The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry(54)

“ ‘No,’ she says. At this point, the baby is crying. Marian says that the worst of it is that she knew what she was doing. Daniel had come to her college for a reading. She had loved that book, and when she slept with him she had read his author biography a million times and she knew perfectly well that he was married. ‘I’ve made so many mistakes,’ she says. ‘I can’t help you,’ I say. She shakes her head and picks up the baby. ‘We’ll be out of your way now,’ she says. ‘Merry Christmas.’

“And they leave. I’m pretty shaken up, so I go into the kitchen to make myself some tea. When I get back out to the living room, I notice that the little girl has left her backpack and Tamerlane is on the floor next to it. I pick up the book. I’m thinking I’ll just slip into A.J.’s apartment tomorrow or the next night and return it. That’s when I notice it is covered in crayon drawings. The little girl has ruined it! I zip it into the bag and put it in my closet. I don’t take pains to hide it very much. I think maybe Daniel will find it and ask me about it, but he never does. He never cares. That night, A.J. calls me about the proper things to feed a baby. He’s got Maya at his apartment, and I agree to go over.”

“The day after that, Marian Wallace washes up by the lighthouse,” Lambiase says.

“Yes, I wait to see if Daniel will say anything, to see if he will recognize the girl and claim the baby, but he doesn’t. And I, coward that I am, never bring it up.”

Lambiase takes her in his arms. “None of this matters,” he says after a while. “If there was a crime—”

“There was a crime,” she insists.

“If there was a crime,” he repeats, “everyone who knows about any of it is dead.”

“Except Maya.”

“Maya’s life has turned out beautifully,” Lambiase says.

Ismay shakes her head. “It has, hasn’t it?”

“The way I see it,” Lambiase says, “you saved A. J. Fikry’s life when you stole that manuscript. That’s the way I see it.”

“What kind of cop are you?” Ismay asks.

“The old kind,” he says.

THE NEXT NIGHT, like every third Wednesday of every month for the last ten years, is Chief’s Choice at Island Books. At first, the police officers felt obligated to join, but the group has grown in genuine popularity over the years. Now it’s the largest book meetup that Island has. Police officers still make up the bulk of the membership, but their wives and even some of their children, when they get old enough, attend. Years ago, Lambiase had had to institute a “leave your weapons” policy after a young cop had pulled a gun on another cop during a particularly heated discussion of The House of Sand and Fog. (Lambiase would later reflect to A.J. that the selection had been a mistake. “Had an interesting cop character but too much moral ambiguity in that one. I’m going to stick to easier genre stuff from now on.”) Other than this incident, the group has been free of violence. Aside from the content of the books, of course.

As is his tradition, Lambiase arrives at the store early to set up for Chief’s Choice and talk to A.J. “I saw this resting on the door,” Lambiase says when he comes inside. He hands a padded manila envelope with A.J.’s name on it to his friend.

“Probably another galley,” A.J. says.

“Don’t say that,” Lambiase jokes. “Could be the next big thing in there.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. It’s probably the Great American Novel. I’ll add it to my stack: Things to Read before My Brain Stops Working.”

A.J. sets the package on the countertop, and Lambiase watches it. “You never know,” Lambiase says.

“I’m like a girl who has been on the dating scene too long. I’ve had too many disappointments, too many promises of ‘the one,’ and they never are. As a cop, don’t you get that way?”

“What way?”

“Cynical, I guess,” A.J. says. “Don’t you ever get to the point where you expect the worst from people all the time?”

Lambiase shakes his head. “No. I see good people just as much as I see bad ones.”

“Yeah, name me some.”

“People like you, my friend.” Lambiase clears his throat, and A.J. can think of no reply. “What’s good in crime that I haven’t read? I need some new picks for Chief’s Choice.”

A.J. walks over to the crime section. He looks across the spines, which are, for the most part, black and red with all capitalized fonts in silvers and whites. An occasional burst of fluorescence breaks up the monotony. A.J. thinks how similar everything in the crime genre looks. Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.

He selects one and holds it out to his friend. “Maybe this?”

What We Talk about When We Talk about Love

1980 / Raymond Carver

Two couples get increasingly drunk; discuss what is and what is not love.

A question I’ve thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/ acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.* This is my favorite short story, Maya, and yet I cannot begin to tell you why.