Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

  Mat came to visit, wearing a snug blue blazer over sharp-creased slacks. We sat in the living room (then dominated by a flat-screen TV, with no tabletop cities even dreamt of) and he told us about his current task at ILM: the design and construction of a bloodthirsty demon with blue-denim skin. It was part of a horror movie set inside an Abercrombie & Fitch.

  “I’m learning how to sew,” he explained. Then he pointed to one of Ashley’s cuffs: “Those are really good seams.”

  Later, after Mat left, Ashley told me she appreciated his neatness. “So if you think he’ll be a good fit, I’m fine with him,” she said.

  This is the key to our harmonious cohabitation: although their objectives are different, Mat and Ashley share a deep appreciation for details. For Mat, it’s a tiny graffiti tag on a tiny subway stop. For Ashley, it’s underwear that matches her twinset.

  But the true test came early, with Mat’s first project. It happened in the kitchen.

  The kitchen: Ashley’s sanctum sanctorum. I tread lightly in the kitchen; I prepare meals that are easy to clean up, like pasta and Pop-Tarts. I do not use her fancy Microplane or her complicated garlic press. I know how to turn the burners on and off, but not how to activate the oven’s convection chamber, which I suspect requires two keys, like the launch mechanism on a nuclear missile.

  Ashley loves the kitchen. She’s a foodie, an epicurean, and she’s never prettier, or more android-perfect, than on weekends, cooking a fragrant risotto in a color-coordinated apron with her hair tied in a blond knot on top of her head.

  Mat could have done his first project up in the attic, or in the small scrubby backyard. But no. He chose the kitchen.

  This was during my post-NewBagel period of unemployment, so I was there to watch it happen. In fact, I was leaning in close, inspecting Mat’s handiwork, when Ashley appeared. She was just home from work, still dressed in J. Crew carbon and cream. She gasped.

  Mat had a huge Pyrex cauldron set up on the stove, and inside there was a slow-churning mixture of oil and dye. It was heavy and highly viscous, and with the slow application of heat from below, it was curling and blooming in slow motion. The kitchen lights were all turned off, and Mat had two bright arc lamps set up behind the cauldron; they shone through and cast red and purple shadows that spun across the granite and travertine.

  I straightened and stood, silent. The last time I’d been caught like this, I was nine, making vinegar-and-baking-soda volcanoes on the kitchen table after school. My mom wore pants just like Ashley’s.

  Mat’s eyes rose slowly. His sleeves were rolled up around his elbows. His dark leather shoes were shiny in the gloom, and so were the tips of his fingers, coated in oil.

  “It’s a simulation of the Horsehead Nebula,” he said. Obviously.

  Ashley was silent, staring. Her mouth hung open a little bit. Her keys were dangling on her finger, arrested in midflight toward the tidy peg where they lived, just above the chore checklist.

  Mat had been living with us for three days.

  Ashley took two steps forward and leaned in close, just as I had, and peered into the cosmic depths. A saffron blob was pushing its way up through a roiling layer of green and gold.

  “Holy shit, Mat,” she breathed. “That’s beautiful.”

  So Mat’s astrophysical stew simmered on, and his other projects continued in sequence, getting bigger and messier and taking up more space. Ashley took an interest in his progress; she’d wander into the room, put a hand on one hip, scrunch her nose, and make a deftly constructive comment. She moved the TV herself.

  This is Mat’s secret weapon, his passport, his get-out-of-jail-free card: Mat makes things that are beautiful.

  So of course I told Mat he should come visit the bookstore, and tonight he does, at half-past two. The bell over the door tinkles to announce his arrival, and before he says a word, his neck bends back to follow the shelves up into the shadowy reaches. He turns toward me, points a plaid-jacketed arm straight to the ceiling, and says: “I want to go up there.”

  I’ve only been working here for a month and don’t quite have the confidence for mischief yet, but Mat’s curiosity is infectious. He stalks straight over to the Waybacklist and stands between the shelves, leaning in close, examining the grain of the wood, the texture of the spines.

  I concede: “Okay, but you have to hold on tight. And don’t touch any of the books.”

