The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry

  “So, did someone break the case or did someone know the combination?” Lambiase asks.

  “Neither. I wanted to get wasted last night. Fucking stupid, but I took out the book so I could look at it. A poor excuse for company, I know.”

  “Mr. Fikry, was Tamerlane insured?”

  A.J. puts his head in his hands. Lambiase takes that to mean that the book wasn’t. “I only found the book about a year ago, a couple of months after my wife died. I didn’t want to spend the extra money. I never got around to it. I don’t know. A million retrospectively idiotic reasons, the main one being that I am an idiot, Officer Lambiase.”

  Lambiase doesn’t bother telling him that it is Chief Lambiase. “Here’s what I’m gonna do. First, you and me are gonna file a police report. Then, when my detective comes in—she’s only on half days during the off-season—I’m gonna send her down to your place to look for fingerprints and other evidence. Maybe something’ll come up. The other thing we can do is call the auction houses and other people who deal in these sorts of items. If it’s as rare a book as you say, people will notice if an unaccounted-for copy comes on the market. Don’t things like that need to have a record of who owned them, a whatchamacallit?”

  “A provenance,” A.J. says.

  “Yeah, exactly! My wife used to watch Antiques Roadshow. You ever seen that show?”

  A.J. doesn’t reply.

  “One last thing, I’m wondering who knew about the book?”

  A.J. snorts. “Everyone. My wife’s sister, Ismay, teaches at the high school. She worries about me since Nic . . . She’s always bugging me to get out of the store, get off the island. About a year ago, she dragged me to this dreary estate sale in Milton. It was sitting in a box with about fifty other books, all worthless except Tamerlane. I paid five dollars. The people had no idea what they had. I felt kind of shitty about taking it, if you want to know the truth. Not that it matters now. Anyway, Ismay thought it would be good for business and educational or some crap if I put it on display in the store. So I kept the case in the shop all last summer. You never come to the store, I guess.”

  Lambiase looks at his shoes, the familiar shame of a thousand high school English classes where he’d failed to do the minimum required reading rushing back to him. “Not much of a reader.”

  “You read some crime, though, right?”

  “Good memory,” Lambiase says. In fact, A.J. has a perfect memory for people’s reading tastes.

  “Deaver, was it? If you like that, there’s this new writer from—”

  “Sure, I’ll stop by some time. Is there someone I can call for you? Your wife’s sister is Ismay Evans-Parish, right?”

  “Ismay’s at—” At that moment, A.J. freezes as if someone has pressed the pause button on him. His eyes are blank and his mouth drops open.

  “Mr. Fikry?”

  For nearly thirty seconds, A.J. is frozen and then he resumes speaking as if nothing has happened. “Ismay’s at work, and I’m fine. There’s no need to call her.”

  “You were gone for a minute there,” Lambiase says.

  “What?”

  “You blacked out.”

  “Oh Christ. It’s just an absence seizure. I used to have them a lot as a kid. I rarely have them as an adult except when I’m unusually stressed.”

  “You should see a doctor.”

  “No, it’s fine. Honestly. I just want to find my book.”

  “I’d feel better,” Lambiase insists. “You’ve had a pretty traumatic morning, and I know you live alone. I’m gonna take you to the hospital and then I’m gonna have your in-laws meet you there. Meanwhile, I’ll have my guys see if they can figure anything out about your book.”

  At the hospital, A.J. waits, fills out forms, waits, strips, waits, takes tests, waits, puts his clothes back on, waits, takes more tests, waits, strips again, and at last is seen by a middle-aged general practitioner. She is not particularly concerned about the seizure. The tests, however, have revealed that his blood pressure and cholesterol are on the border between acceptable and high for a thirty-nine-year-old man. She asks A.J. about his lifestyle. He answers the question truthfully. “I’m not what you’d call an alcoholic, but I do like to drink until I pass out at least once a week. I smoke occasionally and I subsist on a diet of frozen entrees. I rarely floss. I used to be a long-distance runner, but now I don’t exercise at all. I live alone and I lack meaningful personal relationships. Since my wife died, I hate my work, too.”

