The Last Book Party(11)

Jeremy. I had little desire to see Jeremy. I cringed at the idea of appearing before him as the lowly errand runner that I was. I looked around for one of the summer interns, but they’d all skipped out early to start their weekends. I dragged myself into the storeroom to get a galley of the novel Armenian Rhapsody, by a writer who’d emigrated from Yerevan to Chicago as a teenager. It annoyed me that Jeremy was already feeling entitled enough to ask for a delivery to his apartment. I had no idea why it was so urgent that he get the galley today.

It was nearly one hundred degrees and muggy outside, and the air felt thick and dirty. I took the bus downtown and walked the last few blocks to Jeremy’s apartment, the leather straps of my sandals cutting into my feet, which had swelled from the heat. I twisted my hair into a bun and pulled a pencil from my tote bag, sticking it through the knot to keep my hair off my neck.

His building was a narrow brownstone. I went down the steps to the basement and pushed the bell. When the door opened, Jeremy stood in front of me with a spoon in his mouth and a jar of peanut butter in his hand, wearing a plain white T-shirt and baggy khaki shorts. He looked thinner than I’d remembered.

“Hi. Malcolm said you had a desperate need for Armenian Rhapsody.”

I reached into my bag and took out the galley. Jeremy slowly pulled the spoon from his mouth and put it and the jar of peanut butter down on a table by the door. He took the galley, flipped through the pages, and set it on the table.

“Do you want to come in?” he asked, without smiling, seeming almost nervous.

My eagerness to learn more about Franny trumped my wariness of Jeremy. “Just for a minute—to get out of the heat.” I moved toward the wheezing air conditioner in the window by the door.

The room was small and tidy, with one wall of exposed brick. There wasn’t much furniture—a navy-blue futon couch, an antique rocking chair, and an old camp trunk used as a coffee table, on which sat a glass milk bottle filled with dried flowers. Books were lined up neatly on two long wooden shelves propped up on cinder blocks. A pair of pink ballet shoes, their ribbons wrapped tightly around them, and pair of light-blue leg warmers were on the floor near the futon. A tiny kitchen with a half-size fridge, a stove, and a narrow sink was tucked into the corner. On top of the single kitchen cabinet was a clay pot containing an ivy plant with wilting brown leaves.

“Is this your place?” I asked.

“Mine? Are you kidding? Does this look like the kind of place I’d live in?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you.”

Jeremy pointed to a framed poster of Joni Mitchell on the wall.

“You know me enough to know that this couldn’t possibly be mine.”

“I like Joni Mitchell,” I said.

“Of course you do. As does my little sister, Debbie, which is why she hung it in her apartment.”

I was surprised to hear that he was someone’s older brother. From the small fridge, Jeremy pulled out two bottles of Bass Ale and handed one to me. He sat on the futon with his long legs stretched onto the trunk, leaving me the rocking chair. He told me his sister was at a dance festival in North Carolina for the month and he was staying at her place until he figured out where to go next.

“Next?” I asked.

“I’d been thinking of heading up to the Cape to hang with Franny for a while, but I think he’s staying up in Maine with Lil.”

I rocked a few times in the chair, then asked, “So where in Maine are they?”

Jeremy smiled slightly.

“At Lil’s mother’s house in Vinalhaven. Lil’s working at some lobster place where Franny’s hoping to get work too. It’s absurdly remote. You have to drive forever and then take a ferry to get there.”

I shook my head.

“What?”

“I had imagined them on an island,” I said.

“They are kind of an island to themselves,” he said.

When he didn’t continue, I asked, “Is Lil an artist too?”

“She would say so,” Jeremy said.

“Would you?”

He said nothing, which was enough for me to understand he didn’t think much of Lil. Perhaps he found their relationship as illogical as I found his friendship with Franny. We sat in silence for a moment, Jeremy watching me rock in the chair. I stood up and stepped to the kitchen to put my beer in the sink.

“I’m just going to pour the rest out; I should get back to work,” I said, my back to Jeremy, as the amber liquid flowed into the drain.

I was about to turn to go when I felt my hair slip out of its bun and tumble down to my shoulders. I turned around and Jeremy was standing right behind me, holding the pencil that I’d used to keep my hair in place. He looked as surprised as I was.

“Sorry—I couldn’t resist,” he said.

For a second, his face appeared tentative, even open. Had Jeremy been making a pass at me, at Franny’s “easy mark”? Then, tapping the pencil against his palm, he seemed to regain his composure.

“Can I take this?”

“I think you just did,” I said.

I told him I’d see him around, and without looking at him again, I let myself out.





7





Other than May Castanada, the new receptionist, who was listening to her Walkman with her eyes closed when the elevator opened onto the third floor, Hodder, Strike had cleared out by the time I got back. I felt guilty going into Malcolm’s office without permission. Malcolm guarded his authors’ manuscripts carefully, often keeping them even from the assistants, until he’d gotten through a few rounds of edits. Before he’d left for the country, he’d mentioned that Jeremy’s novel was in the “percolation” stage, which meant that he was going to let it sit for a while before he tackled it again.