Stewart and Jean Read online

  She stepped back. She crouched down to pick up the book; the whole time she kept her eyes on Stewart, which meant that she had to fish around blindly with her hand to find the book, which probably made her look ridiculous, possibly crazy.

  Stewart held her gaze, too, but he did it uncertainly, as if he weren’t sure why she was reacting like this. Putting on a show for everyone else. Fucking with her. It was weird, the sense of betrayal that was mixed in with everything she was feeling. Probably because of how cute she’d thought he was when they’d first met, back when their date was going well. She remembered how excited she’d been, when it had turned out they were both from Arkansas.

  She placed the book on the counter. Her voice was like a heavy bucket filled to the brim that she was carefully trying to move without spilling as she said, “This is really fucked up.”

  Stewart nodded and said, “Yeah,” as if her observations were regrettable but true. He picked up the book. “Did you want to purchase this?”

  “Fuck you,” she managed to say, and walked carefully out. It was harder than it had been the other night at the beer garden.

  Upstairs at her office she went into the bathroom. What she really wanted was to wash her face with cold water, but she was wearing make-up and didn’t want to screw it up. Even so, she managed to cool off pretty well. Or so she thought. But she didn’t last ten minutes at her computer till she had to again retreat to the ladies’ room.

  This time her co-worker Marissa noticed her condition. As Jean walked by her cubicle Marissa asked if she was okay, but Jean seemed not to hear. Marissa hesitated, then returned to her computer screen, where she had been trading “yo’ mamma” jokes with a friend over Instant Messenger. Jean was probably just sick, like to her stomach, and wouldn’t appreciate Marissa intruding. But Marissa couldn’t keep her mind on her work. She knew good and well that Jean hadn’t looked merely sick to her stomach—something had happened. She’d looked like someone had died, and it was sad to imagine her alone in the bathroom with whatever the bad thing was. Finally Marissa got up to go check on her, out of concern but also a bit out of nosiness and boredom.

  Besides, she was always on the look-out for chances to get to know Jean better. Marissa found her co-worker fascinating. She was so smart and confident and centered. Almost like she was on a higher plane or something.

  Upon entering the bathroom, Marissa saw that Jean hadn’t even managed to make it to a stall. Her body was a curve supported by the straight, joint-locked left arm attached to the rim of the sink, quivering with tension. Her right hand was raised to her face, her head was bowed. Approaching from behind, Marissa could see that Jean was shaking, but couldn’t yet tell if she was crying, really. “Jean?” she asked, holding out her hand but not quite daring to touch Jean with it, wanting to see her face but afraid that walking around to look at it unasked would be a breach of privacy.

  “Hey, Marissa,” Jean answered in a raspy, shaky whisper.

  This was enough of an invitation for Marissa to step around in front of Jean, look at her face, and come closer to touching her arm, though her hand still hovered an inch or two away. “What happened?”

  Most of Jean’s downturned face was hidden by her hand, but Marissa could make out something like a grimace on her mouth, and the noise she made was almost like a disbelieving laugh. She shook her head, and said, “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Of course I will. Come on, tell me what’s wrong.”

  Jean took in and released a few more shuddery breaths. “There’s a guy in the bookstore downstairs.”

  Then it seemed like she would quit talking. “Yeah?” prompted Marissa. A guy in the bookstore downstairs? What was the worst he could have done, flash her? That didn’t seem like such a big deal.

  Still in that shaky voice, still with her face hidden, Jean said, “We’re both from the same place.”

  Marissa tried to recall Jean’s talk about home. “Kentucky?” she hazarded.

  “No. Arkansas.”

  “Okay.”

  Marissa waited. It started to seem like Jean wasn’t going to volunteer anything more. Could it be some Southern thing? Although she was starting to suspect Jean just plain didn’t want to talk about it, she couldn’t help but prod her once more: “And, so, I mean, did he do something?”

  “No. I did.” Jean shrugged, and sighed, and shook her head as if it were just one of those things, and said, “I shot his brother.”

  “What?”

  “I shot his brother.”

  “Like, with what?”

