Two for the Road, page 4
“Ahh, got it,” he says, banging away at the old Olympia typewriter on the cash desk.
“I didn’t realize you were attempting to convince people you’re not human,” he says, then taps me on the head. I sigh and go back to inputting the box of new releases into the computer database. “New releases go on sale on Tuesdays, so you have to put them out after the shop closes on Monday,” I explain to him. “That’s really important. And you can’t sell one of them on Monday, even if someone asks. They have to come back on Tuesday.”
“Mm-hmm,” he says.
I’m not sure he’s really registered all the information I’ve given him about how to run the store, and the knot in my stomach feels like it’s getting bigger the closer I get to leaving for England tonight. And yet, there’s not much more I can do except write everything on the yellow pads and hope he actually looks at them.
I’m not usually in a rush to close the shop, but at five o’clock sharp, because there’s no one in the store, I lock the front door and then grab the broom and dustpan, to show Lars how to start the cleaning process. “I don’t see why you sweep the floor every night. The whole point of a musty old bookstore is for it to look worn in. The dust adds charm,” he complains, but still sweeps as I wipe down the counter. With both of us working we’re done in twenty minutes and head out the front door. Lars hoists his bag over his shoulder, following me to the door that leads up to my apartment. I unlock it and push it open, letting Lars go first. He lumbers up the steep, narrow stairs.
When he reaches the top, I mean to toss him the keys so he can unlock the door to the apartment but I’m so nervous I fumble them and they land on the step in front of me. I hold my breath as I pick up the keys and push them into his hand. “You’ve got to give the door a shove as you’re turning the key,” I say. “It’s sticky now.” He bangs the door with his hip—twice—and it finally budges, then he passes the keys back to me.
He steps inside and drops his bag, kicking off his beat-up Converse, then begins humming the opening to the Barenaked Ladies’ “The Old Apartment.” I follow him in, watching him to see his reaction. Lars came over shortly after I moved back into the apartment last year. Then he moved to Peru, another long story, and he hasn’t been back since I really made it my own. He shuffles into the living room, puts his hands on his hips, then spins around and I busy myself, bending over to pull off my shoes, placing them neatly on the mat, lining Lars’s up beside mine, my hands shaking as I wait to hear what he thinks. It’s my place now, technically, but for so long it still felt like Mom and Dad’s. I think it’d be weird if the roles were reversed, and I was seeing the apartment totally overhauled by Lars. I’ve changed so much, from the recovered couches to the oil-on-canvas painting of a sunset over an autumn cornfield that I couldn’t afford but splurged on anyway.
He lets out a low whistle. “You’ve really changed it,” he says, looking around. He sounds impressed, and my stomach fills up with a tall glass of relief. He runs a hand along the top of the white wainscoting that separates the paneling from the illustrated owl wallpaper covering the top half of the wall. “Seriously, if this were listed on Airbnb, I don’t think I’d recognize it as Mom and Dad’s place. That’s a good thing.”
“Thanks.” I feel overcome, for a moment—I know I don’t need his approval, but it means a lot to have it. My fingers, which had been clenched, relax.
He sits down on the mustard-colored velvet couch and bounces up and down a few times on the cushions. “Ahh, this couch was always so comfortable. Remember us scheming to have ‘sleepovers’ together? You’d handwrite an invitation to invite me to your sleepover on the couch. Pretty hilarious given every night was already a sleepover in our tiny room.”
“You loved it,” I remind him.
“Did not,” he says, but I know he did. He stands and walks over to the window on the far wall. He pushes back the paisley tapestry to look out onto the street. “Heart’s still there,” he says. I join him at the window and look out at the white heart painted onto the brick of the building a few feet away.
When Lars and I were little, the neighbors painted a white heart on the side of their brick building. It turned the nondescript wall into a work of art, and it was our family who benefited as it’s right outside our window. A gift from them to us.
“Do you want something to drink?” I ask him. “Water, a soda—”
“I’d love a beer, thanks.” He grins.
