Page 2 of Love Walked In
CHAPTER TWO
Leo
How embarrassing that Mari had caught me scribbling in my notebook instead of working.
Though drawing was the only refuge I had from the pig’s breakfast I’d made of my life.
I ended most days face down on my mattress in my childhood bedroom, which I was back living in at the age of thirty-one because my wife had left me for someone else.
I’d be utterly drained, my stomach in angry knots from too much caffeine, not enough food, and the knowledge that I had to keep returning to the shop day after day, be reminded again and again and again that my grandfather was gone and I was lost.
Mari’s warmth, her cheer… it was borderline offensive, made more so by the fact that if I’d met her two years ago, before Becca left and Alexander died, I might have liked it.
Might have shook her hand hello, asked her about her reading and life in California and what she was looking forward to in London.
Instead, I silently led her up the spiraling oak staircase that made the spine of the shop, climbing up two floors and then ducking around a corner into the Religion section, then left around the last bookcase full of Buddhist and Hindu texts to the khaki-colored metal door with “Employees Only” on it.
As I punched the code into the mechanical lock, I snuck another look at the woman who was supposed to be our best chance to keep Ross & Co. open.
She was going to freeze to death, wearing those clothes.
First of all, the Converse would be an utter disaster.
I had a pair of canvas high-tops deep in the back of my closet, plain black instead of her purple with rainbow ( rainbow!
) laces, and I knew they were only good in an English summer, on a day when it wasn’t raining.
They’d be sopping wet in a second, beyond saving in a minute.
On the other hand, her iridescent silver puffer jacket was meant for trekking to the North Pole, not going in and out of heated shops and suffering London’s drizzle.
She was already showing the effects of our temperamental thermostat, her round, pale cheeks flushed, a delicate sweat on her hairline.
As if she sensed my thoughts, she took off her rucksack, enormous jacket, and the ocean-blue jumper underneath, revealing a brilliant yellow daffodil with a saffron heart unfurling up her forearm, and a short-sleeved forest green T-shirt that stretched across her…
My eyes snapped up to her face, and my cheeks warmed.
It was the colors that made me notice her, I told myself. The blues and greens and yellows of her. Not her curves, not her peaches-and-cream skin. I hadn’t looked at anyone like that in eons.
Now I saw her hazel eyes glance around, and for a moment, she looked uncertain, shy, a new girl on the first day of school. An effect that was amplified by the long chestnut-brown braid that dangled over her shoulder, flickering with bronze and copper.
I could tug it, not too hard, just enough to make her forget her nervousness.
I pressed 5 instead of 8, mumbled “Stupid” under my breath as I punched the Clear button.
Where the ever-loving fuck had that thought come from?
Nowhere mature and sensible, that was certain.
Mari blinked and gave me that toothy grin again, a reminder that she was here because I hadn’t had anything resembling confidence in donkey’s years.
“Everything OK?” she asked lightly.
Now I remembered I had bigger problems than one can-do American and successfully unlocked the door. “Fine, thank you.”
I hadn’t had any ideas for how to improve our sales, let alone good ones, in what felt like eons.
So when Judith had told me six weeks ago about her old friend Suzanne and Suzanne’s protégée Mari, who was something of a bookshop whisperer, I had absent-mindedly agreed that an outsider might have fresh ideas for how to turn the shop around.
I marched up the last staircase, this one lined with pictures of the three generations of Rosses who’d run the shop.
Great-Grandfather Leopold in a three-piece suit and fedora in front of Rosenbaum Buchhandlung on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, before he’d seen the writing on the wall when Hitler seized power.
He’d moved his shop and his family to London, changing our name to Ross in the process.
Then Alexander at the height of his powers in the rust-toned 1970s, thick black hair and sideburns, arms folded and grinning widely in front of a display of signed bestsellers.
I didn’t touch the frame like I usually did when I was alone.
I couldn’t be seen to have that kind of silly superstition.