  “Don’t touch them?” he says, testing the ladder. “What if I want to buy one?”

  “You can’t buy them—they’re for borrowing. You have to be a member of the club.”

  “Rare books? First editions?” He’s already in midair. He moves fast.

  “More like only editions,” I say. No ISBNs here.

  “What are they about?”

  “I don’t know,” I say quietly.

  “What?”

  Saying it louder, I realize how lame it sounds: “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve never looked at one?” He’s paused on the ladder, looking back down. Incredulous.

  Now I’m getting nervous. I know where this is going.

  “Seriously, never?” He’s reaching for the shelves.

  I consider shaking the ladder to signal my displeasure, but the only thing more problematic than Mat looking at one of the books would be Mat plunging to his death. Probably. He has one in his hands, a fat black-bound volume that threatens to unbalance him. He teeters on the ladder and I grit my teeth.

  “Hey, Mat,” I say, my voice suddenly high-pitched and whiny, “why don’t you just leave it—”

  “This is amazing.”

  “You should—”

  “Seriously amazing, Jannon. You’ve never seen this?” He clutches the book to his chest and takes a step back down.

  “Wait!” Somehow it feels less transgressive to keep it closer to the place where it belongs. “I’ll come up.” I pull another ladder into position opposite his and leap up the rungs. In a moment, Mat and I are level, having a hushed conference at thirty feet.

  The truth, of course, is that I am desperately curious. I’m annoyed at Mat, but also grateful that he’s playing the part of the devil on my shoulder. He balances the thick volume against his chest and tilts it my way. It’s dark up here, so I lean across the space between the shelves to see the pages clearly.

  For this, Tyndall and the rest come running in the middle of the night?

  “I was hoping it would be an encyclopedia of dark rituals,” Mat says.

  The two-page spread shows a solid matrix of letters, a blanket of glyphs with hardly a trace of white space. The letters are big and bold, punched onto the paper in a sharp serif. I recognize the alphabet—it’s roman, which is to say, normal—but not the words. Actually, there aren’t really words at all. The pages are just long runs of letters—an undifferentiated jumble.

  “Then again,” Mat says, “we have no way of knowing it’s not an encyclopedia of dark rituals …”

  I pull another book from the shelf, this one tall and flat with a bright green cover and a brown spine that says KRESIMIR. Inside, it’s just the same.

  “Maybe they’re recreational puzzles,” Mat says. “Like, super-advanced sudoku.”

  Penumbra’s customers are, in fact, exactly the kind of people you’d see in coffee shops, working through one-sided chess problems or solving Saturday crosswords with blue ballpoints pressed perilously hard into the newsprint.

  Down below, the bell tinkles. A jangle of cold fear makes a quick round-trip from my brain to my fingertips and back. From the front of the store, a low voice calls out, “Is anyone der?”

  I hiss at Mat: “Put it back.” Then I hustle down the ladder.

  When I step wheezing from the stacks, it is Fedorov at the door. Of all the customers I’ve met, he’s the oldest—his beard is snowy white and the skin on his hands is papery-thin—but also probably the most clear-eyed. He seems a lot like Penumbra, actually. Now he slides a book across the desk—he’s returning CLOVTIER—then tap
s two fingers sharply and says, “I vill need Murao next.”

  Here we go. I find MVRAO in the database and send Mat back up the ladder. Fedorov eyes him curiously. “Anudder clerk?”

  “A friend,” I say. “Just helping out.”

  Fedorov nods. It occurs to me that Mat could pass muster as a very young member of this club. He and Fedorov are both wearing brown corduroys tonight.

  “You hev been here, vat, tirty-seven days?”

  I couldn’t have told you that, but yes, I’m sure it’s thirty-seven days exactly. These guys tend to be very precise. “That’s right, Mr. Fedorov,” I say cheerily.

  “End vat do you tink?”

  “I like it,” I say. “It’s better than working in an office.”

  Fedorov nods at that and passes over his card. He’s 6KZVCY, naturally. “I vorked at HP”—he says it Heych-Pee—“for tirty years. Now, det vas an office.” Then he ventures: “You hev used a HP celculator?”

