7
MY thoughts are firing too fast (you, me, your tights, your phone, Benji) and when I get like this there’s only one place for me to go. I walk to the shop, go to the way back and unlock the basement door. I close it behind me and stand in the vestibule that looks to Curtis, to anyone, like a storage closet. I fish in my pocket for the true key, the key that unlocks the next door, the final barricade between the shop and the soundproof basement. I lock the door behind me and by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs I am smiling because there it is, our beautiful, enormous, beastly enclosure: the cage.
“Cage” really isn’t the right word, Beck. For one thing, it’s huge, almost as big as the entire fiction section upstairs. It’s not a clunky metal trap you’d find in a prison cell or a pet shop. It’s more like a chapel than a cage and I wouldn’t be surprised if Frank Lloyd Wright had a hand in the design, what with the stark mahogany beams as smooth as they are heavy. The walls are genius acrylic, unbreakable yet breathable. It’s mystical, Beck, you’ll see. Half the time, when collectors write fat checks for old books, I think they’re under the spell of the cage. And it’s practical too. There’s a bathroom, a tiny stall with a tiny toilet because Mr. Mooney would never go upstairs for “something as banal as a bowel movement.” The books are on high shelves accessible only by climbing a ladder. (Good luck, thieves.) There’s a small sliding drawer in the front wall, the kind they use at a gas station in a sketchy neighborhood. I unlock the door and go inside. I’m inside and I look up at the books and I smile. “Hi, guys.”
I take off my shoes and lie back on the bench. I fold my hands under my head and tell the books all about you. They listen, Beck. I know it sounds crazy, but they do. I close my eyes. I remember the day we got this cage. I was fifteen and I’d been working for Mr. Mooney for a few months. He told me to come in to meet the truck at eight sharp. I was on time but the delivery guys from Custom Acrylics didn’t show up until ten. The guy behind the wheel beeped and waved for us to come outside. Mr. Mooney told me to observe as the driver yelled over the roar of the engine, “Is this Mooney Books?”
Mr. Mooney looked at me, disgusted by Philistines who can’t be bothered to read the sign above the shop. He looked at the driver. “Do you have my cage?”
The driver spat. “I can’t get this cage in that shop. Everything’s in parts, guy. The beams are fifteen feet long and the walls are too friggin’ wide to get through that door.”
“Both doors open,” said Mr. Mooney. “And we have all the time in the world.”
“It ain’t about time.” He sniffed and he looked at the other dude in the truck and I knew that they weren’t on our side. “With all due respect, we usually put these babies together in backyards, mansions, big open spaces, ya know?”
“The basement is both big and open,” said Mr. Mooney.
“You think we’re getting this fucking beast into a basement?”
Mr. Mooney was stern. “Don’t swear in front of the boy.”
The guys had to make at least two dozen trips, lugging beams and walls out of the truck, through the shop, and down the stairs. Mr. Mooney said not to feel bad for them. “They’re working,” he told me. “Labor is good for people, Joseph. Just watch.”
I couldn’t imagine what the cage would look like when it was done, if it was ever done. The beams were so dark and old-fashioned and the walls were so transparent and modern. I couldn’t imagine them coming together until Mr. Mooney finally called me downstairs. I was in awe. So were the delivery guys. “Biggest one ever,” said the sweaty driver. “You keeping African grays? I friggin’ love those birds. They talk, so cool.”
Mr. Mooney didn’t answer him. Neither did I.
He tried again. “Your shelves are wicked high, mister. You sure you don’t want us to move ’em down? Most people want the shelves, like, in the middle.”
Mr. Mooney spoke, “The boy and I have a lot of work to do.”
The driver nodded. “You can get a shit ton of birds in here. Pardon my French.”
After they left, Mr. Mooney locked the shop and told me the delivery dolts were no better than the wealthy sadists who keep birds in cages. “There’s no such thing as a flying cage, Joseph,” he said. “The only thing crueler than a cage so small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so large that a bird thinks it can fly. Only a monster would lock a bird in here and call himself an animal lover.”
