Breakfast with Neruda Read online

  “This is just the beginning,” Shelly says. “Don’t forget the thirty-two rooms inside.”

  Outside the store entrance Shelly glances at the announcements of authors who will be coming for book signings.

  “Ugh,” she says. “Pelee Peugeot.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “She’s this pretentious, ghastly, self-absorbed bitch who writes chick lit,” Shelly says. “My mom loves her stuff.”

  “How do you know she’s ghastly?”

  “And self-absorbed and pretentious,” she says. “She came to Columbus around Christmastime a couple years ago and did a reading at the Barnes & Noble at Easton. Josh and I drove up to get Mom an autographed copy of her latest bestseller. We got there kind of late because Josh has no concept of time. So we had to park clear over by Macy’s and hike to the store in a mini-blizzard. Anyway, we get there an hour before the store is closing. Pelee Peugeot is still there sitting next to a stack of hardback books of all her titles. The line is kind of long, so I stand in line to wait while Josh hurriedly buys her latest book.”

  Shelly picks up a copy of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. “Five ninety-nine,” she says. “Not bad.” She picks up a copy to buy and wanders away from me.

  “So what happens next?” I ask.

  “So I stand there and I start listening as this Pelee chick does her thing. Any time a man wants an autograph, even if he has a woman with him, she swings her long, flaming hair and reaches out to touch him, calling him darling or sweetie. But I notice if it is just a woman, she uses this flat tone, and says, ‘Who should I make this out to?’ So when Josh comes back, I tell him to be the one to get her signature. ‘Seriously?’ he whines. ‘It’s a chick book.’ Which it kind of is. She writes these cheesy mysteries about a jaded female detective who looks amazingly like a younger version of herself. ‘Trust me,’ I tell Josh. ‘The performance will be worth it.’ So he shrugs, and I get out of line. I stand at a rack of books nearby so I’m in both eye- and earshot of her. Josh is the last one in line, and when he gets to her, she looks up and gushes, 'I love to meet my male readers,' she says. She grabs his hand and strokes it. ‘Especially ones so handsome.’ And my brother is good-looking. Kind of like a young Brad Pitt. Anyway, Josh glances at me with this horrified look on his face as Pelee flips her hair at him. It’s no doubt dyed because she’s like five hundred years old, but you can tell she tries to look twenty-five. She’s had so much Botox her face looks like she’s caught in the headlights. And her lips puff up like a blowfish. She bats her false eyelashes at my then eighteen-year-old brother, and opens the book to sign it. ‘So what’s your name, sweetheart?’ She talks like Kathie Lee Gifford with that gushy, East Coast accent. Anyway, Josh just says, 'It’s for my mom.' Pelee’s Botoxed face freezes, and she says, ‘Oh.’ There’s this uncomfortable moment where she is sitting there, the book open on the table in front of her, and waiting. Finally, I yell, ‘Her name is Claire.’ Pelee Peugeot glances my way, and I can see meanness in her eyes, as if the devil has sent her here to sign his books. She turns back to my brother, and with a frigid smile full of teeth, she says, ‘Is that with a C or a K?’ Josh told me later she creeped him out big time.”

  “Maybe she was just weird that day.” I open the door to the bookstore.

  “No,” Shelly says. “I Googled her, and I found out her real name is Anne Smith. She’s had five husbands, all younger. She has a kid by Number Three, but she left him with his father so she could go off to Greece and start writing. That’s where she met Number Four.”

  “So how did she get the name?”

  Shelly shrugs. “I saw this YouTube interview where she had some bullshit story about once having been rescued by some guy driving a Peugeot.”

  “It’s kind of a cool name,” I say.

  Shelly shrugs. “I guess. But she’s still a bitch.”

  We step inside the store. “Smells like paper,” I say.

  “Duh.”

  A bearded guy wearing a Book Loft T-shirt asks if he can help us. “He needs a map,” Shelly tells him, and the guy hands me a photocopy of the store layout.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I say. “It’s like a book museum.”