  Mat returns with MVRAO. It’s a big one, thick and wide, bound in mottled leather.

  “Oh, yeah, definitely,” I say, wrapping the book in brown paper. “I had one of the graphing calculators all through high school. It was an HP-38.”

  Fedorov beams like a proud grandparent. “I vorked on de tventy-eight, vhich vas de precursor!”

  That makes me smile. “I probably still have it somewhere,” I tell him, and pass MVRAO across the front desk.

  Fedorov scoops it up in both hands. “Tenk you,” he says. “You know, de tirty-eight did not hev Reverse Polish Notation”—he gives his book (of dark rituals?) a meaningful tap—”end I should tell you, RPN is hendy for dis kind of work.”

  I think Mat’s right: sudoku. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say.

  “Okay, tenk you again.” The bell tinkles and we watch Fedorov go slowly up the sidewalk toward the bus stop.

  “I looked at his book,” Mat says. “Same as the others.”

  What seemed strange before now seems even stranger.

  “Jannon,” Mat says, turning to face me squarely. “There’s something I have to ask you.”

  “Let me guess,” I say. “Why haven’t I ever looked at the—”

  “Do you have a thing for Ashley?”

  Well, that’s not what I expected. “What? No.”

  “Okay, good. Because I do.”

  I blink and stare blankly at Mat Mittelbrand standing there in his tiny, perfectly tailored suit jacket. It’s like Jimmy Olsen confessing that he has a thing for Wonder Woman. The contrast is just too much. And yet—

  “I’m going to put the moves on her,” he says gravely. “Things might get weird.” He says it like a commando setting up a midnight raid. Like: Sure, this is going to be extraordinarily dangerous, but don’t worry. I’ve done it before.

  My vision shifts. Maybe Mat isn’t Jimmy Olsen but Clark Kent, and underneath there’s a Superman. He would have to be a five-foot-four Superman, but still.

  “I mean, technically, we already made out once.”

  Wait, what—

  “Two weeks ago. You weren’t home. You were here. We drank a bunch of wine.”

  My head spins a little, not with the dissonance of Mat and Ashley together, but with the realization that this thread of attraction has been twisting under my nose and I had no idea. I hate it when that happens.

  Mat nods, as if that’s all settled now. “Okay, Jannon. This place is awesome. But I gotta go.”

  “Back to the apartment?”

  “No, the office. Pulling an all-nighter. Jungle monster.”

  “Jungle monster.”

  “Made from living plants. We have to keep the studio really hot. I might come back for another break. This place is cool and dry.”

  Mat leaves. Later, in the logbook, I write:

  A cool night with no clouds. The bookstore is visited by the youngest customer it has seen in (this clerk believes) many years. He wears corduroys, a tailored suit jacket, and, under it, a sweater-vest stitched with tiny tigers. The customer purchases one postcard (under duress), then makes his exit to resume work on a jungle monster.

  It’s very quiet. I set my chin in my palm and count my friends and wonder what else is hiding in plain sight.

  THE DRAGON, SONG CHRONICLES, VOLUME I

  THE NEXT NIGHT, another friend visits the store, and not just any friend: my oldest.

  Neel Shah and I have been best friends since sixth grade. In the unpredictable fluid dynamics of middle school, I found myself somehow floating near the top, an inoffensive everyman who was just good enough at basketball and not cripplingly afraid of girls. Neel, by contrast, sank straight to the bottom, shunned by jock and nerd alike. My cafeteria tablemates snorted that he looked funny, talked funny, smelled funny.

  But we bonded that spring over a shared obsession with books about singing dragons, and we ended up best friends. I stood up for him, defended him, expended prepubescent political capital on his behalf. I got him invited to pizza parties and lured members of the basketball team into our Rockets & Warlocks role-playing group. (They didn’t last long. Neel was always the dungeon master, and he always sent single-minded droids and undead orcs after them.) In seventh grade, I suggested to Amy Torgensen, a pretty straw-haired girl who loved horses, that Neel’s father was an exiled prince, rich beyond measure, and that Neel might therefore make an excellent escort to the winter formal. It was his first date.

  So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.

