Chapter Fourteen
Lori
Early on Saturday morning, I went out to IKEA with Sam and bought a new bookcase and a small table for the dining area. We loaded the furniture into the back of her van and spent a few hours walking around the Galleria. She had to remind me more than once that we were here to buy clothes; I kept drifting away at every glimpse of a bookstore.
“You think I’ll ever own a library of my own?” I asked her as we passed Barnes & Noble for the third time, and she tugged me away from the entrance. “I don’t mean just a bookshelf in my house but a whole room full of them.”
“I suppose if you save up enough money, and if that is your dream,” said Sam sagely. “While the rest of us are building cribs and saving up for our kids’ college funds, you can be assembling a wall of books.”
“You’ll come into the room one morning to find that the wall has fallen on top of me. Don’t mourn for me, though: I died happy. In fact, you can leave me there and let me be entombed by my books.”
“Deal,” said Sam, beaming at a passing toddler. “I don’t know if we could have afforded the cost of a funeral anyway.”
I tried on a few dresses before I found one that I wanted. I ended up getting a red fox-print dress with matching slippers and a blue cardigan. It did nothing to dispel my librarian image, but since I was going on a date, I wanted to wear something I felt comfortable in.
When I invited Sam into the dressing room, she surveyed me with a look of uncertainty. “Well, if this doesn’t scare him away, then perhaps nothing well.”
“Is it really that bad?” I asked, turning and examining myself approvingly in the mirror.
“It’s not that it’s bad, per se,” she replied. “It’s the inherent schoolmarm-ness of the thing. It’s quintessentially you, is what I’m saying.”
“It’s perfect.” I ushered her out of the room so I could change and make my purchase. As we left Macy’s, I stared sadly down at my bag, wishing I could put it on right then and wear it out of the store. Foxes were some of my favorite animals, and I had long coveted a particular fox-print dress my aunt had linked me in an email, but had never been able to bring myself to spend the money.
I returned home, curled my hair, and changed into my new dress. This done, I stood surveying myself in the mirror with a feeling of satisfaction. Even if Marshall decided I was “nothing more than an old, fussy spinster trapped in the body of a young woman,” as Mom had once called me, at least I would be proud of how I looked tonight.
Jamal texted me at around five to let me know he was closing up the store. (“No robberies and no murders. See, you had nothing to worry about!”). I waited a few minutes before driving over to his house, where I found Sam already waiting, sitting in the kitchen clutching a mug of tea he had brought her from Paris and reading a primer on Foucault.
“Look at you!” she cried, closing the book with a snap when I came in. “When’s he picking you up?”
“He’s meeting me at the shop in a couple hours.” I sat down at the table next to her. “I was thinking about heading over there soon and setting up the table and bookcase, if you want to join me. You know I’m hopeless at following instructions, especially when they’re written in Swedish.”
“But we can’t set it up now; you’re about to go on your date. You don’t want to be all hot and sweaty when he picks you up.” She gave me a scintillating look from behind her mug. “That comes later.”
“Oh, stop!” I said, blushing. “If we end up even having a halfway decent conversation, I’ll be impressed.”
“You sure?” She reached out a hand and stroked my wrist. “No hanky panky?”
I shook my head firmly. “None whatsoever.”
She reached down and opened her purse, flinging a couple condoms across the table. I recoiled in horror as though they were slugs. “I know you don’t like it, but I think you ought to bring along some of these just in case. You don’t want to end up with a surprise baby.”
“No way.” I shoved the condoms back in her direction. In an exaggeratedly prim British accent, I added, “There will be none of that naughty business tonight.”
“Well, he’ll probably be carrying some anyway,” said Sam, returning the condoms to her purse with a defeated look. “Be ready for it.”
“I will be no such thing. You know me: my idea of a romantic evening is sitting on the couch reading a book of hot, steamy poetry.”
“And I am the opposite.” Sam made a salute with her teacup and laughed. “Yes, I’ve had multiple threesomes; ask me anything.”
“I have… so many questions, but I think I’ll table those for another night.” I rose from my chair and motioned for her to follow. “Speaking of chairs, are you ready for this? I really think we can get it done before Marshall shows up.”
