STORY: Burges On Her Lips

After Jon DeVin handed me the keys, he kissed me gallantly. Once on each cheek.

“Lazarus Books is all yours, babycakes. My dear, sweet LB is yours. Call Lucy early next week. Never lie to nor attempt to seduce your accountant. Lucy knows the books, at least the monied ones, such as they are. Listen to her. Perfectly and always.

“You, quite to the contrary of Lucy, you dazzling and wonderful woman, you know The Books. These beautiful, living beings that you’ve helped me to collect, categorize, price, sell, and steward for these many years. That is the knowledge that matters.”

He looked a long moment at me.

“If only you weren’t a woman, dear one. Well, c’est l’amour, non? I love you in any case. But not in every case. Such a shame. Well…”.

Jon ran out of bluster. He touched a tear from his own eye.

“Where were we?”

“Lucy. We were at Lucy. I shan’t forget you ever, Jon. Not ever.”

“Oh, please do, mon chéri. Please do forget me! Your entire world is at the edge of expanding beautifully. As for Lucy — please do pay attention to her. Lucy will make sure you neither starve nor liquidate, dear girl.

“And most of all, do not even dare to cry right now or I will never leave. Lazurus Books is yours now. Immediately now. Papers signed. Keys in your hand.

“Laurence and I are heading to Belgium to fall in love again for the rest of our lives, that poor man. Au revoir, mon chéri.”

“Au revoir, Jon. I can’t thank you enough,” I said as cheerfully as I could, ignoring that he was nothing but a blur, my eyes and heart having entirely teared up over losing his guidance, his friendship. Not even daring to acknowledge my throbbing fear of failure.

“No, dear woman. You can’t. But I shall take my freedom and flee. Watch for a box now and then. We still have quite a cluckery of French language enthusiasts here at Lazurus, your Lazurus. You’ll soon have the entire midwest’s bibliothèque belge clientele in your lovely palm.”

Then he was gone. Just like that.

Lucy was certainly, well, knowledgeable about all the business things: taxes, amortization and depreciation, indemnities, insurance, accrual accounting; simply put, the entire capitalist palette. I thanked the land and sea for her.

In between chain-smoking her noxious hand-rolled cigarettes, she made it clear: I was to run the shop and she would, exclusively, manage all things accountancy. She then gave me a not altogether palatable, five-hour-long tour of the accountancy side of Lazarus Books. Truthfully, had Lazarus himself ever heard the lecture, he would have fought to remain dead.

We were, each of us, together and separately, quite excellent at what we had done for Lazarus in the past. We committed, each to the other, to a financially stable and sustainable future. We swore, formally, that we would “stay in our own lanes, sister,” as she put it.

I nearly cried with relief.

Within a few weeks, sure enough, an exquisite set of books arrived from Jon. A biography of Rene Magritte dictated by his wife, Georgette. Several pre-World War Two cookbooks. Romance novels in Walloon. A sea captain’s textbook in Flemish. Four tomes on the purpose and practice of landscape architecture by G. le Grelle. Dozens more.

I savored my tears of joy, making sure that they did not stain any cover or page. I may be emotional, but never reckless.

Almost never.

As I entered each disquisition, title, and volume into Lucy’s tracking system, I felt into the very bones of the store. Two stories were chock-a-block full. Mine to fill and to empty, curating the fill side and hawking sales toward empty shelves. Such that I might spend ever more time filling it and emptying it again. Always making sure that Lucy could pay us both to do what we most loved to do.

What might I rotate off-shelf for a season? What might I shift to a more eye-catching corner?

I found myself absently caressing an 1876 book of erotica from Charleroi. That was the one.

I rushed shakily to the front door, locked it, and went to the ladies’ room.

Thirty minutes later, released, restored, and renewed, I began to rework my shelves, this time literally, not figuratively, if you’ll permit the pun.

A week on, early dusk on a Tuesday, I was reading a volume of Grimm’s “Children’s and Household Tales” when she came in.

“Welcome to the shop,” I smiled. Jon and I never voiced the shop name to customers. I carried his voluminous and carefully crafted superstitions with the same precise tenderness as I did Lucy’s well-balanced capital debt plan.

She was rather tall. Liquid milk chocolate eyes. Her hair was perfect, classically salt and pepper, straight and lustrous barely touching her shoulders. Hands perfect. Her makeup was perfectly subdued and perfectly executed.

Corporate, I thought. Attorney — no, no. A judge? I wondered. Chief of staff for a US Senator? Neurosurgeon? CIA?

“Excuse me,” she said, smiling.

“I am ever so sorry. Books have a way of eroding my manners,” I babbled. Never mind turning my cheeks into beets.

“Nonsense,” she grinned with care. “You are why I came here, or rather, your reputation. I apologize, I’ve made you blush.”

“No apology necessary. It’s probably the pad thai I had for lunch.”

“From Thai A-One?” She beamed.

“Where else? At least outside of Thailand.” I felt my smile push my blossomed cheeks past my ears, my face reddened beyond the Level Three Spice I loved.

“You must know it, then?”