  “I shot him in the chest with a gun and killed him. This was in Rogers. Rogers, Arkansas. That’s not far from Fayetteville. We were at some friends’ house, but the friends weren’t there. Me and him had been flirting, I guess. He tried to rape me, so I grabbed the gun and I shot him.”

  Marissa gaped at her. “Oh. My. God.”

  Jean’s trembling intensified, and a tear slid down her chin out from behind her hand. “And I don’t feel fucking bad about it,” she said, her voice thicker.

  “Oh my God,” Marissa said again, then, rallying herself, “No, of course you shouldn’t. You have a right to defend yourself!” Privately, she was reeling. It was one thing to know that Jean hailed from gun country. It was another to hear she’d killed somebody with one, regardless of the circumstances. And apparently without much legal fuss.

  Soon she was able to blink past the after-image of the revelation, and return to the issue at hand: “You said this guy’s brother was in the bookstore downstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “What, he just happens to be in town?”

  “He moved to New York. He fucking works down there now. I guess he’s stalking me.” And she recounted to Marissa how she’d met Stewart; how he’d supposedly been looking on OKCupid for New York girls, and happened to see her picture; how that apparently had been motive enough for him to move up here; how he’d sent her this charming albeit intense message on OKCupid, and after going back and forth about it she’d written back and agreed to meet; how they’d been having actually a pretty nice date, when Stewart had sprung his trap on her.

  “Jesus,” Marissa said. One of the oddest parts of the story, to her, was the notion of some guy in Arkansas idly scrolling through the dating profiles of girls a thousand miles away in New York. Why? Because he couldn’t jerk off without fantasizing he was boning someone in a big city?

  “What are you going to do?” asked Marissa.

  “I don’t know,” Jean said. She still had not quite lost control, though her voice was slightly wobblier and tears were still leaking out from behind her hand. “I mean, I guess he’s just going to be down there now.”

  It was true that Marissa had been in part distracted from her compassion by the fact that this was some of the juiciest gossip she’d ever heard. But now she began to realize the horror of Jean’s situation. “No,” she said firmly. “No, he can’t do that.”

  “It’s not illegal to work there.”

  “We’ll explain to the owner and make him fire the guy.”

  Jean shrugged dubiously.

  By now, Marissa had touched Jean. Her hand squeezing the other woman’s shoulder, she said, “Anyway, for right now the important thing is that we need to get you out of here. Just say you’re sick and go home, I’ll cover for you.” A thought struck her. “How did this guy know you worked here?”

  “I told him, like an idiot. During our date.”

  “You’re not an idiot, don’t call yourself that. But you didn’t tell him where you live, did you? Like, your address, or exact train stop?”

  “No.” Jean paused. She seemed calmer, trembled less; Marissa thought that this concrete question, scary as it might be, was distracting Jean somewhat from her plight. “I don’t remember doing that. I’m sure I wouldn’t have. I mean, he knows I live in Astoria. He could tell that from my OKCupid profile.”

  “Right. Well, listen, I don’t mean to freak you out, but you need to make su
re he doesn’t follow you home. Like, wait for you to come out of the building and trail you without your noticing.”

  “Right.” Again, the introduction of a practical consideration seemed to have a calming effect. Jean’s voice was steadier, and she even let her hand fall from her face to reveal her damaged makeup. However, she still didn’t look directly at Marissa as she said, “But, I mean, I’d never know for sure if he wasn’t trailing me, or if I just didn’t notice him.”

  “For today at least you don’t have to worry about that. After you leave I’ll go downstairs and make sure he’s still there in the store. If it turns out he did disappear around the same time you left, then I’ll call and warn you and we’ll figure something out.”

  Jean agreed to the plan. Marissa escorted her down to hail a taxi. Marissa told everyone that it was convenient for her to accompany Jean, since she hadn’t taken her lunch break yet and could go ahead and do that now.

  Marissa put Jean in a cab and watched till it was safely out of sight. Then she turned to face Temple Books.

  She went in and scanned the interior. She didn’t love hanging out in bookstores as much as Jean did, but she’d been in here several times and the place was more or less familiar, and as she scanned the employees behind the register she recognized most of them. There was the Jamaican in the purple knit shirt, who she thought was a manager. There was a guy in a tweed jacket and a bow tie, even though he was only like forty—he was kind of cool-looking, actually. The third guy behind the register had to be this Stewart person. He wore a black T-shirt and had a neatly-trimmed goatee, just like Jean had described him.