  “Oh, is that all?” the doctor asks. “You’re still a young man, Mr. Fikry, but a body can only take so much. If you’re trying to kill yourself, I can certainly think of faster, easier ways to go about it. Do you want to die?”

  A response doesn’t immediately occur to him.

  “Because if you really want to die, I can put you under psychiatric observation.”

  “I don’t want to die,” A.J. says after a bit. “I just find it difficult to be here all the time. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “No. I can see why you would feel that way. You’re going through a bear of a time. Start with exercise,” she says. “You’ll feel better.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your wife was lovely,” the doctor says. “I used to be in the mother-daughter book club she ran at the store. My daughter still works for you part-time.”

  “Molly Klock?”

  “Klock is my partner’s name. I’m Dr. Rosen.” She taps her name tag.

  In the lobby, A.J. encounters a familiar scene. “Would you mind terribly?” a nurse in pink scrubs asks, holding out a battered mass-market paperback to a man in a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows.

  “I’d be delighted,” Daniel Parish says. “What’s your name?”

  “Jill, like Jack and Jill went up the hill. Macy, like the store. I’ve read all your books, but I like this one the best. Like, by far.”

  “That is the popular opinion, Jill from the hill.” Daniel isn’t kidding. None of his books have sold nearly as well as the first.

  “I can’t even express how much it meant to me. Like, I start to tear up thinking about it.” She bows her head and lowers her eyes, deferent as a geisha. “It’s what made me want to be a nurse! I just started working here. When I found out you lived in town, I kept hoping you’d come in someday.”

  “You mean, you hoped I’d get sick?” Daniel says, smiling.

  “No, of course not!” She blushes, then swats him on the arm. “You! You’re terrible!”

  “I am,” Daniel replies. “I am, indeed, terrible.”

  The first time Nic had met Daniel Parish, she had commented that he had the good looks of an anchorman for a local news station. By the car ride home, she had revised her opinion. “His eyes are too small for an anchor. He’d be the weatherman.”

  “He does have a sonorous voice,” A.J. had said.

  “If that man told you that the storm had passed, you would definitely believe him. Probably even if you were still standing smack in the middle of it,” she had said.

  A.J. interrupts the flirtation. “Dan,” he says. “I thought they’d called your wife.” A.J. is not going for subtle.

  Daniel clears his throat. “She’s feeling under the weather, so I came instead. How you holding up, old man?” Daniel calls A.J. “old man” despite the fact that Daniel is five years older than A.J.

  “I’ve lost my fortune, and the doctor says I’m going to die, but other than that, I’m fantastic.” The sedative has given him perspective.

  “Great. Let’s get drinks.” Daniel turns to Nurse Jill and whispers something in her ear. When Daniel returns the book to her, A.J. can see that he has written his phone number. “Come, thou monarch of the vine!” Daniel says as he heads for the exit.

  Despite the fact that he loves books and owns a bookstore, A.J. does not particularly care for writers. He finds them to be unkempt, narcissistic, silly, and generally unpleasant people. He tries to avoid meeting the ones who’ve written books he loves for fear that
they will ruin their books for him. Luckily, he does not love Daniel’s books, not even the popular first novel. As for the man? Well, he amuses A.J. to an extent. This is to say, Daniel Parish is one of A.J.’s closest friends.

  “IT’S MY OWN fault,” A.J. says after his second beer. “Should have gotten insurance. Should have stored it in a safe. Shouldn’t have taken it out when I was drunk. No matter who stole it, I can’t say my conduct was exactly faultless.” The alcohol in combination with the sedative is mellowing A.J., making him philosophical. Daniel pours him another glass from the pitcher.

  “Don’t do that, A.J. Don’t blame yourself,” Daniel says.

  “It’s a wake-up call is what it is,” A.J. says. “I’m definitely gonna cut down on my drinking.”

