snoozing on her elbow, and he did not appreciate this abrupt awakening. Helen realized where she was now. She’d been sleeping on Margery’s sofa. After the termite attack last night, she had not wanted to go back to her apartment.
She looked at her watch. It was six a.m. She’d slept in her clothes. Her mouth felt stuffed with cat fur. She pulled on her shoes, folded the sheets and blanket, and picked up Thumbs. She should get out of Margery’s before her landlady woke up. Officially the Coronado had a no-pets policy.
That meant everyone had to pretend Pete the parrot and Thumbs did not exist, except in emergencies like last night.
No point in waving the illegal cat in Margery’s face.
As she tiptoed through the living room she heard Margery say, “You want coffee?”
“I’ll be right back,” Helen said. She slipped out the kitchen door into the sparkling, dew-covered dawn and walked across the courtyard. She opened her door and dumped Thumbs inside to face the bugs alone. “Sorry, boy,” she said. “I can’t do this without coffee.”
It took two cups and a chocolate doughnut before Helen could face her apartment. A tail-twitching Thumbs met her at the door and led her straight to his water bowl. Hordes of dead insects floated on the surface.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” she said. Her stomach flopped over when she saw his food dish. It was covered with a mound of dead beige bugs, like nuts on a sundae. She gingerly pushed the mess down the disposal.
The rest of the house was not as bad as she thought it would be. The floor had drifts and piles of insects, almost all dead, thank goodness. Wings, like fluttery bits of cellophane, littered the sills and tables. Helen got her clogged vacuum working again, then spent the next two hours cleaning.
Occasionally Thumbs would find a live bug blindly creeping up a wall or across a counter, and howl for Helen.
She’d suck it up with the vacuum. By nine that morning, her home had been swept and polished and dusted until not a trace of the insect invasion remained. Thumbs prowled the perimeter as if he expected the enemy to return any moment.
Even after a shower, Helen still felt crawly. She pulled a blouse out of her closet to wear for work. There was a single wingless termite on the collar, like a decoration. She brushed it off with a shudder.
What if those horrible blind bugs had killed the Coronado? As she walked to work, all Helen could think about was her pretty little apartment complex, menaced by unseen invaders inside its walls.
There were no customers in the bookstore at ten that morning. The staff was at the front cash register, listening to Matt, the youngest bookseller. Whatever he was telling them, they weren’t happy.
That was unusual. Around Matt, most people looked dazzled. His tight white T-shirt accented a body that set male and female hearts fluttering on Las Olas. Matt had dramatic shoulder-length dreads and a long dark face with a knife-blade nose. It was an unusual combination: the rebellious dreads and the sensitive face.
Helen walked in to hear him say, “The whole Page Turners chain will be closed by the end of the month. The Palm Beach store is just the start.”
“They’re closing Palm Beach?” Helen said. “That’s their new showcase. It can’t be closing.”
“They’re announcing it tomorrow,” Matt said. “That’s what I heard, anyway. The store quit getting in new books three weeks ago. That was the first tip-off something was wrong.”
“Ridiculous,” said Albert, the day manager. Albert was fifty-six, a dried-up, fussy man who walked as if he had a broomstick shoved alongside his backbone. He wore starched white shirts that he ironed himself, and, even more unusual for South Florida, a necktie.
“I know the Turner family personally,” Albert said. Once a year he went to a cocktail party at the Turner mansion and never stopped talking about it for the next twelve months.
“I’ve worked here thirty years. I knew the first Page Turner.”
“He’s dead,” Matt said. His dreads and T-shirt were a sharp contrast to Albert’s buttoned-up starch. “If I were you, I’d start cranking on my resume.”
“The Turner family would never abandon us. People as rich as they are have a sense of duty,” Albert said. “If they are closing the Palm Beach store, it’s just temporary. You’ll see.”
“People as rich as they are love money,” said a third bookseller, Brad. “If the stores threaten their income, they’ll close them in a heartbeat. We’ll all be out of work.”
At forty, Brad was skinny as a boy. He had two hopeless loves: Jennifer Lopez and young blond men with pouty lips.
He read every word written on J.Lo, and sighed over her love life. Alas, Brad’s choice in men was not much better than J.Lo’s. Everyone but Brad could see his romances with the blond pretty boys were doomed. Yet he stayed cheerful despite constant rejection. Except now.
“I hate looking for new jobs,” he said.
Helen wondered who to believe: Albert, who had known the Turner family for years, or young, cynical Matt? She wanted to believe Albert. But she’d spent too much time in corporations. Matt was probably right. She felt the panic scratching in her insides like a small sharp-toothed animal.
It had taken months to find this job. She was barely getting by with the weekly paychecks. If Page Turners went out of business, how would she pay the rent? She was still paying off Thumbs’ three-hundred-dollar vet bill at ten dollars a week. It didn’t matter that she was dating Dr. Rich.
Helen did not want charity.
June was the wrong time to look for a job in South Florida. The tourist season was over. Businesses were cutting back on staff or closing for the summer. The animal panic started gnawing at her guts.
Helen’s cheerless thoughts were interrupted by an impossible vision. A young coast guardsman marched up to the counter and practically saluted. The rosy-faced blond looked like he’d stepped out of a recruiting poster. His uniform was white and crisp. His eyes were ocean blue. His manner was respectful.
“I’m here to pick up a special order of twenty-four sea-rescue manuals, ma’am,” he said, making Helen feel a hundred years old. The two-inch-thick manuals were on a shelf behind the register.
“I’ll get them,” Brad said. The skinny bookseller suddenly morphed into Arnold Schwarzenegger. He staggered to the counter with the mighty manuals.
Helen rang up the order. “Thank you, ma’am,” the guardsman said.
He did not see Brad. “Could I help you carry your books?” Brad asked, hopeful as a schoolboy.
“No, thank you, sir,” the strapping coast guardsman said.
He scooped up the twenty-four manuals in his massive arms and broke Brad’s heart. Brad stared at the young man’s tightly tailored pants all the way down Las Olas.
“How’s J.Lo?” Helen said, hoping to distract him.
“She’s on the cover of
He held up the offending magazine. A white card fluttered to the floor.
“Look at that floor,” Brad said. “I picked up cards all morning and now there are another fifty. I’m so frustrated.”
Helen did not think the cards caused his frustration. But the bookstore’s magazine section did have a perpetual snowfall of postage-paid subscription cards. Blow-in cards, they were called. Mostly, they blew out. The white cards fell out of the magazines like square dandruff. Booksellers spent hours picking up the blasted things.
Brad kicked at the cards, then tore off his name tag. “I’m going to lunch.”
Poor Brad, Helen thought, with the smug generosity of someone who was currently lucky in love. She was seeing Dr. Rich Petton, the vet who looked like a shaggy Mel Gibson. Her job worries disappeared in the pink haze that surrounded Dr. Rich.
She wished Brad could be as happy as she was. At least he came back from lunch smiling. “I’ve got it. I’ve been driven half-crazy by those magazine cards. Now I’ll have my revenge.”
Brad picked up all the postage-paid cards on the floor— an inch-thick stack. “I’m mailing them. I won’t fill them in.
I’ll just drop them in the mail. The magazines want to hear from me, well, they will. But they’ll pay.”
His revenge was so perfect Helen couldn’t stop laughing.
Not even when a pale young woman asked her to find a book about “the last Russian princess,
