Nina looked down and smiled. She’d never felt more at home than she did at Knight’s, with the plentiful sarcasm and soothing rows of book spines. It was heaven on earth. Now, if they could only get rid of the customers and lock the front doors, they’d really be onto something.
As the only child of a single mother, Nina’s natural state was solitude. Growing up, she saw other people with fathers and brothers and sisters, and it looked like fun, but generally she thought she was better off without a crowd. That might be overstating it; sometimes she’d ached for them, especially in middle school. There were lots of kids who had older brothers or sisters in the high school, and those kids had a protective glow around them she envied. Older siblings would wave at recess, or even stop by to chat and confer greatness. Then, in high school, Nina would listen to the kids with younger siblings complain about them but wave, or go over and chat. She saw the relationship, the shared address, and wondered about it.
Nina’s mother, Candice, had had her after a very brief liaison with some guy she met in those strange times before Google (1988 BG?), where all you had to go on was what someone told you in person. Nina often shook her head over the crazy risks those Gen X-ers took. No online database of criminal records, no checking social media for wives and children, no reading back through months of feeds looking for clues. They would have to physically talk to a stranger without knowing any backstory. They could pretend to be a whole new person for everyone they met, without the effort of creating a matching online profile; the potential for dishonesty and deceit was shocking. Anyway, Nina’s mom wasn’t even sure of the guy’s name and wasn’t worried about it. She was a news photographer; she traveled the world and took lovers whenever they presented themselves, without guilt or complications. I knew I wanted you, she would say to Nina. God only knows if I would have wanted him.
At first, Candice had taken Nina everywhere with her, carrying her under one arm and putting her to bed in hotel room drawers. After a year or two, however, Nina got inconveniently big and wriggly, so Candice found a nice apartment in LA, and an even nicer nanny, and left Nina to get on with the business of growing up. She’d show up three or four times a year, bringing gifts and strange candy and smelling of airports. Nina had never really gotten to know her, though Candice had loomed large in the child’s imagination. When Nina first read Ballet Shoes, as a child, she’d realized her mother was Great-Uncle Matthew.
Her nanny, Louise, had been a wonderful parent; funny and interested and bookish, loving and gentle. She’d created a peaceful life for Nina, and when she’d come to Nina’s college graduation, she’d hugged her, cried a little, then moved back South to help her own, older daughters raise their children. Nina had been far more devastated by Louise’s departure than she’d ever been waving good-bye to her own mother. Candice had started the race, but Louise had carried Nina over the finish line.
Nina hadn’t missed her mother as much as she’d missed having a father. She wasn’t entirely sure what fathers actually did, day to day, but she’d seen them standing on the sidelines at peewee soccer, or showing up at the end of the school day with their hands in their pockets. In middle school, they’d become totally invisible, but then in high school they’d reappeared, driving the car for late-night pickups and avoiding everyone’s eye when a crowd of teenage girls piled in, smelling of drugstore body sprays and showing liberal amounts of nascent cleavage. Nina found them mysterious. Visiting other people’s houses, she would see their moms—often, in fact, become friendly with their moms—but she left high school without ever truly getting the point of dads. They were a nice bonus, like a pool, or a cute dog, or a natural predisposition to clear skin.
“So, what’s tonight?” asked Liz. “Delicate Ladies Book Club? Transgender Support Bridge Night? Decoupage Devils?”
“You think you’re very funny,” replied Nina, “but truthfully, you’re just jealous I have a wide variety of activities to keep my mind alive.”
“My mind needs no encouragement,” said Liz. “In fact, I’m taking up hard drugs in the hope of killing off some brain cells and leveling the brain/body playing field.”
This was actually true for Nina, too. Not the hard drugs, but the part about her mind needing no encouragement. As a child she’d been told she had ADD, or ADHD, or some other acronym, but her school librarian had simply clicked her tongue and told her she was imaginative and creative and couldn’t be expected to wait for everyone else to catch up. She’d started giving Nina extra books to read and encyclopedias to gnaw on. This approach, Nina now realized, was in no way medically recommended, and didn’t do anything at all for her math skills, but it did mean she arrived in high school having read more than anyone else, including the teachers. It also meant she thought of books as medication and sanctuary and the source of all good things. Nothing yet had proven her wrong.
Nina eyed her boss. “Tonight is Trivia Night.” She knew Liz wanted to join her trivia team but couldn’t work up the energy for the required late nights and weekly study sessions.
“They didn’t ban you yet? I thought they were going to ban you for winning all the time.”
“They did ban us from one place, but there are plenty of bars where they’ve never heard of us.”
Liz raised her eyebrows. “You’re a trivia hustler?”
Nina shrugged. “Living the gangster dream.”
Liz looked at her. “Go on. Do it.”
Nina shook her head.
“Please.”
Nina sighed. “You have to give me a category.”
“Marine life.”
“Too easy. A hundred-pound octopus can squeeze through a hole the size of a cherry tomato.”
“Kurt Vonnegut.”
“He opened one of the first Saab dealerships in America.”
“Jupiter.”
“Has the shortest day of all the planets. Can I stop now?”
“Does it hurt your head? Do you see auras around things?”
“No, but your expectant expression is low key stressing me out.”
Liz cackled and walked away. “You have no idea how amusing that party trick is,” she added over her shoulder. “Don’t forget to dress nice tomorrow. Mephistopheles is coming in.”
“OK.” Nina frowned after her, then tried to remember how long Jupiter’s day actually was. She couldn’t help it; it was . . . 9 hours and 55 minutes. Thank God for that. Not being able to remember something was, for Nina, torture. It was like an itch on the roof of your mouth, or when you get a bug bite between your toes. You have to go after it, even though it’s almost too much sensation to deal with. Liz thought all the clubs and activities Nina did were a way to be social, but she was totally wrong. Left undistracted, her brain tended to fly off the rails and drive her insane with endless meandering rivers of thought, or constant badgering questions she needed to look up answers to. The trivia, the reading, the book club . . . they were simply weapons of self-defense.
Two
In which we learn a few things that irritate Nina.
Nina walked home in the golden light of her evening neighborhood, the magical hour beloved of lighting directors and single people dreaming their plans for the night. Around her, people walked their dogs after work, talking on their phones, oblivious to the slanting sun glinting on windows and door knockers, the colors of the pastel sky as gauzy as any red-carpet lineup. Nina often reflected that LA was not a pretty city, architecturally speaking, but the sky made it beautiful several times a day. As with all things Hollywood, the lighting guy is God.