I make my way over to the fridge and pull open the door, then grab a green bottle from the six-pack I picked up last night with the groceries I bought for Lars.
He twists off the cap, flipping it onto the coffee table as he continues making his way around the room. He runs a hand along the piano that fills the wall between the couch and my bedroom door, one of the only original pieces left from our childhood, a piano both Lars and I begrudgingly played for years growing up. When our parents were downstairs at the shop, we’d often half-heartedly play with one hand while holding a book with the other—he, a comic book, me, a romance novel. I sit down in the emerald wingback chair and pull my legs up under me.
He takes a swig of beer then looks over his shoulder at me. “You ever play?”
I shake my head, smoothing my dress over my legs, which are jittery. It’s starting to sink in: I’m leaving in two hours.
Lars places the bottle on the wooden window sill, a mix of chipped white paint and tan wood, then surveys the dozen plants I’ve assembled by the window—an asparagus fern, a trailing vine, a Chinese evergreen, a large jade plant, a tall yucca and a spattering of air plants. “That’s a lot of plants. Any of them weed, by chance?” When I make a face, he laughs. “Kidding. I’ll bring my own plants tomorrow.” He returns to the couch, puts his beer on the table and sits down, stretching his arms behind his head.
I shake my head, then pop up and grab the yellow pad off the speckled counter. “Everything for the apartment is in here,” I say. Even though Lars grew up here, he moved out when he was seventeen and certainly won’t remember the old quirks or know about the new ones, like the trick to turning off the hot tap on the kitchen faucet and the way you have to pull on the left side of the window in the bedroom to open it.
“I color-coded the plants,” I say, pointing out the dot system. “Yellow means you need to keep the soil moist. Red means let the soil run dry before you water—”
“Won’t I be busy taking care of the shop?” He raises his eyebrows, teasing me.
“I don’t want the plants to die,” I say as I plop down on the couch beside him.
He exhales. “So you’re getting outta Dodge. Never thought I’d see the day you’d leave this town. Do you even know how to leave Ann Arbor?”
I know he’s kidding—technically, I leave Ann Arbor all the time, just not for more than a few hours, or on the rare occasion, overnight. Maybe a weekend if there’s a holiday and the store would’ve been closed anyway.
“It’s not that I don’t know how to leave Ann Arbor, it’s that I’ve never really had a good reason to close the store and leave,” I say. “Now I do.” This is true, but it’s not the whole truth. What I leave unsaid is how many times I’ve wanted to go on a trip. After high school, I thought about taking the summer to travel with Dory, like Sydney and Leela in I See London, I See France. Instead, Dory went alone while I worked at the shop to save for college. For a few months I toyed with going to an out-of-state college, maybe California or New York—but in the end I went to U of M. In my last year of college I fantasized about getting my own apartment in Paris. But then, well—anyway, in every case there was always a more sensible reason to stay.
So Lars isn’t wrong: aside from a weekend getaway to Napa with David a few years ago or Jacynthe’s wedding in Nantucket, I’ve never been away for more than two nights in a row.
“Yeah, well, you deserve it.” He slaps my knee. “I mean it. Have a blast. Don’t worry about the store or this place. Really, what’s the worst that could happen?”
I exhale, look around at the apartment, a dreamlike, rare sense of calm coming over me. Everything is in place. There’s nothing left to do now but find out if Zane is really the one.
Chapter Five
Day 1, Sunday, 9:52 a.m.