  We step up to the first level, where current bestsellers are displayed. I spot a Pelee Peugeot book on the New York Times bestseller shelf.

  “That bitch,” Shelly whispers. She reaches for the book. She leans in toward me and whispers, “Normally I bend a few pages of her books every time I go to Barnes & Noble. That way it will get remaindered, and Pewee Pissant can’t make any money off it.” She sets the book back on the shelf unharmed. “But this is an independent bookstore, so I’ll be nice.”

  “Remind me not to piss you off,” I say.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Your pages are already bent.”

  We thread our way up and down various staircases and rooms. Each room is unique, and I notice the music changes every few paces. In one room we hear Patsy Cline. A few steps away, Coltrane wails on sax, and yet another room plays John Lee Hooker. It reminds me of Bob. He was into music, and he’s the reason I know something about jazz and blues.

  The shelves are filled to capacity in each room. “It’s almost too much,” I say. “Overwhelming.”

  “Pick out whatever you want,” she says.

  “I want it all.”

  “Well, my dad’s rich, but he’s not that rich.”

  “I could live here,” I say. Is this where it starts? This tendency to want to hold on to everything? To keep all the books of the world within reach? “This store reminds me of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.” Shelly gives me a quizzical look. “In a book I read a couple years ago called The Shadow of the Wind, there was this secret hideaway where they stashed old books,” I say, “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books.”

  “What’s the book about?”

  “It’s about this boy’s possession of a rare book he picked out from the cemetery. It houses the last copies of all the books that have gone out of print.”

  “It’s a book about a book?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to explain . . . part mystery, part love story. The kid picks out a book that leads into all sorts of intrigue.”

  “Let’s see if we can find it,” she says. She looks on the map. “Fiction is in rooms eight, nine, and ten.”

  Even with a map, the rooms are hard to figure out. If we were in a hurry, I’d ask for help, but I like the adventure of finding things. Like Daniel Sempere and his father, we move through the labyrinth of books and search through the fiction section.

  “Who’s it by?” she asks.

  “Carlos Ruiz Zafón.”

  We find it under Zafón, along with his other books. “I liked The Angel’s Game too,” I say, “but not as much as The Shadow of the Wind. The Angel’s Game is more of a ghost story. The Shadow of the Wind has more layers.”

  “You talk like someone in AP English.”

  I blush. “I am in AP English. Or I was before, you know.”

  “Yeah.” She nods. “Before the shit hit the fan.”

  “Just because I live in my car doesn’t mean I don’t have a brain.”

  “I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . . I don’t know what I meant.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s my birthday; you’re allowed to insult my intelligence.” But I realize I am kind of trying to impress her with my vocabulary. She has money and two parents and lives in a big, fancy house. Words are all I have.

  She swats me with the book. I take it from her hands, open to page five, and read from the last paragraph. “Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”

  “Books do have souls,” she says.

  “What’s your favorite book?” I ask. “And don’t say Little Women or Twilight or I will steal
your father’s car and leave you here.”

  She laughs. “You really don’t know me very well at all. Little Women? Hardly. And I may look Goth, but the vampire book thing doesn’t turn me on.”

  “That’s a relief. But seriously, if you were being evacuated to another planet and could take only one book, what would it be?” I say.

  “Like in The Green Book?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s a kids' book,” she says, “where this girl can only take one book with her to a new planet, so she chooses a blank book so she can write her own stories.”

  “Cool,” I say. “Is that your book?”

  “No. I like that one, but there are others I like more.” She thinks for a minute. “I can only choose one?”

  “Yep.”

  As usual, she turns the question back to me. “So what’s your go-to book?”

  “No, I asked you first, and since it’s my not birthday, you have to tell me.”

  She unravels her black hair from the braid and shakes her head. Her hair cascades across her shoulder in wavy dents.

  “Nice delaying tactic,” I tell her.

  “I can’t think with my hair in a knot.”