  Now Neel Shah appears framed in the front door, tall and solid, wearing a snug black track jacket, and he ignores the tall dusty Waybacklist completely. Instead he zeroes in on the short shelf labeled SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY.

  “Dude, you’ve got Moffat!” he says, holding up a fat paperback. It’s The Dragon-Song Chronicles, Volume I—the very book we bonded over back in sixth grade, and still our mutual favorite. I’ve read it three times. Neel has probably read it six.

  “This is like an old copy, too,” he says, riffling the pages. He’s right. The newest edition of the trilogy, published after Clark Moffat died, features stark geometric covers that make a single continuous pattern when you line all three books up on the shelf. This one has an airbrushed rendering of a fat blue dragon wreathed in sea foam.

  I tell Neel he ought to buy it, because it’s a collector’s edition and it’s probably worth more than whatever Penumbra is charging. And because I haven’t sold more than a postcard in six days. Normally I’d feel bad pressuring one of my friends to buy a book, but Neel Shah is now, if not quite rich beyond measure, then definitely competitive with some low-level princes. At around the same time I was struggling to make minimum wage at Oh My Cod! in Providence, Neel was starting his own company. Fast-forward five years and see the magic of compound effort: Neel has, to my best approximation, a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank, and his company is worth millions more. By contrast, I have exactly $2,357 in the bank and the company I work for—if you can call it a company—exists in the extrafinancial space inhabited by money launderers and fringe churches.

  Anyway, I figure Neel can spring for an old paperback, even if he doesn’t really have time to read anymore. While I’m digging for change in the front desk’s dark drawers, his attention turns, at last, to the shadowy shelves dominating the back half of the store.

  “What’s all that?” he says. He’s not sure if he’s interested or not. As a rule, Neel prefers the new and shiny to the old and dusty.

  “That,” I say, “is the real store.”

  Mat’s intervention has made me a bit bolder with the Waybacklist.

  “What if I told you,” I say, leading Neel back toward the shelves, “that this bookstore was frequented by a group of strange scholars?”

  “Awesome,” Neel says, nodding. He smells warlocks.

  “And what if I told you”
—I pick a black-bound book from a low shelf—”that every one of these books is written in code?” I open it wide to show a field of jumbled letters.

  “That’s crazy,” Neel says. He traces a finger down the page, through the maze of serifs. “I’ve got a guy from Belarus who breaks codes. Copy protection, stuff like that.”

  Embedded in that sentence is the difference between Neel’s life, post-middle school, and mine: Neel has guys—guys who do things for him. I don’t have guys. I barely have a laptop.

  “I could have him take a look at this,” Neel continues.

  “Well, I don’t know for sure that they’re in code,” I admit. I close the book and slide it back onto the shelf. “And even if they are, I’m not sure it’s, like, worth cracking. The guys who borrow these books are pretty weird.”

  “That’s always how it starts!” Neel says, thumping my shoulder. “Think of The Dragon-Song Chronicles. Do you meet Telemach Half-Blood on the first page? No, dude. You meet Fernwen.”

  The main character of The Dragon-Song Chronicles is Fernwen the scholarly dwarf, who is small even by dwarven standards. He was cast out of his warrior clan at an early age and—anyway, yes, maybe Neel has a point.

  “We gotta figure this out,” he says. “How much?”

  I explain how it works, how the members all have cards—but now it’s not just idle talk. Whatever the cost to join Penumbra’s lending club, Neel can pay it.

  “Find out how much it costs,” Neel says. “You’re sitting on a Rockets & Warlocks scenario here, I swear.” He’s grinning. He switches to his low dungeon-master voice: “Do not wuss out now, Claymore Redhands.”

  Oof. He’s deployed my Rockets & Warlocks name against me. It is a spell with ancient power. I concede. I’ll ask Penumbra.

  We return to the short shelves and the airbrushed covers. Neel flips through another of our old favorites, a story about a huge cylindrical spaceship slowly approaching the earth. I tell him about Mat’s plan to woo Ashley. Then I ask him how his company is doing. He unzips his track jacket and points proudly to the gunmetal-gray T-shirt underneath.