Our cage was only for books and Mr. Mooney wasn’t kidding. We did have a lot of work to do. Workmen installed sealant in the walls that rendered the entire basement soundproof. More workmen came and built and expanded the back wall of the shop so that the door to the basement opened first into a vestibule that contained the real door to the basement. We were building a top secret, soundproof clubhouse in the earth and I woke up so excited every day. I assisted Mr. Mooney as he wrapped dust jackets in custom-fit acrylic cases (gently, Joseph), before placing the jacketed books into acrylic boxes with air holes (gently, Joseph). Then he put that box into a slightly larger metal box (gently, Joseph), with a label and a lock. When we had ten books or so, he would climb a ladder in the cage and I would pass him the books one at a time (gently, Joseph), and he would set them on those wicked high shelves. I asked him why we had to go through so much trouble for books. “Books can’t fly away,” I said. “They’re not birds.”
The next day, he brought me a set of Russian nesting dolls. “Open,” he said. “Gently, Joseph.”
I popped one doll in half and got another doll and popped that doll in half and got another doll and so on until the final doll that could not be popped in half, the only whole doll in the bunch. “Everything valuable must be hidden,” he said. “Or else.”
And now you pop into my head and you’re more beautiful than a doll and you’ll love it in here, Beck. You’ll see it as a refuge for sacred books, the authors you love. You’ll be in awe of me, the key master and I’ll show you my remote control that operates the air conditioners and humidifiers. You’ll want to hold it and I’ll let you and I’ll explain that if I wanted to, I could jack up the heat and cook these books and they’d turn to mold and dust and be gone, forever. If there’s any girl on Earth who would appreciate my power, it’s lovely, unpublished you in your little yellow stockings with your dream of writing something good enough to get you inside this cage. You’d drop your panties to get in here, to live in here, forever. I drop my own drawers and cum so hard that I go deaf.
Fuck. You are good. I try to stand. I am dizzy. Gently, Joseph.
It’s almost time to open and I catch my breath and I go upstairs. There are only two of us who work here now that Mr. Mooney is retired. There’s Curtis, a high school kid, kinda like I was back in the day. He does stupid stuff just like I did. Heck, when I was sixteen years old, Mr. Mooney gave me a key, and of course, one night I forgot to close the cage.
“You failed, Joseph,” said Mooney when he was younger but still old, the kind of guy who was never young, not really. “You failed me and you failed the books.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But we never shut cabinets or doors in my house.”
“That’s because your father is a pig, Joseph,” he said. “Are you a pig?”
I said no.
A few days later, I snuck into the cage and took out a new, old Franny and Zooey, a signed first edition. I decided to like it more than Catcher in the Rye just to be unique. And I loved it, Beck. What a book! Sometimes I flipped back to the beginning just to rub my finger on Salinger’s signature. You had to pay $1,250 to do what I did. But I didn’t pay. And neither did the woman who stole it from the desk at the register.
I would recognize her anywhere. She had reddish hair and a paisley scarf, and was thirty, maybe thirty-five. She paid cash. I told Mr. Mooney I’d work extra to make up for it and I promised I would find her. I cut school and skulked the streets until my toes were bleeding. But it’s hard to find a woman when you don’t know her name or where she lives. Mr. Mooney ordered me to go into the cage and close my eyes. I was scared. When I heard him lock the door I knew I was locked inside.
I didn’t have a ladder so I couldn’t reach any of the books; you can’t walk into the Louvre and kiss the Mona Lisa. I had no phone, no sunlight, no darkness. All I had was my brain and the buzz of the AC unit and the daily slice of pizza (cold because steam is no good for old books), and coffee (lukewarm in a cup from the Greek diner), both of which Mr. Mooney slipped to me through the drawer. The days and nights got lost. Mr. Mooney cared enough about me to teach me a lesson. I learned.
He let me out of the cage on September 14, 2001, three days after September 11. The whole world was different then and Mr. Mooney said my father had never called; he probably thought I was dead. “You are free, Joseph,” he said. “Be wise.”
I didn’t spend as much time at home after that. It wasn’t hard to slowly disappear. My mom left when I was in second grade so I grew up knowing that it was possible to leave people, especially my dad. I don’t feel sorry for myself, Beck. Lots of people have shitty parents and roaches in the cabinets and stale, raw Pop-Tarts for dinner and a TV that barely works and a dad who doesn’t care when his son doesn’t come home during a national disaster. The thing is, I’m lucky. I had the bookstore.
