‘What letter?’ he asks, and I know that however it happened, that letter went missing. It’s possible Henry picked up his book and the letter dropped out. It’s possible someone took the letter from the Letter Library before he got to it.
He’s drunk and thinking slowly, so it’s not hard to stall for time. I stare at the sky, pick at the grass, all the while I’m thinking of the right thing to say. He wrote me so many letters, long and Henry-like letters, and I wanted to answer every one but I didn’t. Instead I imagined how hurt he’d feel when he found out I was writing to Lola and not him.
‘What letter?’ he asks again.
I almost tell him. I should tell him, so he knows I didn’t forget him. But I have a second chance to save face and it actually doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve moved on. ‘It was just a goodbye letter. I left it for you at the counter of the bookstore but I guess it went missing.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Goodbye, the way most goodbye letters do, Henry.’
‘But, why didn’t you reply to my letters?’
‘I got busy. I met a guy – Joel.’
‘What kind of a name is Joel?’
‘It’s a fairly common one, actually.’
‘And he became your best friend?’
‘Look,’ I say to end this whole line of conversation. ‘I got busy. I fell in love. I was preoccupied with school and new friends. But I should have written, Henry. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
‘Did you miss me at all?’ he asks.
‘I did,’ I say, and at the same time I tell myself not to do something stupid and cry and tell him how desperate I was to see him at the funeral. I try not to think about how I could have had him there with me if I’d listened to Cal and not been so stubborn.
‘So we’re friends again?’ he asks, and I tell him we are.
‘Good friends?’
‘Good friends,’ I say, and as proof, which he seems to need, I tell him I’m taking the job at the bookstore.
‘For as long as it’s there,’ he says.
I ask what he means, and he tells me that tonight, he voted to sell. ‘It solves all my problems. We sell the shop. I get some money. Amy and I travel, and when we move back I can afford to rent my own place. No more making-out in the self-help section.’
‘You make out in the self-help section?’ I ask.
‘I’ll study and become something.’
You’re something now, I think. ‘Be sure,’ I say, and he says the one thing he’s sure about is Amy.
I know it’s time to get up because Henry starts reciting poetry again. I get my poetry from two places – school and Henry – so I haven’t heard any for a while. The last poem I heard in Henry’s voice was ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. Tonight it’s one I don’t know.
The words drop, drunk and heavy, and I see the poem as Henry speaks it– a raining world, a hiding sun, a person fighting to love the terrible days. He tells me it’s called ‘Dark August’, and it’s by Derek Walcott.
‘Are you still searching for Frederick’s book?’ I ask, and he nods.
Henry believes in the impossible, the same way Cal did. He thinks he can find the copy of that book against all odds.
He recites the poem one more time because I ask him. There’s something in it that I need to find. An answer, maybe, to how it’s done, how a person starts living again. I don’t find it. All the poem does is make me ache, in places unlocatable.
‘I need to go home,’ I say, but Henry’s too drunk for me to explain to him why that’s no longer possible.
There’s still a light on inside the bookstore and it gives the place a soft glow. I’ve always loved it here. I loved the polished floorboards and the deep rich wood of the shelves. I loved the way the spines of the books looked, neatly aligned, one next to the other. I loved it because here I could always find Henry.
I ring the bell and, while I wait, I look at the front window. There’s the seat where George always sat reading with Ray Bradbury on her knee. The books in the window form a new display – Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Safran Foer, Simmone Howell, Fiona Wood, Nam Le – and I’ve read none of them.
I look closely at the book in the centre of the window – Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. At the bottom of the pink cover is a small typewriter with paper flying out, the paper turning into clouds as it rises. I can’t name what it makes me feel; sadness, maybe, at the pointlessness of an atlas for clouds – an atlas for things that move from minute to minute.
Michael comes to the door with Frederick. ‘Lucky I was here playing Scrabble,’ Frederick says, as they take Henry off my hands. I follow with the wallet and keys that have fallen from his pocket.
‘My father,’ Henry says as they tumble through the door.
‘My son,’ his dad replies, helping him towards the fiction couch.
‘Amy’s going out with Greg Smith,’ I say to explain why Henry’s drunk. ‘I found him in the girls’ toilets.’
‘In my defence, I was too drunk to know it was the girls’ toilets,’ Henry says.
‘Go to sleep,’ his dad tells him. ‘It’ll seem better in the morning.’
‘No offence, Dad,’ Henry says, ‘but unrequited love is just as shit in the morning as it is at night. Possibly worse, because you have a whole day ahead of you.’
‘No offence taken,’ Michael says. ‘You’ve got a point there.’
‘They should just kill the victims of unrequited love,’ Henry says. ‘They should just take us out the second it happens.’
‘That would certainly thin the population,’ Michael says, as he tucks a blanket around him.
Henry calls me over. He beckons as I’m walking towards him, waving me down to face level when I arrive. His breath smells of beer. ‘I wish I’d gotten the letter.’
‘Forget the letter.’
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But I want you to know something.’
‘What?’
‘I missed you,’ he says, and then he kisses me on the mouth, before he falls back on the couch, asleep.
I don’t like admitting it, but I can feel Henry’s kiss all the way home. It was a drunken kiss, a mistaken kiss and he’s so out of it he probably thought he was kissing Amy, and I don’t like him anyway, but still, I think about it just the same.
I’ve parked and I’m sitting in the car, angry with myself for feeling it, and telling myself at the same time that it’s not my fault, telling myself that anyone would feel weird after a friend kissed them, when Rose walks out of the warehouse and gets into the passenger seat.
‘You’re avoiding me,’ she says.
‘I’m avoiding myself,’ I tell her. ‘I’m sorry. About before.’
‘Me too,’ she says, and takes a breath. ‘So I called Gran. She suggested the value of compromise.’
‘Translated: she said you’re stubborn and you might try listening to other people once in a while?’
‘That’s quite close to how the conversation went, yes. I’d do anything for you,’ she says. ‘Even call my mother.’ She shifts around so she’s facing me. ‘Want some good news?’