Chasing Sylvia Beach (5 page)

SHE HAD MET Daniel on a sunny day right before her trip to France. Spring was working its usual magic, making everything buzz with vitality. Couples strolled up and down Colfax Avenue, not noticing Lily running back to work from the Japanese noodle restaurant, clutching her book instead of a lover. She arrived at Capitol Books, crowded with customers on their lunch break. Valerie called her over to look at some books a customer had brought in to sell. Lily popped a mint in her mouth and headed to the back room, relishing the thought of going through a stash of books. A CD was playing Van Morrison, and Lily hummed along.

A young man in a red baseball jacket waited, surrounded by several cardboard boxes. Lily skirted the mess and stepped behind the desk, where she assumed an air of authority. Beginning with the box closest to her, she began assessing the books. She glanced at the seller, who wore his blond hair closely cropped. He leafed through a copy of
The Urantia Book
with a look of disdain. Surely the baseball jacket was an ironic choice. He didn’t appear to be the sporty type, and shuffling through his books confirmed it.

It took only a glance to see that this was a great buy. Great buys included lots of interesting books in excellent shape that didn’t need to be checked against the stock list. His books included a range of religious texts, spanning Confucianism to Judaism and some of the more liberal Catholic scholars, like Emmett Fox and Teilhard de Chardin. Lily made a stack of the certain buys and the few she would need to research, sneaking peeks at him. There was always a story behind someone selling his books. She couldn’t resist asking if he was going atheist.

He laughed at the question and a conversation struck up between them. They were engrossed in book talk when Valerie hurried in, coming behind the desk to retrieve a roll of cash register tape.

“Good buy?” She winked at Lily, who blushed. After giving the guy an approving look, Valerie returned to the front counter. Lily could have been mistaken, but she thought that he blushed now, too. She worked through his last boxes, mostly fiction, classics in trade paperback editions. She flipped through the pages—no underlining, no notes in the margins. Perfect. The rejects didn’t even fill one box. He would be getting a lot of books in trade or a decent amount of cash.

“Why are you selling your books? Are you moving?”

He folded his arms across his chest and appraised her.

“Are you always this nosy? They’re my books, if you’re thinking I stole them.”

Lily’s blush crept down her neck. She apologized for prying and focused on the books.

“I’m just clearing my shelves to make room. I’m not moving.”

She glanced up. He was smiling at her. Nearby a few shoppers lurked, perusing the shelves but really eavesdropping. In a shop this small, every conversation was public, and the introverted customers often eavesdropped. Lily knew this because she eavesdropped all the time herself. She pretended it was just the two of them and continued chatting while flipping through the books.

As she was finishing, a woman wearing a bike helmet came in to sell a handful of books from her backpack. The guy gathered up his empty boxes. No one did that. They just took their trade slips and left. And most people requested money, using their beloved books as a cash cow. Lily respected him for going for the book credit. It was twice as much as cash, after all, and who wouldn’t want more books?

Lily finished the transaction reluctantly, stamping his trade slip with “Capitol Books” and handing it to him along with the box of rejects.

“Can I donate them? And . . . how about a drink sometime?”

Behind him, the cyclist made a small thumbs-up gesture. Lily couldn’t believe her face could get hotter, but it did. “Sure,” she said, trying to ignore the woman.

“‘Sure’ I can donate the books or ‘sure’ you’ll have a drink with me?”

“Both.” She didn’t think she could blush any more, but the flush spread from her neck down her chest. They made plans and he left, leaving Lily completely unable to focus on the next seller’s books.