Then me two years ago, aged twenty-nine, smiling and a little distracted, unburdened even though I was carrying an armful of art books, totally unaware of the hurricane of loss about to rip me apart.
“In here,” I said to Mari, who was sizing up the photographs.
“You guys have a real history,” she said wonderingly. “I’ve never been to a family-run store that’s lasted this long.” She pointed at the picture of Leopold. “He founded the store in Germany, what, ninety years ago?”
“One hundred,” I said. “The anniversary’s this year, actually.”
She glowed in the dim light of the staircase. “That’s incredible . You know that’s incredible, right? You definitely should do something to celebrate.”
For a moment, I wanted to bask in the warmth of her compliment.
Leopold had restarted the business from scratch after he fled Germany, been interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man at the start of the war, and still managed to create a British bookselling institution.
But then I sighed. Mari wasn’t wrong, but the thought of celebrating when the life force had gone out of the shop and out of me made me want to lie on the floor.
“Possibly. Come on, my father gets impatient.”
When we walked into the office, my father immediately stood up from my chair and said loudly, “What kept you? I have better places to be, you know.”
“We know very well, David,” Judith said from the chair beside the desk.
“But you own a share of this place the same as we do, so why don’t you greet our American guest politely?
” She stood slowly, the grimace on her face telling me that her arthritis was particularly vicious today.
“Welcome,” she said, reaching for Mari’s hand while she leaned on her stick with the other.
“I’m Judith Ross. Suzanne has sung your praises for so long, I feel I know you already. ”
“Suzanne exaggerates, but I’ll take it,” Mari said warmly as she put her things down and shook hands. “She tells great stories from when you two were at Oxford together.”
“We got into a lot of trouble back then, yes. Usually at her instigation,” Judith said dryly.
“Oh, I find that impossible to believe.”
Mari winked and they smiled at each other, a delightful little conspiracy already forming between them, and no, I did not feel a twinge of jealousy at being on the outside of it.
Judith hadn’t said a word to me about her life before Alexander until he’d died, and even then it was only vague glimpses of parties and debates and endless piles of books for her politics, philosophy, and economics degree.
But how much curiosity had I actually expressed?
“I’m David,” my father said impatiently. “I own a share of the shop, but I’m normally running my own political communications firm, so I won’t be very helpful. You’d best address your concerns to Judith and Leo.”
“But you’re part of the history of the shop, too, right? Leo was telling me you’re celebrating your hundredth anniversary this year,” Mari said, smiling bravely.
“Yes, yes, we’re very old and prestigious, and we’re also on our way out,” my father said. “I don’t know why we keep going, when we know bookshops are fighting over the scraps Amazon is dropping from the table.” He made a show of checking his watch.
Mari held her hand up. “May I explain?” she asked, and I marveled at her daring.
When Judith nodded, Mari put her hand in her pocket and said, keeping the same calm and easy tone, “I started working officially at Orchard House Books when I was fourteen years old, and I became the store manager four years ago. I have a bachelor’s in English literature with high honors from Huntington College and I studied for my MBA at Sonoma State at night while working at the store.
In the past four years my initiatives have increased Orchard House’s revenue by eight percent year on year, and I helped four other California bookstores come up with similar ideas.
Long story short, I know a fair amount about this business.
” She looked my father in the eye. “Yes, Amazon is really, really good at piling them high and selling them cheap, metaphorically speaking. When they entered the market, it was like when deep-sea trawlers started vacuuming up the ocean. All the fish, from the sharks down to the minnows, got outcompeted on sheer volume.” She turned to Judith and to me.
“But stores like yours can play a different role.”
“What are we if not a business?” I asked, a little exasperated.
“You can be a refuge.”
I stared at her smiling face like she’d spoken Martian. “Refuge” wasn’t a word Alexander ever used in relation to the shop. “A what now?”
Judith gestured. “Tell us more, Mari.”