***
We spent the next hour struggling to decipher the instructions and nailing the bookshelf together.
“I’ll be honest,” said Sam. “When you told me you wanted to add a reading shelf, I had a hard time imagining you parting with any of your beloved books.”
“I was hoping I could convince other people to contribute theirs, but I’m sure I could find some books of my own that I’ve already read or don’t plan on reading again.” Walking over to the soda fountain, I poured myself some lemonade in a clear plastic cup. “I still have a bunch of books that Mom sent me on the evils of the Catholic Church.”
“You should probably just go ahead and burn those.”
“I just might.” I pulled up Instagram on my phone and began scrolling through pictures of my bookcase. “Here’s a copy of The Dollhouse Murders that I’ll probably never read again… I tried re-reading the My Teacher Is an Alien! series recently, but it hasn’t aged well… I never cared much for The Virgin Suicides; it’s too literary… This is an old copy of Proust, but no one else will ever read it, so I may as well just keep it.”
“What a strange fate,” said Sam, peering over my shoulder. “Imagine becoming famous for writing a book that no one has ever read.”
“Hey, I’ve read it!” I said defensively. When Sam glared at me, I added in a quieter tone, “… parts of it.”
Sam set down the hammer and stretched. “Lori, I realize that you think this is fascinating, but please don’t spend your entire date talking about the books you want to throw out. If you show him your bookstagram even once, I will literally come over there and beat you over the head with a wet fish.”
“You realize when you say that, it just makes me want to give him a tour of my whole bookshelf,” I said in a tone of irritation. “I’m sure there are boys who would find it terribly interesting.”
“Marshall is not one of those boys, sweetie,” said Sam. “You can trust me on this.”
I don’t think she meant to discourage me, but I could feel my stomach tightening into knots at the thought. What if my date didn’t care about the things that I cared about? What if we didn’t have a single thing in common? What if I mentioned my favorite author and he started checking his phone, or, even worse, made fun of me? There were so many things that could go wrong, and one way or another I was bound to end up crying in the bathroom before the end of the night.
Sensing my distress, Sam came over and knelt down beside me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m sure he’ll be great and a nerd and super into books and you’ll make passionate love tonight and have a couple of really nerdy kids.”
“You’re not helping, Sam,” I said with a roll of my eyes. A couple of kids was the last thing I wanted, nerdy or not.
“Maybe not, but I think you’re more ready for this than you know. You can’t pretend you’re not even a little excited. Aren’t you looking forward to this? Even a little?”
Slowly and reluctantly, I nodded. “He may have tricked me into going on a date, but he is very attractive. Whatever his other faults might be, I’ll grant him that.”
“See? And isn’t there part of you that’s been wanting to sleep with him?”
“I don’t know about that…” I said quietly, though the sudden flow of blood to my face suggested otherwise. It was bizarre, the amount of attraction you could feel towards someone with whom you had nothing in common. Sometimes, it felt like my whole body was rebelling against me.
“You sure about that?” asked Sam with a shrewd look.
“Not entirely,” I said faintly. “And I hate it because it means there’s a part of me that isn’t governed by intellect or reason… a part of me that’s just pure want and hunger.”
“That just wants to be thrown down on a bed and fucked until you can’t move,” said Sam with a gleam in her eyes.
I resisted the temptation to cover my face in embarrassment. “That’s a bit less delicate than how I would have put it, but yes, essentially. I hate that that part of me exists. I wish I was all book.”
“Well, you’re human, too, and you’ll have to accept that. Sometimes we have longings we don’t know how to deal with and wish we could be rid of. But they’re there, and there’s no use pretending they’re not.”
“I suppose not,” I said sadly, throwing my hammer down in disgust. “I just wish there was a way of boxing off those icky parts of ourselves, those animal parts, and never having to look at them or think about them. But then, they have a way of surfacing when it’s least convenient.”
“Well, anyway,” said Sam, rising slowly to her feet, “you won’t have to think about it again for another couple hours at least. It looks like Marshall just pulled into the parking lot.”