  I laugh and smooth a strand of hair out her face, and my hand brushes her skin. We stare at one another for a long second. “It used to be The Catcher in the Rye,” she says.

  “What is it now?” I ask.

  I want to kiss her, but am afraid to spoil the moment. Besides, she hasn’t answered my question.

  “Promise you won’t laugh or make a sound of derision?”

  “Nice vocab word,” I say. “Seriously. Tell me.”

  She takes a breath. “It’s a toss-up between On the Road by Jack Kerouac and 100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda.”

  “I love Neruda,” I say. “I have a battered copy of his Selected Poems.”

  “The one with a picture of him on front? Clasping his hands together?” I nod. “I have that book, too,” she says. “In fact I took it with me when I . . .” She does not finish. Instead she quotes from one of Neruda’s sonnets. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved . . .”

  “In secret, between the shadow and the soul,” I add.

  She smiles. “You’re not a total ignoramus.” She reaches up and caresses my cheek, pulls me to her, and our lips meet. The world evaporates around us. It’s been so long since I kissed a girl that a lingering thirst fills me, making me feel robust and alive. But our moment is broken by a toddler who grabs my pant leg. I look down, and a round-faced boy giggles.

  “Hey, buddy,” I ask. “Are you lost?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Bernard!” a woman of around thirty says. She reaches for the boy and hoists him onto her hip. “Sorry.”

  “No problem,” I say. But the spell is broken. Shelly has already moved on to peruse the shelves again. “Let’s go find the poetry room,” she says. “I’ll show you my favorite sonnet.”

  She hands me the stack of books she plans to buy, takes my hand, and leads me toward the poetry. On the way, I notice a poster with a quote by Edmund Wilson: “No two persons ever read the same book.”

  We end up in room thirteen. I pick up a book. “Look,” I say, holding it out. “A book called Making Out in Chinese.” I want to make out with Shelly in any language.

  She laughs. “They must do it differently than the rest of us.” Shelly scans the shelves and finds the book she was looking for, a bubble–gum pink paperback of Pablo Neruda’s 100 Love Sonnets. “Here it is. 'Sonnet 89.'” She looks up at me. “This poem always makes me cry.”

  That sparks my curiosity, and I glance over her shoulder as we read the poem together. I think it’s the most wonderful poem I have ever read.

  She closes the book and her eyes are wet. “This is what we all want, isn’t it?” She says, her voice a whisper. “To love and be loved by someone so completely that we are unbroken.”

  I don’t know how to react, but I know not to ruin the moment by speaking. I pull her into my arms. It’s one of those times when words won’t do, one of those inexplicable moments where the door to what makes Shelly tick has opened. Not far. But she has let me into the foyer, and I want to linger there awhile longer before she either tosses me out or takes my hand and draws me inside. I stroke her silky hair, and she weeps softly into my chest.

  When we finally pull apart, the book’s pink cover and some of its pages are crushed between us. “I guess we’re buying this one,” I say.

  She smiles and says, “Happy Not Really Your Birthday.”

  Chapter Six

  After leaving The Book Loft we sit side by side outdoors at Cup O Joe, sipping cold mocha lattes. We sit close together without touching. Our silence is easy and necessary. Shelly and I shared something powerful, and I wonder what she feels right now, but I’m afraid to break our chain. I want to know her fully, to step inside her skin and burrow around. Like a hunter who waits for the fawn to become comfortable enough to let down her guard, I will wait. Our time together is fragile as butterfly wings—bright and beautiful, yet easily damaged.

  Shelly begins reading The Shadow of the Wind. I pull the mangled poetry book out of the bag and smooth its cover. “Thanks for the book,” I say. “I first heard of Neruda in Honors 10 English.”

  “Which poems?”

  “‘Ode to Tomatoes’ and ‘Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines.’”

  “Hmm,” she mutters. “We read some Neruda in Mrs. Silver’s class.” Shelly leans her head on my shoulder. We take turns reading poems aloud to one another.