London, England
The sidewalk on Buckingham Palace Road is packed with people walking in both directions, and I try my best to avoid running over anyone’s toes with my bright-orange hardshell rolling suitcase. I’m walking from Victoria Station to Victoria Coach Station—which are, worryingly, two very different places—and my hands are shaking so badly I can barely hold on to the handle. The tour bus is leaving in eight minutes, which might be fine if I were suitcase-free and running in sneakers, but I’m wearing new suede flats without socks that are rubbing against the backs of my heels. Result: blisters. My feet are swollen from the plane ride so instead of my shoes completing my cute outfit of light-washed cuffed jeans and white linen/cotton V-neck with a handful of bracelets, it looks like I’ve shoved two balls of pizza dough into baby shoes. The wheels of the suitcase clatter along the cobblestone as I hobble as fast as I can. Why didn’t I consider how massive Heathrow Airport would be and walk a little faster instead of taking in the sights, the sounds, the smells? Why didn’t I think about how long it would take for me to pick up my luggage and pack a sensible carry-on bag instead of half my closet? Why didn’t I remember from the seventeen thousand books I’ve read set in London that the tube is notoriously delayed? Why didn’t I take a cab rather than trying to save a few pounds by taking transit?
Seven minutes.
The five-story cream and glass art deco building comes into view up ahead, a centipede-line of passengers queued up to get through the sliding glass doors under a sign that says Departures in white writing on blue.
Six minutes.
A blast of cold air hits me in the face, throwing my hair back. Inside the doors, the station opens into an atrium, with a dozen overhead screens indicating trains and platforms.
The words and numbers are a confusing jumble, and the station is a blender of sounds: bus engines idling, the staticky crackle of the loudspeaker announcing departures and arrivals, the click of heels, the rumble of suitcases, the chatter of people all around. I give up on the screens and look around, then follow the steady stream of people deeper into the station, down a tiled hallway past fast-food stations and vending machines, pillars with pay phones and rows of metal seating.
Five minutes.
It smells a lot like sweaty feet. I blink, pushing away the overwhelming exhaustion that’s come from getting no more than seventeen minutes of sleep on the overnight flight. I don’t know where to go. I spin around looking for any clue, but there’s too much information.
Four minutes.
“Keep moving! People are trying to get places!” someone barks behind me and jostles the bag on my shoulder as they pass. I pull my suitcase closer and hurry to the left, down a long hallway.
Three minutes.
Pain sears through my shoulder from the weight of my large, overstuffed tote bag. There’s a long line in front of a series of ticket booths. The problem isn’t getting a ticket, because I have one; it’s what to do with it.
I look around, panic taking a front row seat in my chest, and then back down at the stack of papers I’ve been clutching for a good hour now, the edge where I’m death-gripping them moist with sweat from my palm, but nowhere on any of these papers does it say where to actually find the bus despite the hundreds of times I’ve studied it. All it says is Victoria Coach Terminal.
I’ve had nightmares about situations like these.
I turn around and start running in the direction from which I just came, back down the same hall, past a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows where a row of large white buses, national express written on the side in lowercase letters, are pulled into docks.
On my right is a booth selling totes, I ❤ London sweatshirts, ball caps, postcards and other touristy things that blur together as I rush past, dodging a woman wearing a coral-colored trench coat, her hair frizzy, her eyes wide. I’m sure I don’t look much better. The pillars are now blue, the numbers in white, starting at 1 and counting chronologically up to 10, maybe more, extending to the far end of the room. The convenience shop to the right is blasting Katy Perry. I weave through the people to the second pillar, around to the third, detour through the wire seats to four, and so on, straight to the end, wildly looking for any sign that will tell me where to find the gate for the tour. Past the tenth pillar is a set of sliding doors out into the coach area, which is useless to me because I still don’t know which gate to go to, which bus to board. And then, seconds later, through another set of sliding doors, is a booth, the green sign reading Information, like a flashing beacon in the middle of a storm.
I can’t even bring myself to look at my phone to see what time it is. My only hope is that all of these buses, still parked in their bays, are also supposed to leave at ten and are running late. That England time is like island time, and the bus will leave when the bus leaves. With me on it.
