The Beach Book

By the second week of August, I had developed a system for tourists. This is not something Jessica knows about.

Jessica believes that every person who comes into R&C Booksellers is an individual with individual needs and should therefore be approached as an individual. This is because Jessica owns a bookstore and has ideas about bookselling that become increasingly noble in direct proportion to how tired she is.

I work there by the hour.

There are five kinds of tourists. The first kind knows exactly what they want. The second kind wants something “set around here,” by which they mean Maine, unless you give them something set in Maine, at which point they mean specifically the coast. The third kind wants a beach book. The fourth kind wants a bathroom. The fifth kind has brought children.

There is overlap.

It was ninety-one degrees outside, which should not happen in Oakridge Harbor and had happened for four days in a row. The front door was propped open because the air-conditioning had given up sometime around Tuesday, and two box fans were moving hot air from one part of the store to another with considerable enthusiasm and no measurable effect.

Reagan had been lying directly in front of one of them since eight-thirty, her ears moving in the breeze and nothing else.

“You're blocking the fan,” I told her.

She opened one eye.

“The fan is for everybody.”

She closed the eye. I stepped over her.

The store smelled like coffee, old paper, and August. August has a smell in R&C that the other months don't. Warm wood, mostly. The floors heat up all day through the front windows, and by afternoon the whole place smells slightly different, like the building itself has been left in the sun.

Outside, Water Street was full. Not crowded the way it gets for an event. Worse. Summer crowded. People moving slowly for no reason. Families stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. Somebody standing in the street to take a picture of the harbor while a truck waited behind them.

Every table outside Denise's was occupied. Bell Hardware had put a handwritten sign in the window that said WE DO NOT SELL SUNSCREEN. I had watched Theo put it up that morning. I had also watched two people go inside afterward and ask for sunscreen.

It was eleven-fifteen when the woman came in. She was maybe forty. Maybe fifty. I am bad at that. She had sunglasses on top of her head and a canvas bag over one shoulder and the pink shoulders of somebody who had already received information from the sun and chosen not to act on it.

“I need a book,” she said.

This is the sort of opening Jessica likes.

“What kind?”

“I don't know.”

Type three. Beach book.

“I finished mine this morning. We're here through Sunday.”

I asked what it was, and she told me. I knew the book. I had not read it, but I knew the cover, which is almost as useful in retail.

“Did you like it?”

“Loved it.”

“What did you like about it?”

She thought about that. This is the important question. People almost never know.

“It was easy. But not stupid. And nothing too awful happened.” She paused. “I don't want to learn anything.”

“Perfect.”

She laughed. I was not joking.

There are times for books that improve you. There are also times when you have paid two hundred and eighty dollars a night for a rental cottage with a view of somebody else's dock and you want to sit in a chair for six hours while nothing bad happens to anyone you care about.

I understand this.

I took her to fiction.

◆

The problem was that every book I gave her was wrong.

The first one had too much romance. The second one had a child in danger. The third one was apparently too long, although it was twelve pages shorter than the book she had just finished. The fourth one had a cover she didn't like.

Jessica would tell you not to judge a book by its cover. Jessica has also refused to stock a book because the cover had “the wrong yellow.”

There are the things Jessica believes and the things Jessica does, and I have worked at R&C long enough to understand that both are sincere.

I tried again. The woman followed me between the tables, adding requirements as we went. No murder. No divorce. No sick parents. No war. Nothing historical. Animals were acceptable, provided nothing happened to the animal.

I stood in front of the new releases and considered what remained of literature.

Behind us, the espresso grinder started. It ran for three seconds, stopped, then ran again.

“Sarah,” Jessica called from the café corner.

“I hear it.”

“It's doing the thing.”

“It always does the thing when it's hot.”

“It didn't do it yesterday.”

“It was eighty-nine yesterday.”

There was a pause.

“It was ninety.”

The woman looked at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “We're very technical.”

“I can tell.”

I found another book and handed it to her. She read the back.

“Does the husband die?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

She handed it back.

Fair.

◆

At noon, the store filled up all at once. There is no reason for this. There is never a reason for it. A bookstore can be empty for twenty minutes and then nine people come through the door in the space of forty seconds as though they were released from somewhere.

A family came in with three children. Type five. A man asked Jessica where the restroom was. Type four. Two women went directly to local interest. Type two. A man walked to the counter and asked whether we had a specific book, including the author and edition. Type one.

My beach-book woman was still with me.

I had now shown her eleven books. She had become apologetic around number seven. By eleven she was committed.

“I swear I'm not normally this difficult.”

“It's fine.”

“No, I'm being impossible.”

“You know what you want.”

“I clearly don't.”

“You know what you don't want. That's almost the same thing.”

That was something Jessica had said to somebody once. I had made fun of her for it at the time. It turns out she was right, which is irritating.

I left the woman reading the back of number twelve and went to help at the counter.

For the next twenty minutes, everything happened. A little boy spilled a lemonade near travel and Reagan appeared from nowhere. Jessica intercepted her with a speed I have never seen her use for anything involving another human being. Someone wanted to know if the postcards were local. They were. Someone wanted stamps. We did not sell stamps. They wanted to know where they could buy stamps. Nobody knew.

Then the espresso machine made the noise again.

Jessica looked at it. I saw her look at it.