  “Right after this beer,” Daniel quips. They clink mugs. A high school girl in denim cutoffs so short her buttocks peeks out the bottom walks into the bar. Daniel holds up his mug to her. “Nice outfit!” The girl gives him the finger. “You gotta stop drinking. I gotta stop cheating on Ismay,” Daniel says. “But then I see a pair of shorts like that, and my resolve is seriously tested. This night’s been ridiculous. The nurse! Those shorts!”

  A.J. sips the beer. “How’s the book coming?”

  Daniel shrugs. “It is a book. It will have pages and a cover. It will have a plot, characters, complications. It will reflect years of studying, refining, and practicing my craft. For all that, it will surely be less popular than the first one I wrote at the age of twenty-five.”

  “Poor bastard,” A.J. says.

  “I’m pretty sure you win the Poor Bastard of the Year Award, old man.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “Poe’s a lousy writer, you know? And ‘Tamerlane’ is the worst. Boring Lord Byron rip-off. It’d be one thing if it were a first edition of something fucking decent. You should be glad to be rid of it. I loathe collectible books anyway. People getting all moony over particular paper carcasses. It’s the ideas that matter, man. The words,” Daniel Parish says.

  A.J. finishes his beer. “You, sir, are an idiot.”

  THE INVESTIGATION LASTS a month, which in Alice Island PD time is like a year. Lambiase and his team find no relevant physical evidence at the scene. In addition to throwing out the wine bottle and cleaning up the vindaloo, the criminal had apparently wiped down the apartment of fingerprints. The investigators question A.J.’s employees and also his few friends and relations in Alice. These interviews result in nothing particularly incriminating. No book dealers or auction houses report any copies of Tamerlane turning up either. (Of course, auction houses are notoriously quiet about these matters.) The investigation is considered unsolved. The book is gone, and A.J. knows he will never see it again.

  The glass case, now, has no use, and A.J. is unsure of what to do with it. He has no other rare books. Still, the case had been pricey, nearly five hundred dollars. Some vestigial, hopeful part of him wants to believe that something better could come along to put in the case. When he bought it, he was told he could also use it to store cigars.

  As retirement is no longer on the horizon, A.J. reads galleys, returns e-mails, answers the phone, and even writes a shelf talker or two. At night, after the store is closed, he starts running again. There are many challenges to long-distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put one’s house keys. In the end, A.J. decides to leave his front door unlocked. In his estimation, nothing here is worth stealing.

  The Luck of Roaring Camp

  1868 / Bret Harte

  Overly sentimental tale of a mining camp that adopts an “Ingin baby” whom they dub Luck. I read it for the first time at Princeton in a seminar called the Literature of the American West and was not moved in the least. In my response paper (dated November 14, 1992), the only thing I found to recommend it were the colorful character names: Stumpy, Kentuck, French Pete, Cherokee Sal, etc. I chanced upon “The Luck of Roaring Camp” again a couple of years ago and I cried so much you’ll find that my Dover Thrift Edition is waterlogged. Methinks I have grown soft in my middle age. But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.

  —A.J.F.

  In the weeks after the robbery, Island Books experiences a slight but statistically improbable uptick in business. A.J. attributes the increase to the lesser-known economic indicator known as “the Curious Townie.”

  A well-meaning townie (W-MT) will sidle up to the desk. “Any word on Tamerlane?” [Translation: May I turn over your significant personal loss for my own amusement?]

  A.J. will reply, “Nothing yet.” [Translation: Life still ruined.]

  W-MT: Oh, I’m sure something will turn up. [Translation: Since I have no investment in the outcome of this situation, it costs me nothing to be optimistic.] What’s new that I haven’t read?

  A.J.: We’ve got a couple things. [Translation: Pretty much everything. You haven’t been in here for months, possibly years.]

  W-MT: There was a book I read about in the New York Times Book Review. It had a red cover, maybe?

  A.J.: Yeah, that sounds familiar. [Translation: That is excessively vague. Author, title, description of the plot—these are more useful locators. That the cover might have been red and that it was in the New York Times Book Review helps me far less than you might think.] Anything else you remember about it? [Use your words.]

