ONE YEAR AGO
“Did you see? People all down the block, waiting for the doors to open. There won’t be enough chairs!”
Roy Clarke squirmed uncomfortably. He wanted to stand, but the bookstore owner had supplied a high stool. “I’d better not keep them here for too long then. Just a quick reading, sign a few books, and home.”
“They’re here for you.” Wendy Clarke, his wife, had already helped herself to the free prosecco. “Don’t be in such a rush. They’re our new neighbors. We’re all going to be great friends.”
Roy unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves, then rolled them down again. While he appreciated Wendy’s cheerful optimism, he wondered why he’d ever agreed to this.
On their first stroll to familiarize themselves with their new neighborhood, Wendy had noticed a sign on a scaffolded Smith Street storefront that read SMITH CORNER BOOKS: 2 WEEKS ’TIL OPENING DAY! Without hesitation, she’d stepped around the construction debris and gone inside to introduce herself. Roy lingered outside, pretending to be a smoker, even though he was not. The next day, Wendy forwarded him an email from Jefferson, the bookstore’s owner, with the subject Roy Clarke reading confirmed for opening day!! The body of the email was all lavish praise and buttering up. Never in Jefferson’s wildest imaginings could he ever have hoped for “the Roy Clarke” to open his store. Roy didn’t mean to be an ass. It was just that he’d wanted to slip into Brooklyn and discover it quietly, be discovered by it quietly. Not bang in—pow!—let’s welcome the big famous author who, sorry to disappoint, hardly thought of himself as an author anymore because he spent more time making tea and toast than he did writing pages.
Shy Clarke, Roy and Wendy’s youngest daughter, age fifteen, contemplated pretending she’d just gotten her period. Shy was nervous about starting at her new American school later that week. She also felt uncomfortable for her father, who she knew was in agony. Shy’s older sisters had come up with her unusual name right after she was born because she’d seemed to duck and look away whenever they cooed over her. Right now, Shy sat very still in the front row, her pale bare knees pressed tightly together. She wasn’t sure she could endure her father’s misery for much longer.
“Unlocking the doors now,” Jefferson announced. He wore a heavy black-and-green plaid wool shirt, despite the fact that it was the first week in September and seventy-five degrees outside. His long, bushy brown beard looked like it would make a nice home for a family of squirrels.
An excited murmuring throng waited outside on the sidewalk. Jefferson unlocked the glass door and held it open to let them in.
Roy and Wendy had moved to Cobble Hill, the charming brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood just south of Brooklyn Heights, from London almost three weeks ago. People from the neighborhood had actually stood around with their children and dogs and watched the movers moving in their furniture and boxes of possessions with great interest. Wendy wasn’t bothered. She was too busy unpacking boxes and giving orders. Roy watched the neighbors watching them. It was his first inkling that they hadn’t moved to the big city at all, but to a very small village where nothing went unnoticed.
Jefferson’s neat rows of folding chairs filled up fast. There was a lot of hugging. Everyone in the audience seemed to know one another. Roy didn’t know anyone. His agent and editor were both based in London. He hadn’t even told them about the event. Wendy was his agent for this one, bless her.
Roy sat stiffly on his stool in a state of faux alertness. Voices faded in and out. Someone touched his elbow. A copy of Orange, his most popular novel—the novel that had been adapted into an acclaimed HBO series starring Frances McDormand, Drew Barrymore, Kristen Stewart, Kevin Dillon, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Hugh Grant and had aired for four seasons—was placed across his stool-braced knees. He blinked and clasped the book between his hands. He would read the part about the firemen. It was recognizable from the TV show, a bit racy, and always made him laugh. His agent, a bright twenty-eight-year-old who had inherited the post when Roy’s longtime agent died, said it was “endearing” that his own writing still made him laugh. He thought it best to endear himself to his new neighborhood if he could.
A shadow passed in front of him.
“Thank you, friends and neighbors. Welcome to your new bookstore, Smith Corner Books. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to open a bookstore and I’m thrilled so many of you are here this evening,” Jefferson began.
Roy shifted on his stool. It was almost time.
“Without further ado, I’m delighted to introduce one of my all-time favorite authors—I’m still pinching myself that he’s here in my little store. You know him from Blue, Yellow, Green, Purple, and the smash hit Orange, which The New Yorker described as Bridget Jones meets Waiting for Godot The Guardian has said of him, ‘If Jane Austen froze her eggs and one of them was impregnated by both Albert Camus and Tim Robbins, this author would be the brainchild.’ The New York Times calls him ‘Kafka for millennials and way, way funnier.’ An absurdist and a realist, a master of the microscope. No one understands the tragedy, the humor, and the romance in the everyday better than this guy. If you’ve read or seen the part in Orange when Mark stops up the toilet with marmalade, you know what I’m talking about. Boxed sets of the Roy Clarke Rainbow and individual titles are all available here tonight. Please welcome Roy Clarke.”
Roy looked up. Jefferson applauded with the crowd and backed into his seat. His introduction had been rather too swift, Roy thought. He sat up straighter, crossed and uncrossed, then recrossed his legs. Bloody uncomfortable stool. He cleared his throat and looked out at the audience.
At one end of the first row, next to her mother, sat his daughter Shy, her knees squeezed together, eyes on the wooden floorboards, vibrating up and down like she needed the toilet. Next to Shy, Jefferson beamed up at Roy through his beard. Wendy beamed up at Roy from beneath her blond fringe with a sort of pert but docile admiration he didn’t recognize. Roy opened his copy of Orange and thumbed through it in search of the firemen scene. He didn’t know the exact page number, but at some point he’d written a stream of foul words. That was what he looked for.
The firemen were chopping through a burning building with axes. Smoking embers stung their eyes. They could barely breathe. Like drunken fraternity brothers, they shouted out and explained the dirtiest, most disgusting sexual acts they’d ever heard of with cheerful camaraderie. Later on in the scene they did a full analysis of Julia Roberts’s entire acting career, starting with Mystic Pizza, which was their favorite. It was this scene that had won Roy’s writing critical accolades such as, “witty, sexy fun,” and “a man’s book you can take home to Mother.”
“I think I’ll read straight off and get to know you later,” Roy said without looking up. Titters of laughter. A few whoops. A whistle. He’d been told that he always came off sounding “very cool” at his readings, which was odd, because speaking in front of large groups of people made him sweat so much he was required to wear black or navy blue so no one would see.
Rusty Trombone. Mississippi Hot Pocket. Dirty Sanchez. Glory Hole. Julia Roberts. Mystic Pizza. Pretty Woman. Notting Hill.