LATER HE WAS alone with Michelle, and he moved along the table they had set out, throwing empty plastic wineglasses into a plastic bag. Michelle fiddled at the CD player she had set up, and the gentle electronic music she liked started up. Quiet voices and lush sounds that were like being wrapped in something soft. It wasn’t what he would have chosen, but he was getting used to it, starting even to depend on it. Like her sweet perfume and the quotes she put up on the board near the door every day. Admonitions to be brave and alive. Rilke and Emerson and Rumi. That made him secretly siphon off books and try to parse out the meaning of the poems she loved.
He became aware of her behind him and stopped. He turned and she took the plastic bag from his hand and dropped it on the floor and moved into his arms and they were dancing. He was stiff and moved slightly to the beat, and she rested her head on his shoulder, and after a minute he lost the sense of the music and just swayed with her. He tried out different things in his head. Telling her where he had been and what he had done. Wondering what she needed to know to know him.
She finally said, “What happened?”
“What?”
“In August?” She kept her head tucked against him, her breath warm on his chest. “Was it the accident?”
He had been waiting for this question since they day she had come in about the job but still wasn’t ready for it. “Yes. No.” He shook his head. “I was in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” She picked her head up, and suddenly it was much more difficult and there was something guarded in her eyes.
His eyes flicked over her face and he looked down again. “I’ve made some mistakes in my life.”
She stopped moving, and then he did, a beat too late.
“Tell me.” But her face was different, harder, and it was an interrogation and his mind was blank.
The door chimed and they both looked up, Michelle pulling away and moving to the stacks, collecting paper plates left by Ho’s kids. He looked after her, his hands still in the air, then turned to the door to see two kids, thirteen or fourteen or fifteen. One short and blond, the other long, with black hair hanging lank over his eyes. They moved to the counter and dropped a pillowcase on it, spilling hardback books, and Ray pawed through them while the short kid fidgeted and the tall kid stared hard at him. The tall one wore a thin black jacket with duct tape on the elbow, and Ray remembered he’d seen them before, by the side of the road in Warrington. The tall kid had a runny nose, and they both had red cheeks from the cold. The short one was just getting fuzz on his chin and had spots of something purple and sticky-looking on his army coat.
There were some old books that looked like they were worth something. Jack London, The Iron Heel and Call of the Wild. Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. Some others he didn’t recognize. Some of them in plastic covers. First editions or something. He took more out of the pillowcase and found two candlesticks and a bell that looked to be real silver.
The short kid flicked the bell with his finger, miming plea sure at the bright sound. “Gimme a hundred bucks. And you can keep all that shit.”
Ray looked them up and down and smiled.
“Yeah? That ain’t much for all this swag.”
“No, it’s like a deal.”
Ray put sunglasses on the tall kid in his head and laughed. Manny and Ray, a month out of Lima, scoring from empty houses near the Willow Grove mall and trying to dump the stuff in the pawnshops along 611.
The blond kid snapped his fingers under Ray’s nose and pointed. “Fitzgerald, you know him?” He looked into the corner of the room as if something were painted there. “ ‘All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath.’ “ He pantomimed laughing, like a dog panting, and looked over his shoulder at his friend, who smiled and nodded as if the blond kid had done a card trick he’d seen before.
The tall one looked at Michelle, who had stopped what she was doing and stood listening. His face changed and he looked hard at Ray. “Don’t fuck with us, man. Just pay us or let us be on our way.”
Ray nodded slowly. “Where did you get this stuff?”
The blond kid snorted, but the tall one reached over and started snapping the books back into the case. “We’re out of here, Lynch.”
Ray held up a hand. “Wait a minute, okay?”
The tall kid moved toward the door, wiping at his nose with his free hand, and Ray snapped the register open and he stopped. The shorter kid stood up and angled his head to see. Ray came out with two twenties and held them out to the kids. Michelle sighed and disappeared into the back of the store. The blond kid, Lynch, pointed at his friend and the pillowcase. For the first time, Ray noticed a bruise on the tall kid’s face, the shape of a hand etched in faint and fading blue.
The blond kid said, “What? This shit is worth like ten times that.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Then what?”
“Take the money.”
The kids looked at each other, then reached for the money. Ray held out another two twenties, but when the kids reached for them, he jerked the bills back and held them high.
“This is to buy books with.”
The kids looked at each other again, the blond one, Lynch, shrugging.
“Buy,” Ray said again. He picked up the day’s paper and dropped it where they could see he had circled half a dozen ads in red. “These are garage sales. Go by these places and buy what-ever books you find. Don’t pay more than a buck a book, and don’t bring me CDs or DVDs or games or any other shit. Just books.”
The tall kid shrugged and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand.
Ray said, “Get receipts.”
He let the blond one take the money and watched it disappear into his coat and handed the tall one the newspaper. “Take that shit back where you found it and go buy me some books. Every book you bring me I’ll pay you another buck. So drive hard bargains.”
Ray watched them walk to the dark street through the front windows, heads together, talking and laughing. He saw a young blond girl come out from behind a column on the porch as if she’d been hiding there. She fell in beside the boys, and Lynch took her arm. When she turned one last time to look at the store, he saw a ring of livid purple around her right eye.
He turned to see Michelle in her coat. Her head was down.
“Okay, see you,” she said.
“Wait.”
“What?”
She looked at him and then away, and he had that feeling again of recognition he had had before on the street in August.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you, you know. Coming back?”
“Why is Theresa’s name on the store?”
“I told you I was… in trouble.”
“Are you in trouble now?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Why do you pay me under the table?”
“What’s going on? Isn’t that better for you?” He looked around as if there were someone else he could bring into the conversation.
“Is it? Those kids stole that stuff.”
“Yeah, but’”
“You thought it was funny or cute or something.”
He smiled, saw at once that was the wrong thing. “They’re kids, Michelle.”
“Kids like you?”
“Once, yeah.”
She was shaking her head and moving to the door. “So you’re what? The cool guy who buys stolen stuff and maybe sells you some weed?”