They met after work at the seedy bar next door. Politicians hunched around tables while scruffy street people cashed in their change at the bar. A few tumbleweeds wearing plaid shirts and work boots played pool in the back. Lily saw these kind of men on Colfax all the time—just passing through the plains, stopping in Denver to hook up with other drifters before heading on. The jukebox near the empty cigarette machine blared classic rock, the kind that didn’t offend any of the patrons. She would feel uncomfortable in the bar filled mostly with men if it weren’t for Daniel next to her. After he’d brought beers to their table, he told her that he worked in a bar downtown. “It’s nothing like this,” he laughed, looking over at the two men in plaid arguing loudly over the pool table. “It’s upscale.” He used his fingers to mark the undertone quotes around the word. It wasn’t long before they were discussing books.

“What are you reading now?” Daniel leaned toward her over the table.

Lily pulled a paperback copy of
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
from her purse. Daniel scanned the back cover.

“I’ve never gotten into that whole Parisian expatriate myth.”

Lily grew indignant. “What do you mean, ‘myth’? These were real people, living real life, making real art. Writers!” She snatched the book back from him. He pushed his hand through his hair.

“I can tell you’re into it.” He smiled and Lily’s anger melted away.

“I am. I’ve read a lot about that time period. I love France. I did, anyway.”

“What changed that?”

Lily put the book back into her bag. Right about now she wanted a cigarette, but she’d quit and had vowed never to smoke again. Besides, smoking was forbidden in bars now. That made it easier. She sipped her beer.

“Hmm . . . I still love it. But maybe you’re right. Maybe it is the myth of it. Did you know that Gertrude and Alice worked during World War I, making friends with American GIs and supplying them with food and goodies?”

She went on to recount the stories of the women’s lives with the artists. Daniel seemed to take as much pleasure in hearing about the stories as she did from reading them. He encouraged more than just the surface, and Lily kept talking. Usually she was the listener, absorbing the rants and complaints of her bookish customers. As he went to the bar to get another round, she had a moment of doubt: was he really interested in what she was saying or was he just trying to please her? But when he came back with their beers, the way he looked into her eyes made her believe his sincerity.

They talked and drank for a few hours, exchanging favorite book titles and making lists of each other’s recommendations. Lily was more buzzed than she had been in a long time. She’d never met someone like this at the bookstore, and it felt good to talk with someone her age about books she liked. At the end of the night, Daniel walked Lily to her bike parked in front of the bookstore. Cars whizzed by on Grant Street while she fumbled with the lock. She extracted the coil from the frame and stood, the bike in between them. Daniel watched her, his hands in his pockets.

“I had a good time tonight,” he said.

“I did, too. Thanks for the beers.” She held her helmet in one hand while shrugging on her backpack. A man crossing Colfax stopped in the crosswalk, shouting and gesturing at a car that had ignored the pedestrian signal, cutting him off in the middle of the street.

“It’s not too cool around here at night,” Lily said.

“Yeah, you better get home before the real weirdos come out.” They laughed. Lily’s palms began to sweat. He took her number and they made plans to go out again.

“Okay, then,” she said, moving to strap her helmet on. Daniel stepped closer, putting his hand on her arm. He leaned in and kissed her. She kissed him back and for a moment she forgot they were on the street. He tasted like beer and she liked that.

A man stepped out of the Newhouse Hotel next to the bookstore, pausing on the sidewalk to light a cigarette. He blew out his smoke and whistled. “Get a room!” he shouted. “Right here at the Newhouse!” He chortled. Lily and Daniel drew apart.

“Yeah. Right. Okay . . .” Lily stammered.

“Right, mm-hmm,” said Daniel, and bent toward Lily for one more kiss. They kissed for another minute, then Lily drew away.

“We’re going to attract a crowd this way. A very seedy crowd,” she added. She pulled her helmet on and Daniel stepped back and watched her get on her bike.

“Ride safe,” he said. She rang her bell and pedaled away, her legs wobbly. She zoomed home along the bike path on 16th Street, buoyed by Daniel and the potential for another date with him.

The next morning she relished the details of the date in her notebook with a cup of coffee from her French press and her cat, Mr. Petey, curling around her legs. Lily was playing out different Daniel scenarios: he’d come into the bookstore that afternoon and they’d make another date; he’d make her wait several days and she’d have to call him, showing him that she was assertive; or their date was a fluke and she’d never see him again.