“Don't.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You're thinking about it.”

“I'm allowed to think in my own store.”

“You're going to unplug it.”

“It may need to be unplugged.”

“There are six drinks waiting.”

Jessica looked at the six drinks, then at the machine.

The machine behaved.

“See?”

“That proves nothing.”

The beach-book woman appeared at my elbow holding a book I had not given her.

“I think I found it.”

I looked at the cover. It had been sitting face-out on the table approximately four feet from where we had started.

“Oh.”

“Have you read it?”

“No.”

“Do you know anything about it?”

“Yes.”

“Anything terrible?”

I thought about it. “There's a restaurant. Two sisters don't speak for a while.”

“Do they make up?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone die?”

“No.”

“Anyone get divorced?”

“They're already divorced when it starts.”

She considered this distinction.

“I'll take it.”

Twelve books. Twenty-eight minutes. She had selected the thirteenth herself.

I took it to the counter.

◆

At one-thirty the store emptied again. Not completely. There were three people browsing, which does not count as people in August.

The family with the children had gone. The lemonade had been removed from the floor and, despite Reagan's efforts, mostly from Reagan. The espresso machine had survived.

I stood behind the counter eating half of a sandwich while Jessica did something with invoices. She does invoices with the same expression she uses when reading a book she doesn't like but intends to finish.

“Beach book bought one,” I said.

“I saw.”

“Twenty-eight minutes. Twelve rejected.”

“Why?”

I gave her the list. Too romantic. Child in danger. Too long. Bad cover. Husband might die. Historical. War. Sick parent. Animal uncertainty.

Jessica kept writing while I talked. When I finished, she nodded.

“Reasonable.”

I stared at her. “Reasonable? She wanted nothing to happen.”

“Things can happen without bad things happening.”

“Name three books.”

She stopped writing and looked toward fiction.

I waited.

“That's not the point.”

“Name one.”

She went back to the invoices.

I finished my sandwich.

◆

At three, the heat finally broke.

It happened without rain. The sky had been white all day, the harbor almost the same color, and then a wind came up from the water hard enough to lift the chalkboard outside and put it flat on the sidewalk.

I went out to get it. The temperature had dropped so quickly that the air felt cold against my arms, and everybody on Water Street noticed at once.

People came out of stores. Denise stood in the bakery doorway with her apron on. Theo came halfway out of the hardware store and looked up at the sky as if he had personally ordered the front and wanted to inspect it. A woman walking toward the harbor stopped and closed her eyes.

For maybe thirty seconds, the whole street just stood there enjoying being less hot.

Then the chalkboard tried to leave again.

I caught it by one leg.

Theo shouted something from across the street about bringing it inside.

“I've got it.”

“You don't got it.”

“I literally have it.”

The wind turned the board sideways in my hands.

Theo watched.

I carried it inside.

He did not say anything. He didn't need to.

◆

At four-fifteen the beach-book woman came back.

I recognized her immediately. This is not always good.

Returns happen. Sometimes people get twenty pages into a book and discover that somebody has a terminal illness that was not mentioned on the back, and then they come back and look at you as though you wrote it.

She came to the counter carrying nothing.

“I just wanted to tell you,” she said. “It's perfect.”

“The book?”

“I'm a hundred pages in.”

“You've been gone three hours.”

“My husband took the kids to the maritime museum.”

That explained it.

She put both hands on the counter. “Nothing has happened. It's wonderful.”

I laughed. She thanked me again and left.

I watched her go up Water Street with the canvas bag over her shoulder.

Jessica was at the other end of the counter.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You're doing a face.”

“I don't have a face for this.”

“You absolutely have a face for this.”

She picked up the invoice.

I knew what the face was. I had seen it before.

It was the face Jessica makes when something happens in the store that supports one of her larger theories about why bookstores should exist.

I don't know what the theory is. She has never explained it.

I don't think she could.

◆

At five-thirty, the temperature outside was sixty-eight degrees. We opened both front windows, and the air came through the whole store and moved papers on the counter and finally did what the box fans had been pretending to do since morning.

Reagan abandoned her fan and went to the open window, standing underneath it with her nose up.

I erased the chalkboard. The August board had been mine since June because Jessica had made the mistake of saying she didn't care what went on it as long as the store hours remained legible.

She had learned from this.

I had not.

I wrote tomorrow's date at the top. Under it I wrote:

NEED A BEACH BOOK?

WE HAVE THIRTEEN.

Jessica looked over my shoulder.

“Twelve.”

“Thirteen.”

“She found the thirteenth herself.”

“In the store.”

“That isn't the same as us recommending it.”

“It was our inventory.”

“That's not how recommendations work.”

I added:

MAYBE FOURTEEN.

Jessica went back behind the counter.

The board stayed.

At six, I put my textbook in my bag. I had brought it every day that week and had not opened it once.

School started in three weeks.

I was going to open it tonight.

I knew this with complete certainty.

Outside, Water Street had gone soft in the evening light. The heat was out of the pavement. People were still walking toward the harbor, but faster now, like they had somewhere to be instead of all the time in the world.

I said goodbye to Reagan, then Jessica, then Reagan again because she had followed me to the door.

I walked home with my bag over one shoulder and the wind coming up Water Street behind me.

The textbook stayed in the bag all night.