The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry(56)

“That is an entirely different situation,” Amelia insists. A second later, she yells, “FUCK!” A.J. thinks something must be seriously wrong because Amelia never curses.

“What is it?”

“Well, the thing is, I rather like your brain.”

He laughs at her, and she weeps a little.

“Oh, enough with the tears. I don’t want your pity.”

“I’m not crying for you. I’m crying for me. Do you know how long it took me to find you? Do you know how many awful dates I’ve been on? I can’t”—she is breathless now—“I can’t join Match.com again. I just can’t.”

“Big Bird—always looking ahead.”

“Big Bird. What the . . . ? You can’t introduce a nickname at this point in our relationship!”

“You’ll meet someone. I did.”

“Fuck you. I like you. I’m used to you. You are the one, you *. I can’t meet someone new.”

He kisses her and then she reaches under his hospital gown between his legs and squeezes. “I love having sex with you,” she says. “If you’re a vegetable when this is done, can I still have sex with you?” she asks.

“Sure,” A.J. says.

“And you won’t think less of me?”

“No.” He pauses. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the turn this conversation has taken,” he says.

“You knew me four years before you asked me out.”

“True.”

“You were so mean to me the day we met.”

“Also true.”

“I’m so screwed up. How will I ever find someone else?”

“You seem remarkably unconcerned about my brain.”

“Your brain’s toast. We both know that. But what about me?”

“Poor Amy.”

“Yes, before I was a bookseller’s wife. That was pitiable enough. Soon I’ll be the bookseller’s widow.”

She kisses him on every place of his malfunctioning head. “I liked this brain. I like this brain! It is a very good brain.”

“Me too,” he says.

The attendant comes to wheel him away. “I love you,” she says with a resigned shrug. “I want to leave you with something cleverer than that, but it’s all I know.”

WHEN HE WAKES, he finds the words are more or less there. It takes a while to find some of them, but they are there.

Blood.

Painkiller.

Vomit.

Bucket.

Hemorrhoids.

Diarrhea.

Water.

Blisters.

Diaper.

Ice.

After surgery, he is brought to an isolated wing of the hospital for a monthlong course of radiation. His immune system is so compromised from the radiation that he isn’t allowed any visitors. It is the loneliest he has ever been and that includes the period after Nic’s death. He wishes he could get drunk, but his irradiated stomach couldn’t take it. This is what life had been like before Maya and before Amelia. A man is not his own island. Or at least a man is not optimally his own island.

When he isn’t throwing up or restlessly half sleeping, he digs out the e-reader his mother had given him last Christmas. (The nurses deem the e-reader to be more sanitary than a paper book. “They should put that on the box,” A.J. quips.) He finds that he can’t stay awake to read an entire novel. Short stories are better. He has always preferred short stories anyway. As he is reading, he finds that he wants to make a new list of short stories for Maya. She is going to be a writer, he knows. He is not a writer, but he has thoughts about the profession, and he wants to tell her those things. Maya, novels certainly have their charms, but the most elegant creation in the prose universe is a short story. Master the short story and you’ll have mastered the world, he thinks just before he drifts off to sleep. I should write this down, he thinks. He reaches for a pen, but there isn’t one anywhere near the toilet bowl he is resting against.

At the end of the radiation treatment, the oncologist finds that his tumor has neither shrunk nor grown. He gives A.J. a year. “Your speech and everything else will likely deteriorate,” he says in a voice that strikes A.J. as incongruously chipper. No matter, A.J. is glad to be going home.





The Bookseller


1986 / Roald Dahl Bonbon about a bookseller with an unusual way of extorting money from customers. In terms of characters, it is Dahl’s usual collection of opportunistic grotesques. In terms of plot, the twist is a latecomer and not enough to redeem the story’s flaws. “The Bookseller” really shouldn’t be on this list—it is not an exceptional Dahl offering in any way. Certainly no “Lamb to the Slaughter”—and yet here it is. How to account for its presence when I know it is only average? The answer is this: Your dad relates to the characters. It has meaning to me. And the longer I do this (bookselling, yes, of course, but also living if that isn’t too awfully sentimental), the more I believe that this is what the point of it all is. To connect, my dear little nerd. Only connect.

—A.J.F.





It is so simple, he thinks. Maya, he wants to say, I have figured it all out.

But his brain won’t let him.

The words you can’t find, you borrow.