“Where’s the store?” I asked, confused.
“I believe we just found it,” said Hanako.
I felt uncertain, as if we’d come not to a place of business but to a forest home of sprites and talking creatures. Hanako must have felt it too, for she slipped her hand through my arm, and that is how we entered. But once we were inside, our nervousness evaporated. There were books everywhere—against every wall, in every nook and cranny. Indeed, the house had been completely overrun by books, as if by a particularly lush and fast-growing ivy. The structure itself was fragmented, single rooms joined by open patios and a stone-covered courtyard, with book-shelves lining even the outside connecting walls. These walls were covered—as were the exterior walls—with a narrow shingled roof just wide enough to keep the books dry. The courtyard was filled with potted plants, and the light that filtered through the mingling branches of the oaks gave one the feeling of being inside and outside at once.
“Welcome to Book Haven,” said a young flaxen-haired woman as we entered, and she smiled at us like everyone had smiled that day, genuine and friendly and unknowing.
The central courtyard was crowded with dozens of people, all listening to a stern, mustachioed man who was giving a formal speech. We sat there for perhaps five minutes as he expounded on the importance of philanthropic support for cultural institutions, and although Hanako was too polite to complain, I could feel her impatience as undeniably as I felt my own. We did not wish to be listening to anyone’s speeches on this stolen and beautiful day. And so I got her attention and nodded toward a side door, and we slipped into one of the rooms.
“This is such a wonderful place,” she whispered. “It’s unfortunate we didn’t come on a different day.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied, keeping my voice down as well. “Look, we’re in the Drama section. Aren’t you searching for a new play?”
“I’m appearing in one now,” she said in a scolding tone, “which Nakayama-san doesn’t seem to remember.”
“I do remember!” I turned a corner and found that the room opened unexpectedly into another, larger room; over the door there was a sign that read, Literature. “It’s just that I’ve been so absorbed in novels of late. Look—here’s Tolstoy. May I read you War and Peace?”
“Not if you expect to return to Los Angeles this month.”
“I didn’t mean the whole thing. A passage.” I slipped behind a bookcase and Hanako followed; we might have been the only people in the store. I read her the opening pages of War and Peace, which I had loved so much as a young man, and which—along with so many other books I’d admired—I had not so much as looked at in years. As I read I leaned closer to her, self-conscious about my enthusiasm, and when I looked up I was surprised to see Hanako’s face just inches from my own.
“Too many characters and battle scenes,” she said, flushing a little. Then she slipped around the corner and entered yet another room, where she found a row of the Brontë sisters in new leather-bound editions. “This is more to my taste,” she said, pulling Jane Eyre off the shelf and reading me the opening passage.
“Too many tortured souls and dusty old houses,” I teased.
“You’re quite hopeless,” she said, shaking her head at me.
We kept turning corners and stumbling into new rooms, which themselves were divided by ceiling-high bookshelves behind which we lost one another. It was a honeycomb of a building, segmented and layered, and every time we found each other again I felt both surprise and relief. Twice we ran into other people looking at books— people who, like us, had left the event, or who had come to the bookstore just to browse—and both times we were so startled that we burst into laughter as the shoppers glared at us like unruly children.
After we had each read several passages from favorite books, only to have the other reject them, we finally found some works that we admired in common, by Dickens and Flaubert. Off the side of one of the catacomb rooms we found a small patio; we sat in its two wrought iron chairs and read from Great Expectations. I hadn’t read a novel in many months, let alone out loud, but we easily got lost in the story. We stayed there in the shade of the oak trees for an hour or more, easing into a peace I never felt in the course of my everyday life. But then the event broke up and people started wandering through, interrupting our perfection. And so we left our chairs regretfully and put the books back and then slowly made our way to the car.
As we drove back to Los Angeles in the fading light, I said, “Thank you for the afternoon, Minatoya-san. My earlier claims aside, it has been a long time since I’ve read anything but a shooting script.”
Hanako turned to me, the ribbon of her hat now tied beneath her chin, her hands folded together on her lap. “It wouldn’t hurt you to vary your forms of entertainment. There is more to the world than pictures.”
“I know,” I said. “There are just so many demands on my time.”
“When is the last time you went to the theater?”
I sighed. “Far too long. And as you know, I’m particular about the theater. Having started there, like you, I am hard to please.”
“You have not seen one of my own productions in years, Nakayama-san.” Although her voice was lighthearted, the admonishment was clear. I remembered what
