of stores on Pearl Street. I even asked my parents to use my given name—which they, albeit reluctantly, did. They have always been overindulgent with me.

Frieda was not so easy to push over. “Kitty suits you,” she said. “Why change?”

I shrugged and said that perhaps it was simply time to grow up.

I even used that name when introducing myself to potential suitors. It felt good, a fresh start. A chance to be someone new. Someone a bit more sophisticated, a bit more experienced.

Nothing happened with any of those fellows—a random first date here and there, but no second ones. Apparently, changing my name was not going to automatically change my persona, the way I’d hoped it might.