We are browsing a bookstore in Cleveland Park. Liam and I, and Lizzie and Siobhan, wandering the crowded store. And we are on the second floor on a balcony surround that overlooks the level below, when one of the assistants comes up to Liam and I. The two of us are sitting at a barstool table and she takes the third stool and sits with us.
Read moreShe has straight black greying hair fashioned into a bob and a pale chinless face, and she is young, maybe twenty-five. She wears an oversized jumper, green with white flecks, and she looks like a big bear in the jumper. And she is explaining to us how the shop gets us to buy more books.
Then suddenly, “You have the same pullover as me!”
And it is true because I have a similar jumper, dark green with little white bits. She pulls one of the white flecks on her jumper to illustrate the point.
“You want to take me out?” she asks, directing her question at me.
I am taken aback. I’ve never had an affair and I don’t know what to say or where to start. And I can’t think of where we would go. Somewhere where Siobhan wouldn’t bump into us, but something nice, like a walk. Like in Dupont Circle, for the restaurants? Or Cleveland Park itself? A place where there are more interesting shops.
I am trying to think of something to say when she walks away to help a customer.
Then Siobhan walks by. She takes the ladder down to the first floor.. And I peer over the edge to look where she went but the ladder she took drops straight down. I would follow her but it looks dangerous. The rungs are painted an orangey brown and it does not look like something for the shop visitors to use.
“You’re not supposed to go down there,” I hear someone complain.
I peer again over the edge of the balcony, and sure enough, the lower floor looks like a backroom warehouse. A tall thin man who could be the manager is down there, and is handing someone a book. Then he adjusts the ladder at an angle, and bounds up the rungs, his spider legs wheeling, taking the rungs two or three at a time, before he jumps over the gate at the top, onto our level.
I have to find the shop assistant. There is an argument upstairs, and perhaps she is there to deal with it, but when I get there, I see that she is the source of the commotion. She is surrounded by visitors to the shop. It looks like they are trying to calm her down, but she bursts through them and takes the stairs up to the next floor. And I follow her, pushing past the crowd and up the stairs, and once I arrive there I find myself outside, on the roof. The assistant is even higher, sitting on her knees on a dark grey awning that partially covers the rooftop area.
She is wailing. “What about Daniel, what about him?” she cries, as she flops back against the awning.
I think Daniel must be an ex, or a fired store assistant and I think it best to leave her alone and return downstairs to meet up with the others. Besides, I cannot think of places we would go or things we would do. Even though I really want to do something with her.
Back on the ground floor, the four of us exit the bookstore together. We walk up the road a few steps until I pause.
“Hang on,” I say to Lizzie, Liam, and Siobhan, “I will just be a minute.”
I pop back into the store to find the assistant. I am holding a flyer advertising books, but it has too much writing on it for a space to write my number, and tear off for her. And if I give her my number, maybe she won’t even call.
Instead, she can tell me her number and I will remember it, or will write it down on the back of my hand.