It doesn’t take a fucking village to raise a child. Mr. Mooney was the boss now, the dad I wanted to do right by. I kept hunting for the Franny and Zooey thief and right after 9/11, I wasn’t alone. Everyone was like me, searching the streets. People wanted to find their families; I wanted to find the thief. There were flyers for missing people all over the city. I thought about learning to draw and plastering the city with drawings of the thief. I could pretend she was my mother. I didn’t go through with it and sometimes I think the thief died in one of the Towers, karma. But most of the time I think she’s probably out there, alive, reading.
I am in the L–R Fiction stacks when the doorbell chimes and I am ready. You told your girlfriends you would come by around this time. I know this because I have your phone and you are not the kind of girl who locks her phone with the four-digit password. I have been reading your e-mails. I have taken pictures of the passwords you keep in your password folder. This way, when you change your password, if you change your password, I’ll know the possibilities. You are not the kind of girl who comes up with new passwords. You have three in rotation:
ackbeck1027
1027meME
1027BECK$Ale
It gets better. You don’t want to tell your mother that you lost another phone. You went and got a new phone with a new number and a new plan. I know all this because your old phone is still active. So I read the mass e-mail you sent to your friends announcing your new phone number because I can read all your e-mail! Chana was mortified:
WTF? Tell your mother you lost your phone and get that shit shut down. Identity theft! Perverts! Beck, seriously. Tell your mom you fucked up. She’ll get over it. People lose phones. Get the phone shut off. It’s not that dramatic.
You wrote back:
Phone is probably in gutter; so yes, it’s really not dramatic. If someone does have it, I’m a poor MFA candidate with debt. Who’s stealing that identity? And if someone thinks I’m pretty enough to put my selfies all over the Internet, well then I’ll feel pretty. Just kidding. But seriously, it’s all good. I wanted a new phone anyway! I love my new number!
Chana would not relent:
YOU GET A NEW PHONE WHEN YOU TELL THEM YOU LOST YOUR OLD PHONE. Your mother will know you lost your phone because of your NEW PHONE NUMBER. Also: $$$$$
You were stubborn:
Please calm down, C. I told my mom I changed numbers because I wanted a New York one. She doesn’t even know how to text, let alone read the bill. It’s fiiiiine. And money? Whatever. One more little bill isn’t going to kill me at this point, you know?
Chana didn’t reply and I love your mom (Thanks!) and I love you, you little hypocrite! Your old (but still working!) phone is an encyclopedia of your life and it will be open to me as long as your mother pays the bill. Score one for the good guy! Oh, Beck, I love reading your e-mail, learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won’t get alarmed. My good fortune doesn’t stop there: You prefer e-mail. You don’t like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an “essay” for some blog in which you stated that “e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away.” I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I’m so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don’t publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise.
Starting today.
You’re here.
“Hang on,” I call out, as if I don’t know it’s you up there and I’m so full of shit. I trot up the stairs and into the stacks and you’re here in a plaid jumper and kneesocks and you dressed up for me, I know you did, and you’re holding a pink reusable bag.
“Engine, engine, number nine,” I say and you laugh and I am so good when I have time to prepare. “What’s up?”
I go in for the hug and you let me hug you and we fit well together. My arms take you. I could squeeze you to death and to life and I pull away first because I know how you girls can be about this stuff, your basic instincts ruined by magazines and TV.
“I brought you something,” you coo.
“You didn’t.”
You respond, “I did.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Actually, I didn’t die.” You laugh. “So I kinda did.”
We’re walking up to the front and I know why we’re walking up there. You want me. You want me here. You know that if we stay in these stacks I’m gonna press you against the F–K placard and give you a present and I’m behind the counter and I sit as I planned—with my hands intertwined behind my head as I lean back and put my feet up and my navy T-shirt lifts just enough so that you can see my midsection—you need something to dream about—and I smile.
“Show me what you got, kid.”