“Indeed, I do,” she said. “I’ve never been to Thailand, sorry to say. I wonder, with that restaurant equidistant to my office and your bookstore, why there would ever be a need to leave the city.”

My face was more rubicund than you could get with Einstein’s gravitational redshift. Depending, of course, where in the universe you might be standing.

“You’re too kind,” I managed to whisper. “Is there some particular book I can help you find?”

“Yes, thank you very much.”

I wondered, if I rested my face on her shoulder, would my red cheeks clash or complement the emerald necklace at her throat?

“I’m a social science researcher,” she said. “I spend a lot of time with numbers and books, in that order. My social skills are often less skillish than I wish they were.

“Skillish,” I beamed. “Brilliant.”

“Thank you. It’s good to mangle language on purpose. My name is Sally.”

Her hand was wonderfully warm and strong.

“Enchanté,” I said.

“You?” she asked.

“Me?”

“Your name? ‘Shopkeep’ seems too formal. ‘Bookseller’ is accurate, but a bit obvious,” she smiled impishly.

“Ah, yes! A name. I have one! Yes! It’s Evelyn. Please call me Evie, if you like.”

“Enchanté, Evie. Now, to answer your question, I’m looking for no book in particular. I do love to read in French. It relaxes me and gets stacks of numbers and data gremlins out of my mind in the evenings. Have you a collection I might look at?”

“Have I!”

After that, she came to Lazarus often. Most days, she made a purchase. Not every time. We would chat briefly and then she would head confidently to my very well-curated, I certainly do say so myself, French collection. Thanks in part to Jon’s Antwerpian generosity, I filled a sweet corner in the back with children’s books, literature, philosophy, and cookbooks. Histories of clowns, dynasties, and gardens.

All in French. With some in Walloon just for fun.

Normandy. That was my secret nickname for the French language area. It was all but hidden around the corner from the entryway, deep into the store. Once past my capitalist-cashier post, through the Macabre Arts section, past the stairs that led up to the more pedestrian collections and college sell-backs, between the Early African and Contemporary African fine and folk art collections, one made a hard left at the end of the walkway right where the astrophysics and space exploration trove lay, and thence, beyond my direct eyesight into Normandy.

Once there one found a beautifully small teak table, a comfy chair with a straight back, and an electric tea kettle at the end of the eddy, the whole of it opening onto a small window overlooking the park.

When I wasn’t tending the till, trying to accomplish the buckets of Lucy-assigned data acquisition and reporting tasks, or filling online orders, I spent much of my workdays in Normandy. I crafted it for me, curated it for the real booklovers, and cherished it entirely.

Best of all, it was close enough to the Ladies’ such that I could quickly tend to my own shelving, which was nearly every day, these books being as cerebrally seductive as they could be.

Weeks later, on a Tuesday late afternoon, we bonded, the researcher and I, wordlessly, which is rather unexpected for two bibliophiles.

Wordlessly, but not soundlessly.

She arrived looking a little disheveled. Well, not exactly. Perfect hair. Perfect make-up. Expensively sensible shoes. A business not-at-all-casual suit that perfectly matched her milk chocolate eyes.

She was always perfect. But today, certainly shaken. I would never be so forward as to be informal, but I did manage to say, “The tea kettle will be so happy to see you!”

Before I could mentally shout “DORK!” at me, she reached across the counter and squeezed my hand! She was strong but tender, her skin soft but defined. There was, I thought, a small tremor as she allowed the contact to linger just an extra moment.

She touched me!

“Bless you, dear. You sweet soul. I am so happy to be in this refuge today.”

I was more than a little concerned, without knowing quite why. She didn’t feel especially aggravated, worried, or beset upon. Maybe I was too busy trying to keep my composure in her presence to notice.

Nevertheless, I managed to gather a small stack of Wodaabe funerary mask art books, a rare edition of death poems written to Abraham Lincoln, and several travel guides to famous graves. Macabre Arts buyers are notoriously fickle and easily bored.

Working in that area of Lazarus would give me a clear view of the front door to the shop. Never mind that it just happened to be close enough to Normandy that I could quickly respond to a call for assistance.

Just in case. Close enough to lend support. If she should need it.

Well. OK. I also just wanted to be close to her. In case she needed me for something.

Anything.

As I ordered and shelved, I heard her turning pages. She was always quite gentle with the books. Searching today, it seemed to me, for something in particular. I considered, then reconsidered, then damn near triggered an anxiety attack thinking about just boldly going around the corner and offering any assistance she might need.

Luckily, all those emotions paralyzed me long enough to hear her.

Her breathing had been soft but slowly gained pace, then became a bit sharp. Was that a gasp?

Was she…?

After a few minutes, she sighed deeply. She made a small coo sound, tried to clear her throat, utterly falling into a quiver.

That’s when I knew. Just like me.

Sapiosexual.

Soon thereafter, I renamed Normandy. ‘Bruges’ was far more romantic. Much less war. Much more love.

We were lovers of books, Sally and I. Intimately so.

Together. At a distance.

It was the best long-term relationship either of us might have imagined. I never told her that I knew. Lovers don’t share every secret, after all.

Except on Milk Chocolate Eye Tuesdays.