Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(13)

We stood by the counter and sipped our espressos. Customers leisurely browsed the shelves or sat, reading quietly. Sunlight from the windows stretched a slice of brightness against the floor. Jess had a Billie Holiday album playing and the beautiful, vulnerable voice drifted through the store, backed by unhurried big band instrumentals. I took pleasure in the languid pace of the bookstore, the slow movements, the soft voices, the smells of fresh coffee and aged paper, the people who circulated comfortably between the high stacks with gentle semi-purpose, like fish in an aquarium. My bookstore was a place of calm for me—a calm all the more meaningful given how much chaos and unpredictability and pain was out there, outside the doors. Much of my childhood had been anything but calm, so much so that for years I had given up any hope of finding it for myself. Maybe the bookstore had started accidentally, but as I brought in the boxes of books and filled the shelves, I must have known, deep down, that what I was truly doing was building the refuge I had always been so desperate for, and so unsure of ever finding.

“So? Who is he?” Jess wanted to know.

I shook my head. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Too late now.”

“Fine. He’s a grad student.”

“Got yourself a Berkeley boy! Business? Law? You gonna marry rich and retire?”

“English, sadly. I think I’ll keep my day job.”

“So what’s the plan for the first date?”

“Have him to dinner.”

Jess laughed. “You’re one of a kind. A strange guy coming to dinner on the first date.”

“Right,” I said. “‘Because he’s gonna slip something in my drink or tie me up. I think I’ll survive, but if you don’t hear from me, tell the cops to check the English Department for clues.”

“Or,” she winked, “they should check the bedroom…”

“My God. You never stop.” I saw an older, white-haired man in the fiction section, looking lost. He was dressed impeccably in polished cordovan loafers, a blazer, and a polka-dot blue tie. “Help you find something?” I asked, walking over.

He turned with a relieved look. He had a pleasant face and sharp eyes. “My grandson’s birthday. I’m afraid I’ve fallen out of touch with whatever twelve-year-old boys read these days. But I was sternly warned by his mother that he has every Rowling and Tolkien book in existence.”

“What’s your grandson like?” I asked.

“Very active. Boy Scouts, loves wilderness, adventure—anything outdoors.”

I thought for a second, then started moving up and down the shelves, pulling books. “Jack London, the gold standard. Lived down the street from here, too. White Fang, Call of the Wild. Wildness to domestication and the inevitable reverse.” I moved down a few letters and grabbed another. “Gary Paulsen, Hatchet. Can’t go wrong. Classic wilderness survival.” Another title caught my eye and I pulled it. “The White Company. Knights and battles.”

He looked at the book. “Arthur Conan Doyle … Sherlock Holmes?”

“This one’s different. He’ll like it. Trust me.” I was already headed down the shelves and grabbed another. “Robert Louis Stevenson. I’m sure he’s read Treasure Island, but try Kidnapped.” I lingered in the Ss, scanning titles. “Ernest Thompson Seton. Helped found the Boy Scouts, actually. Lives of the Hunted.” I handed the man the last paperback. The cover was frayed and the pages were heavily marked up. I saw him notice. “Don’t worry. Your grandson is going to be happy.”

“You know your books,” the man commented as I rang him up.

“Goes with the territory. If I worked as a florist I bet I could tell you all about peonies.”

His eyes crinkled. “Somehow I don’t see you with peonies.”

I put the books in a paper bag and dropped a couple of bookmarks in with the receipt. “Hope he enjoys. Tell him happy birthday from me.”

I rang up a few other customers while I finished off my espresso. Across the store I heard voices raised in argument. The ZEBRAS were in, occupying their usual corner. The ZEBRAS were the Zealous East Bay Ratiocinating Amateur Sleuths, a group of East Bay residents who convened a few times a week. Their stated purpose—as their business cards happily stated—was the “Solving of Crimes, Reading of Mysteries, and Nitpicking of Everything,” but they leaned decidedly toward the latter parts. As far as I knew, they’d never solved anything more than whose turn it was to pay for lunch, and they were usually a month behind on that. What the ZEBRAS were best at was having spirited literary debates over endless amounts of coffee and deli takeout.

“Don’t forget, by the way,” Jess said. “Book group this week.”

I nodded. “I invited someone new, actually. Her name is Zoe. Who knows if she’ll show up, but keep an eye out for her just in case.”

Jess gave me a look.

I shrugged. “Maybe. She looked like some company would do her good, anyway.” I enjoyed the book club, made up of women I met through my other work. Everyone from English professors to women who had never made it through a copy of People until they started coming. They were my favorite. I loved seeing them get so excited about something they’d always been told was a waste of time. When a woman realized there were situations, lessons, knowledge in books that applied to her own life more than she’d ever imagined.