You lay it on the counter and I lower my legs and move forward and I’m hunching over the counter. I could touch you I’m so close and I know you like my cologne because you and Chana lust after a bartender who wears this cologne which is why I bought it and I open my present, my present from you.
It’s The Da Vinci Code in Italian and you clap and you laugh and I love your enthusiasm and this is something that comes more naturally to you than writing, giving. You are a giver.
“Open it up,” you say.
“But I don’t speak Italian.”
“The whole book’s not in Italian.”
I flip through and you are wrong and you grab the book and drop it on the counter.
“I know for a fact that the first page is in English. Open.”
I open. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” you say. “Read up.”
There you are, in black ink. You wrote to me:
Engine, Engine, Number Nine
On the New York transit line
If some drunk girl falls on the tracks
Pick her up pick her up pick her up
I read it out loud; I know you get off on your writing and you clap at the end and there it is in writing. You are literally asking me to pick you up and you nod and your name is there so it’s not freaky when I say it.
“Thank you, Guinevere.”
“It’s Beck.”
I lift up the book. “But it’s also Guinevere.”
You concede, you nod. “You are welcome. . . .”
I took off my name tag in the cage. You are pretending you don’t remember my name and I help you out. “Joe. Goldberg.”
“You are welcome, Joe Goldberg,” you say and you sigh and on you go. “But that’s kind of fucked, right, because I came here to thank you and now I’m saying, ‘You’re welcome.’ ”
“Tell you what,” I say and this is it, just how I practiced. “Now that we’re both alive and nobody’s singing and you got me this sweet-ass present, which is great because of all the books we have in this place, Italian Dan Brown is not one of them . . .”
“I noticed,” you sing and you blink and smile and you’re rocking a little.
I breathe. This is it, the next step. “Let’s get a drink sometime.”
“Sure,” you say and you cross your arms and you’re not looking at me or saying a specific time or date or place and now there are elements of our dynamic coming slowly into view, like a photograph in a darkroom—you didn’t write your number in the book and you got me the joke part of our thing—Dan Brown—instead of the shared serious part of our thing—Paula Fox—and I think you have a hickey. A small one, but still. You bought Paula Fox for Benji. You bought Dan Brown for me.
“The thing is,” you say, “I still can’t find my phone and I don’t have a new one yet so I’m not making a lot of plans, you know?”
“Yeah.”
I pretend I have to check something on the computer and I think of the way you e-mailed your friends about me, the way you talked more about the fact that I rescued you than the fact that you’re obsessed with me, so obsessed that you had to pretend you didn’t remember me. You didn’t tell Chana and Lynn about the way you think about me when you mount your green pillow, about how nervous and intimidated you were with me. You were so nervous and distracted by me that you lost your phone, Beck. Remember? Instead, you e-mail your friends about Benji and I have to speak or I’ll blow it.
“So, you never found your phone?”
“No, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think I left it in the subway station.”
“You had it in the cab.”
“Oh right, I did, but I mean who remembers the name of the cab company, right?”
Premiere Taxi of Lower Manhattan.
“Nobody ever remembers the name of the cab company,” I agree.
You ask me for a pen and I give you a pen and you grab one of our bookmarks and flip it over and write down your e-mail address that I already know. “Tell you what,” you say as you scribble. “I’m really busy with school and stuff, but why don’t you e-mail me and we’ll make a plan.”
“I hope you know those bookmarks are for paying customers only.”
You laugh and you are awkward without a phone to dive into and you look around, waiting to be excused. You really do have a daddy complex, Beck.
“Not for nothing, but these books aren’t gonna sell themselves, so why don’t you skedaddle and let me, you know, get back to work.”
You smile, relieved, and you almost curtsy as you back away. “Thanks again.”
“Every time,” I say. And I planned that and you smile, no teeth, and you don’t say good-bye and I don’t say “Have a nice day” because we are beyond pleasantries and you gave me your e-mail address and now I have to choose which draft to send to you. I knew you’d come in and I knew you’d give me your e-mail so last night I wrote different versions of my first e-mail to you. I was up all night writing, Beck. Just like you. I was in my cage, Beck. Just like you.
I put your bookmark with your e-mail in the Italian Dan Brown. It fits perfectly.