  She takes my hand and lets it linger on her lap as she rests her head on my shoulder. The afternoon leans into laziness, and we linger, just being. I am content, like a cat in a sunny window, and this is another moment where the world can explode and I can die happy.

  Then Shelly’s phone screams that Psycho shower scene scream.

  “Crap.” She sighs, and looks at the text. “Yes, we are still alive,” she says out loud, as she pecks out her message. She glances at her screen, and stashes her phone in her bag. “We have to go.”

  I expect an explanation, but she offers none. We walk back to the car, hand in hand, in no hurry. I regret that we didn’t park farther away. I almost wish the car were stolen, out of gas, or not able to start. I want to extend this day with Shelly indefinitely. But we cannot stop time, nor can we repeat it. No moment can ever be duplicated. Copied maybe, but the original will always be its own entity.

  I hold Shelly’s door for her, and she climbs in, places her shades over her eyes, and wraps her hair back into a braid. I put on the mirrored sunglasses and start the car. “Buckle up.”

  She grins and snaps her seatbelt across her lap. Before I pull out of the parking space, I look at her and say, “This has been the best un-birthday ever.”

  We talk very little on the way back. Shelly tries to read her book, but the pages flap in the wind, so she stuffs it under the seat and leans her head back. She has not put the scarf back on, and the shorter pieces of hair in the front fly around her face like gnats.

  The ride home goes by too quickly. I pull the little blue car into Shelly’s driveway and feel a heaviness in my chest. I take a deep breath and hand her the sunglasses. I feel something between us shift.

  “What’s the matter?” she asks.

  “I hate to give up the car. I don’t want to go back to my own pitiful mobile home.”

  She laughs. The real truth is I don’t want to separate from Shelly and our fragile bond. I fear that string might break as soon as she enters her house, and she will not look back.

  She leans over and kisses me, and the world is righted again, I think.

  “See you tomorrow,” she says.

  I stay up late reading Neruda’s poems, marking my favorites with ripped flags of paper. I wonder which ones are Shelly’s favorites. Will she decide I’m a dork if we don’t like the same poems?

  Ashley used to tease me, calling me a “word nerd
” whenever I tried to talk to her about books. Her idea of literature was Twilight and The Notebook. I loaned her The Shadow of the Wind, but she said she couldn’t get into it. “Too many descriptions,” she had said. She tried to get me to read Twilight, and I couldn’t get past the first page.

  But Shelly has some reading chops, so maybe she will like The Shadow of the Wind. Is she even thinking about me as much as I am thinking about her?

  • • •

  I wake on my own, and glance at my phone. Seven forty-five. Shit! I scramble into my clothes and piss along the fence. Inside the building I rinse my face in the water fountain just inside the door. I make it to the custodial office just in time to hear Earl bark at me, “The day starts at eight, not eight oh five!”

  “Sorry. Overslept.”

  I’m rumpled and hungry, but most of all worried. Why didn’t Shelly wake me?

  Earl says today we will be working in the library. “We need to pull the tables and chairs out into the hall.”

  “Do the books stay in?”

  “Now what do you think? That we’re going to stack up shelves and shelves of books in the hallway? Mrs. Morgan would kill me if we did that.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s a dumb question.”

  “And you’re a senior again this year?” He shakes his head. “Woe to the world when we release you.”

  I want to ask him where Shelly is, but I don’t want Earl to ask me why I am asking about her.

  He unlocks the library and flips the lights on with a key. The school replaced all the light switches in the hallways, gym, cafeteria, and library with key locks because too many kids played with the lights at random.

  “We’ll leave the computers where they are. Our main function in here is to clean the carpets and fix anything on Mrs. Morgan’s work order.” He slips his glasses out of his front pocket and reads a sheaf of papers. “Fix the broken lock on the AV storage door, change the bulbs in her office, and mend a couple broken chairs.” He folds the papers. “Let’s get started, kid.”