“I’ll do my best to have them read in three.” He pauses. “Let’s order dessert,” he says. “There must be a ‘whale of a sundae’ or something.”
Amelia groans. “That is truly an awful wordplay.”
“So if you don’t mind my asking, why was The Late Bloomer your favorite book from that list? You’re a young—”
“I’m not that young. I’m thirty-five.”
“That’s still young,” A.J. says. “What I mean is you probably haven’t experienced much of what Mr. Friedman describes. I look at you, and having read the book, I wonder what made you respond to it.”
“My, Mr. Fikry, that’s a very personal question.” She sips at the last of her second Queequeg. “The main reason I loved the book was the quality of the writing, of course.”
“Of course. But that isn’t enough.”
“Let’s just say I’d been on many, many bad dates by the time The Late Bloomer came across my desk. I’m a romantic person, but sometimes these don’t seem like romantic times to me. The Late Bloomer is a book about the possibility of finding great love at any age. Sounds cliché, I know.”
A.J. nods.
“And you? Why did you like it?” Amelia asks.
“Quality of the prose, blah blah blah.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to say that!” Amelia says.
“You don’t want to hear my sad stories, do you?”
“Sure I do,” she says. “I love sad stories.”
He gives her the Cliffs Notes version of Nic’s death. “Friedman gets at something specific about what it is to lose someone. How it isn’t one thing. He writes about how you lose and lose and lose.”
“When did she die?” Amelia asks.
“A while ago now. I was a little older than you at the time.”
“That must have been a long while ago,” she says.
He ignores the barb. “The Late Bloomer really could have been a popular book.”
“I know. I’m thinking of having someone read a passage from it at my wedding.”
A.J. pauses. “You’re getting married, Amelia. Congratulations. Who’s the lucky fellow?”
She stirs the harpoon around the tomato juice-tinted waters of her Queequeg, trying to recapture a shrimp that’s gone AWOL. “His name is Brett Brewer. I’d about given up when I met him online.”
A.J. drinks the bitter dregs of his second glass of wine. “Tell me more.”
“He’s in the military, serving overseas in Afghanistan.”
“Well done. You’re marrying an American hero,” A.J. says.
“I guess I am.”
“I hate those guys,” he says. “They make me feel totally inadequate. Tell me something shitty about him so that I feel better.”
“Well, he’s not home much.”
“You must miss him a lot.”
“I do. I get a lot of reading done, though.”
“That’s good. Does he read, too?”
“No, actually. He’s not much of a reader. But that’s kind of interesting, right? I mean, it’s interesting to be with someone whose, um, interests are so different from mine. I don’t know why I keep saying ‘interests.’ The point is, he’s a good man.”
“He’s good to you?”
She nods.
“That’s what counts. Anyway, nobody’s perfect,” A.J. says. “Someone probably made him read Moby Dick in high school.”
Amelia stabs her shrimp. “Caught it,” she says. “Your wife . . . was she a reader?”
“And a writer. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. Reading’s overrated. Look at all the good stuff on television. Stuff like True Blood.”
“Now you’re making fun of me.”
“Bah! Books are for nerds,” A.J. says.
“Nerds like us.”
When the check comes, A.J. pays despite the fact that it is customary for the sales rep to pay in such situations. “Are you sure?” Amelia asks.
A.J. tells her that she can pay next time.
Outside the restaurant, Amelia and A.J. shake hands, and the usual professional pleasantries are exchanged. She turns to walk back to the ferry, and one important second later he turns to walk to the bookstore.
“Hey A.J.,” she calls. “There’s something kind of heroic about being a bookseller, and there’s also something kind of heroic about adopting a child.”
“I do what I can.” He bows. Halfway through the bow, he realizes that he is not the type of man who can pull off bowing and quickly rights himself. “Thank you, Amelia.”
“My friends call me Amy,” she says.
MAYA HAS NEVER seen A.J. so occupied. “Daddy,” she asks, “why do you have so much homework?”