  A.J. will then lead the W-MT over to the new release wall, where he makes sure to sell him or her a hardcover.

  Strangely enough, Nic’s death had had the opposite effect on business. Though he had opened and closed the store with the emotionless regularity of an SS officer, the fiscal quarter after her death had posted the worst sales in Island’s history. Of course, people had felt sorry for him then, but they had felt too sorry for him. Nic had been a local, one of their own. They had been touched when the Princeton graduate (and Alice Island High School salutatorian no less) had returned to Alice to open a bookstore with her serious-eyed husband. Refreshing to see a young person coming back home for a change. Once she died, they found they had nothing in common with A.J. except their shared loss of Nic. Did they blame him? Some of them did, a little. Why hadn’t he been the one to drive that author home that night? They consoled themselves and whispered that he’d always been a little odd and—they swore they didn’t mean this in a racist way—a little foreign; it’s obvious the guy’s not from around here, you know. (He was born in New Jersey.) They held their breath as they walked past the store, like it was a cemetery.

  A.J. runs their credit cards and concludes that a theft is an acceptable social loss while a death is an isolating one. By December, sales have returned to their usual, pretheft rate.

  TWO FRIDAYS BEFORE Christmas, two minutes before close, A.J. makes the rounds of kicking out and ringing up the last customers. A man in a puffy coat is hemming and hawing over the latest Alex Cross. “Twenty-six dollars seems like a lot. You know I can get it cheaper online, right?” A.J. says that he does know as he shows the man the door. “You should really lower your prices if you want to be competitive,” the man says.

  “Lower my prices? Lower. My. Prices. I hadn’t considered that before,” A.J. says mildly.

  “Are you being cheeky, young man?”

  “No, I’m thankful. And at the next Island Books shareholders’ meeting, I’ll definitely raise this innovative suggestion of yours. I know we want to remain competitive. Between you and me, for a time in the early oughties, we’d given up on competition. I thought it was a mistake, but my board decided that competition was best left to Olympic athletes, kids in spelling bees, and cereal manufacturers. These days, I’m glad to report that we at Island Books are definitely in the competition business once again. The store’s closed, by the way.” A.J. points toward the exit.

>   As puffy coat grumbles his way out the door, an old woman creaks over the threshold. She is a regular customer, so A.J. tries not to be too annoyed that she is coming in after hours. “Ah, Mrs. Cumberbatch,” he says. “Unfortunately, we’re closing now.”

  “Mr. Fikry, don’t you turn those Omar Sharif eyes of yours on me. I am outraged at you.” Mrs. Cumberbatch pushes past him and slams a plump paperback on the counter. “The book you recommended to me yesterday is the worst book I have read in all my eighty-two years, and I would like my money back.”

  A.J. looks from the book to the old woman. “What was your problem with it?”

  “Problems, Mr. Fikry. To begin, it is narrated by Death! I am an eighty-two-year-old woman and I do not find it one bit pleasurable to read a five-hundred-fifty-two-page tome narrated by Death. I think it is a remarkably insensitive choice.”

  A.J. apologizes but he is not sorry. Who are these people who think a book comes with a guarantee that they will like it? He processes the return. The book’s spine is broken. He will not be able to resell it. “Mrs. Cumberbatch,” he cannot resist saying, “it appears that you read this. I wonder how far along you got.”

  “Yes, I read it,” she replies. “I most certainly did read it. It kept me up all night, I was so angry with it. At this stage of my life, I would rather not be kept up all night. Nor do I wish to have my tears jerked at the rate at which this novel jerked them. The next time you recommend a book to me, I hope you’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Fikry.”

  “I will,” he says. “And I do apologize, Mrs. Cumberbatch. Most of our customers have rather liked The Book Thief.”

  ONCE THE STORE is closed, A.J. goes upstairs to change into his running clothes. He leaves through the bookstore’s front entrance and, as has become his custom, does not lock the door.