Their eyes meet, and now she has to decide whether to say hi and keep browsing, or actually approach and greet. She decides she can’t get away without actually greeting, but then realizes the other woman has someone else with her, someone who looks vaguely familiar, but she can’t remember why. Nina had seen this scenario so often she’d gotten used to the flicker of panic in a woman’s eyes as she walked forward while desperately wishing she weren’t. It was hilarious, but only when it wasn’t you. Anyway, now the friend is committed, too, whether she likes it or not, so she says hey, the original woman says hey, hug regulations apply as previously described. Then the friend says, so, whatever your name is, this is Bindy Macaroon, I think you two might already know each other. (Moms of a certain age know dozens and dozens of people through various channels, so they have to perform this human equivalent of canine butt sniffing all the goddamned time.)
ORIGINAL WOMAN: Oh, hi, Bindy. Do we know each other? (Here there would be a lot of head movement and facial expressions that alternated between friendly openness and self-abasement, playing it safe until the connection is clarified. If it turns out they know each other because one of them slept with the other one’s boyfriend in college, then, you know, awkward.)
BINDY: I think we do! You look so familiar! (Similar head bobbing and approach/withdraw body language.) Do you have a kid in Miss Rectangle’s class?
ORIGINAL: No . . . My daughter, Elephantine (pronounced the French way, of course), is in Mr. Elevator’s class. Does your child do swimming at the YMCA with Professor Bubbles?
BINDY: No . . . Art class on Saturdays at Brushlicious?
ORIGINAL: No . . . Preschool? We were at Harmony House of Love and Kindness, were you?
BINDY: No, Urethra went to Mandarin Immersion Buddhist Chakra Preschool. In the Valley.
And with that they would give up and shrug and would never, ever realize they knew each other because one time they bumped cars in traffic and stood on the street for ten minutes exchanging insurance information.
If you had walked into the bookstore after lunch that day, you would have seen Nina making a pile of books on the counter that might have struck you as dangerously unbalanced, and shortly before two in the afternoon she suddenly knocked it to the floor. It made an incredible noise.
The man who’d just walked through the door paused and narrowed his eyes at her.
“Is Liz here?”
Mr. Meffo was their landlord. Larchmont Boulevard was broadly owned by three or four people. A large family had owned properties in one section of the boulevard since the ’60s, and they were generally mellow and much loved. Another landlord was an investment bank that kept out of it, for the most part. And the third was Mr. Meffo. He was a popular villain on the boulevard, but of course he was just a regular businessman trying to make a profit, which would be the actual point of business. If he’d been a sheep farmer, he would have been carrying a lamb around and wearing a bonnet, but as he was a landlord, he was carrying an iPad and a cell phone.
Unfortunately, the rent had gone up precipitously, and business hadn’t followed suit, so Liz had taken to hiding whenever he came around. She paid the rent, more or less; she just took generous advantage of space and time. She also called the poor man Mephistopheles, which wasn’t nice.
“Sorry, Mr. Meffo, she just left.” Nina hoped the book fall had been sufficient warning. Once Liz had been trapped with a customer when Mephistopheles walked in and had had to pay the rent on time.
Mr. Meffo sighed. He wasn’t a bad man; he was simply a good businessman. “Can you tell her to call me, please? The rent is overdue.”
Nina nodded and smiled, glad she’d worn a nice, professional outfit. Liz had told her they needed to look successful, so it wouldn’t cross Meffo’s mind to cancel their lease. “I’m sure she knows, Mr. Meffo. We’ve been very busy with lots of customers lately.”
He looked around at the empty store. “Really?”
“Oh yes, you just missed a rush.”
“Did I?” He looked at Nina, doubtfully. “Well, tell Liz I’ve had several inquiries about the store, and one or two buyers interested, which is appealing.” He sighed. “Being a landlord isn’t as much fun as you’d think.”
Nina said nothing, having never thought being a landlord would be fun.
He left, and Nina waited ten or twenty minutes until Liz peered around the office door.
“Is he gone?”
Nina nodded. “You must pay the rent,” she said.
“I can’t pay the rent,” replied Liz.
“You MUST pay the rent,” Nina insisted.
“I can’t pay the rent,” said Liz, again.
Nina assumed a Dudley Do-Right voice. “I’LL pay the rent!” and Liz sighed, “My hero!” and then they went about their day.
Later that day, Nina finally reached her mom. She had to get the timing right in order to catch her mother when she wasn’t ignoring her phone, which was most of the time. Candice Hill had grown up in the darkest Australian wilds of the 1980s, where, reportedly, the women glowed and the men plundered, but no one had a cell phone. These days, she was remarkably cavalier about turning hers on. “I don’t want to make myself too easy to find, darling,” she would say, as if being thousands of miles away wasn’t enough.
Nina had decided 7 A.M. in China was a reasonably good bet, so she stepped into the bookstore office a little before four in the afternoon, before the high school kids came in to moon around the graphic novels and peep at one another over the shelves. The phone rang and rang, and Nina was getting ready to leave a sarcastic voice mail when her mother picked up.
Of course, modern telecommunications made it sound like she was across the street. “Good morning, lovely!” Candice yelled, as she often did. “Everything OK?”
“Well, mostly,” replied Nina.
“What can I do you for, my love? I have to be at work in an hour. Spit it out.” She issued an order in Mandarin, multitasking as usual.
“William Reynolds is dead.”
There was a pause, then the sound of her mother exhaling. She gave it a shot, though. “Sorry, who’s that then?”
“My father, William Reynolds.”
Candice could tell Nina was mad, but she was still blasé, because she’d been born that way. “Oh, that William Reynolds. Yeah . . . I was hoping you’d never find out about him.”
This was one of the things Nina actually loved about her mother. She would lie or make up crap and then, if you caught her at it, simply admit defeat and move on. She didn’t seem to experience shame or regret in any form.
However lovable her mother was, though, Nina was being firm with her. “Well, I did, so how about you fill me in? Why on earth didn’t you tell me I had a father? You knew I wondered. Why did you think it was a good idea to keep us apart? I have a brother and sisters!”
“You do? That’s nice.”
Nina’s voice went up an octave. “Mom, I have more than half a dozen relatives living in the same city as I am! Just think of all the playdates and birthday parties I missed out on.”
Her mother laughed. “You didn’t need anyone to play with; you were fine. Other people are overrated.”
“I generally agree, Mom, but I would have liked the option.” Nina noticed her other hand was clenched tightly, and reached for a pencil. She twirled it back and forth through her fingers, a nervous habit she’d refined into a party trick. Assuming she was at the kind of party where pencil twiddling would be impressive.