“Some of it’s extracurricular,” he says.
“What’s ‘extracurricular’?”
“I’d look it up if I were you.”
Reading an entire season’s list, even the list of a modestly sized house like Knightley, is a major time commitment for a person with a chatty kindergartner and a small business. After he finishes each Knightley title, he sends Amelia an e-mail to tell her his thoughts. In his e-mails, he cannot bring himself to use the nickname “Amy,” though permission had been granted. Sometimes, if he really responds to something, he calls her. If he hates a book, he’ll send a text: Not for me. For her part, Amelia has never received this much attention from an account.
Don’t you have any other publishers to read? Amelia texts him.
A.J. thinks a long time about his reply. None with sales reps I like as well as you is his first draft, but he decides this is too presumptuous for a girl with an American hero fiancé. He redrafts. It’s a compelling list for Knightley, I guess.
A.J. orders so many Knightley titles that even Amelia’s boss notices. “I’ve never seen a little account like Island take so many of our books,” the boss says. “New owner?”
“Same guy,” Amelia says. “But he’s different from when I first met him.”
“Well, you must have really done a number on him. That guy doesn’t take what he can’t sell,” the boss says. “Harvey never came close to these kinds of orders with Island.”
Finally, A.J. gets to the last title. It’s a charming memoir about motherhood, scrapbooking, and the writing life, written by a Canadian poet that A.J. has always liked. The book is only 150 pages, but it takes A.J. two weeks to get through it. He can’t seem to read a chapter without falling asleep or being distracted by Maya. When he finishes it, he finds himself unable to craft a response. The writing is elegant enough, and he thinks the women who frequent his store could respond to it. The problem, of course, is that once he replies to Amelia, he’ll be done with the Knightley winter catalog, and he’ll have no reason to contact Amelia until the summer list hits. He likes her, and he thinks it’s possible that she might like him, despite that horrendous first meeting. But . . . A. J. Fikry is not the kind of man who thinks it’s okay to try to steal another man’s fiancée. He doesn’t believe in “the one.” There are zillions of people in the world; no one is that special. Besides which, he barely knows Amelia Loman. What if, say, he did manage to steal her and it turned out they weren’t compatible in bed?
Amelia texts him, What’s happening? Didn’t you like?
Not for me, unfortunately, A.J. replies. Looking forward to seeing what’s on Knightley’s summer list. Yours, A.J.
The response strikes Amelia as overly businesslike, dismissive. She thinks about picking up the phone but doesn’t. She texts back, While you’re waiting, you should definitely watch TRUE BLOOD. True Blood is Amelia’s favorite television show. It had gotten to be a kind of joke with them that A.J. would like vampires if only he would watch True Blood. Amelia fancies herself a Sookie Stackhouse type.
Not gonna happen, Amy, A.J. writes. See you in March.
March is four and a half months away. By then, A.J. feels sure his little crush will have gone away or at least resolved itself into a more tolerable dormancy.
March is four and a half months away.
Maya asks him what’s wrong, and he tells her that he’s sad because he’s not going to see his friend for a while.
“Amelia?” Maya asks.
“How do you know about her?”
Maya rolls her eyes, and A.J. wonders when and where she learned that gesture.
Lambiase hosts his Chief’s Choice Book Club at the store that night (selection: L.A. Confidential), and after that, as is their tradition, he and A.J. share a bottle.
“I think I’ve met someone,” A.J. says after a glass has mellowed him.
“Good news,” Lambiase says.
“The problem is, she’s affianced to someone else.”
“Bad timing,” Lambiase proclaims. “I’ve been a police officer for twenty years now and I’ll tell you, pretty much every bad thing in life is a result of bad timing, and every good thing is the result of good timing.”
“That seems terribly reductive.”
“Think about it. If Tamerlane hadn’t gotten stolen, you wouldn’t have left the door unlocked, and Marian Wallace wouldn’t have left the baby in the store. Good timing is what that was.”