The phone rang, saving her from her fantasies. It was her father calling from his home in Chicago. After the usual Chicago/Denver weather report, he announced that he had a surprise. A wave of fear shook Lily out of her romantic stupor. He was probably going to tell her that he and his girlfriend, Monique, were getting married. Lily knew it was inevitable, but it was still too soon for her. Her father went on to give her the good news: he was gifting her with a trip to Paris. Lily was shocked. He explained.

“There’s a literary festival next month at that bookstore Shakespeare and Company. Monique found out about it. I thought you’d like to go. You can get ideas for your writing. Get inspired. Have some fun.” Suspicion replaced fear as Lily listened. Her father wasn’t given to grand gestures and had never appeared interested in her passion for France. Maybe Monique was having a good influence after all. Maybe there was hope for a real relationship with her father.

“Wow, Dad, that’s a pretty big present. Are you sure there isn’t some guilt motive? You aren’t about to drop some big news on me, are you?”

“No, of course not. I’m just worried about you. You’re too young to be moping around a bookstore, spending all of your time reading. You’ve got to get out, live a little.”

She thought of Daniel. She was getting out, finally. She was living a little.

“Like you?”

He ignored her snippy tone. He told her the details, offering to buy her plane ticket and reserve her a hotel room if she could pay the rest. “I’ll get you there, then you’ll be on your own to make friends at the festival,” he said.

The thought of the festival both excited and scared Lily. She could attend lectures about literature and view films about authors. She’d sit in cafés with other writers, talking about books, crafting her own stories. It would be the push she needed to start writing. But too much was happening at once, and the thought of returning to Paris was daunting. That evening, drinking a glass of wine on Valerie’s patio in northwest Denver, Lily told her friend about her date and then sprung the news about Paris.

“What are we supposed to do while you’re frolicking around Paris with the literati?”

“I’ll only be gone for nine days,” Lily said. It had turned chilly, forcing Lily to pull her sweater on. “Let’s go inside.”

Valerie ignored her. “What about the columnist job you applied for?”

Lily slapped her forehead. “Ahh! I forgot about that. Do you think Susan will let me have the job even if I take time off to go to France?”

Valerie shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask her. It’s a great opportunity. I wouldn’t blow it. It’s your big chance to break into print.”

“You’re right. I’ll ask her about it when I send in my sample columns. The one about you is great. You’ll love it.”

“I’d love to drop everything and run off to Paris,” Valerie said. She pulled a box of cigarettes out of her bag. “Don’t kill me. I only do it when drinking.” She lit up and pocketed the lighter.

“Thanks a lot. That helps, smoking in front of me.” Lily helped herself to more wine and stood up with her glass. She stepped off the paved patio and away from the cigarette smoke. “Well, why don’t you?” she asked.

“Why don’t I what?”

“Drop everything and run off to Paris.”

“Excuse me? Did you notice I’m running a bookstore here?”

Lily pulled her gaze away from the stars and looked at Valerie.

“Hello! I know you are running a bookstore. That doesn’t mean you can’t take a vacation every once in a while.”

“I’d love to. I’d love to have the money to go somewhere. I’d love to be able to leave the store for a week. But I can’t. Enjoy it while you’re free, Lily.” She stubbed her cigarette out. Lily sat back down.

“Why do people always complain about their circumstances, like they have no control over them? Everyone has the ability to change their lives.” Even as Lily said it, she knew she was wrong. She’d seen enough people limping along Colfax Avenue to doubt that everyone was capable of positive change.

Val cleared her throat and spoke quietly. “Lily, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you’re one of the complainers. I love having you at the bookstore and I know you want more. What about your writing? Susan gave you that chance to apply for that column on the paper. Don’t blow it,” she repeated.