I press myself up so close to the linoleum counter that the sharp edge feels like it’s going to cut through my middle, but I ignore it, let go of the handles of my suitcase and drop my tote bag to the ground, then wave a hand to get the attention of the kiosk clerk staring into the distance. He’s in his mid-twenties and wearing an ill-fitting gray polyester shirt that’s buttoned up the front, the collar splayed, a name tag over the left breast pocket that reads Chuck. His fingers ruffle the edges of a skateboarding magazine. Tattoos on three fingers of his left hand spell GET. I tilt my head to see what’s on the other hand. The word LOST.
I refocus. “Hi!” I say brightly. “I’m signed up for the Spires, Shires and Shores trip with Wilkenson Tours?”
“That a question?” His tone is bored.
Obviously, I don’t say.
“Oh, no.” I let out a nervous laugh. “It’s a fact. I just don’t know where to go and I’m in a huge hurry and—” I wave my hands around.
“Ticket.”
I shove the now-crumpled, sweaty wad of papers toward him, the sheet with the highlighted ticket confirmation on top. Chuck peers at the papers for way too long, flipping them backward and forward. I swallow the lump in my throat. Eventually he looks up, the whites of his eyes dull. “Gate 20.”
I stare at him. “Twenty?” Why couldn’t it be gate 10, which is only a few steps behind me, from the direction in which I came? I turn. “But the numbers only went up to ten.”
He shoves the papers back toward me. “Twenty. That way.” He tilts his head to the right.
I shove the papers in my mouth, sling my tote bag over my shoulder, grab the handles of the suitcase and pivot. I head down the hall, passing more kiosks, more coffee shops, more people, more more more—to gate 11. To the right, in the open area, the buses line up, no empty spots. I can do this, I can make it there on time. I rumble my suitcase across the pavement, back through the other sliding doors, past pole 11, around a group of people camped out in the middle of the floor, past pole 12. Around pole 13 and through a row of seats, someone stretched out, their arm across their eyes. Back through to the right of pole 14, weaving, bobbing; one of the wheels on the smaller suitcase is stuck, so now I’m just dragging it along with me. Lifting my massive suitcase into the air, I step over a group of kids sprawled across the terrazzo, using their suitcases as pillows. “Hey!” one of them protests as my suitcase drags across his midsection on its way up. Sweat drips down my back, pooling above the waist of my jeans, under my nose, in my scalp.
“Sorry!” I holler, wheels back on the tile, racing toward pole 20. Left turn toward the sliding door. A small poppy-red bus sits in the bay—a third of the size of the other buses—more like an oversized minivan. Cozy for sure. With the tour this small, my odds of sitting very close to Zane are very good, I realize with excitement. But first, I’ve got to get on the bus. There’s no lineup of people, in fact there are no passengers at all, just the bottom half of someone bent over, rearranging the suitcases in the storage compartment under the bus.
Home stretch. I can do this. I’m going to make it.
“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” I call out four thousand times or so with the little breath I have left, racing toward the person. Maybe I’m racing toward Zane himself. I manage to stop just short of the person, realizing it’s a man and that his butt looks very good in his khakis, and let go of my suitcase, which tips over and falls on his leg. He backs out and stands up too quickly, knocking his head on the sharp edge of the door to the storage compartment.
“Fuck.”
He grabs at the top of his head with one hand and trains his dark-chocolate eyes on me. His brow is furrowed, his dark hair falls in waves to his chin. Two-day stubble. A squiggle of indistinguishable lines on his toned, tanned forearm. As he stands, he stretches so that my head is in line with his chest—which is clad in a forest-green polo shirt, the words WILKENSON TOURS over his right breast, and a white name tag that reads TAJ over his left. Not Zane. Obviously it’s not Zane—Zane has light hair, light eyes—but I’m still relieved for the confirmation that I’m in the right place. And I’ll get a second chance to make a good first impression—maybe even one where I’m not out of breath and haven’t just caused him a concussion.
“Are you alright?” I ask, but he squints at me, still rubbing his head.
“I’ll live,” he grumbles.
“Great. OK. Well, I’m here,” I say breathlessly. When he stares at me blankly, I flail an arm at the bus, and repeat: “I’m here.”