  Marissa pretended to be browsing through the bestseller tables as she eyed the guy. Jean had also called him cute, but Marissa didn’t see that at all. Sure, his haircut was fine and he wasn’t fat or anything. But his eyes were too big, almost buggy, and you could tell from his face he’d have jowls one day.

  He glanced at her, then away, then again glanced at her and looked away, then finally held eye contact and raised his shoulders and jutted his head at her with a “what?!” gesture. It affronted Marissa that he would have the gall to even return her gaze, considering the shit he was pulling. She marched up to his register, tilting her head back so she could look up at him, and demanded, “Excuse me, but are you looking at me?”

  “You were looking at me, ma’am,” he said, as if she were crazy.

  “That’s right, you were, Miss,” said the Jamaican manager, whom she’d totally forgotten about even though he’d been standing right next to Stewart the whole time.

  “This is between me and him,” said Marissa. Which actually wasn’t true, it was between him and Jean, but that didn’t occur to her right now.

  “So handle it after he gets off work, please,” said the manager.

  “I’ve never even seen this girl before,” the guy Stewart told his boss.

  That was true, he had no way of knowing who she was. But, again, his whole scheme struck her as so egregious that it seemed he simply had to know what she was mad about; if someone walked to him and was angry, surely he had to say to himself, Maybe they’re angry about the shitty thing I’m doing. So it was with outrage at his dishonesty that she said, “You know good and well why I’m here.”

  “Not really,” he said. Before she could lash out at him, he added, “Are you friends with Jean or something?,” thereby proving her point, that he’d known all along what she was riled about.

  “Yes,” she said. “What makes you think you can come around and harass people?”

  “I’m not harassing anybody. I’m just working here.”

  “What is she talking about?” asked the manager. “Harassing who?”

  “That girl from earlier,” Stewart told him, “the one who stepped on the book.”

  That was all the manager needed to hear: “All right, ma’am, I think this is something you and Stewart can discuss after his shift.”

  “Don’t you want to know what kind of person you’ve got working here?”

  “Not especially.”

  Before she could retort, Stewart cut her off. Glaring at her, he demanded, “I’d like to know. What kind of person?” His voice had risen along with hers and people were watching them now. Customers who had been hidden among the shelves were wandering to the front of the store to see what was going on. “Huh? What kind? Tell us, what kind?”

  It was on the tip of Marissa’s tongue to reply, “A rapist.” She was glad she stopped herself, because of course that wasn’t true. He was the brother of a rapist, but that wasn’t at all the same thing. She nearly started talking loudly about what he was doing, harassing Jean with his mere presence if nothing else, but explaining it might be tricky—she didn’t want to sound like she was mad at him because his brother had been shot. Moreover, she’d have to reveal that Jean had shot a guy, and since that was private information she ought to consult her friend first.

  Which meant she was stuck, seething under his glare, unable to respond to it. What with the righteous anger painted over his face, anyone casually watching would have thought he was the wronged party, he played it so well.

  “You know good and well,” was all she said.

  He said, “Anything I know, I’m not afraid for you to say in front of these people.”

  “Yeah, well.” The realization of how little she could say had not only galled her, it had also put her in a state of high anxiety as she tried to figure out how she was going to extricate herself from this scene with dignity. The options were limited. Finally, she said, “We’ll be watching you,” which she knew sounded stupid even as she said it, and she spun on her heel to leave.

  Behind her, Stewart called, “Thanks, ma’am, be sure to come again.”

  Three

  Dan, the owner, had heard the commotion from his office, and apparently having no stronger distraction at the moment called Stewart up there to interrogate him.

  This was Stewart’s first time in the office since he’d been hired three days ago, the day after his date with Jean. It was fairly organized but not exactly neat: it was too lived-in for that, constantly in the middle of being used by a busy man.

  Stewart found Dan kind of intimidating. With his big unblinking eyes, his grizzled graying beard, his wiry short frame taut in his jogging shorts with T-shirt tucked in, he struck Stewart as a real New Yorker.

  “So what the hell was all that down there?” demanded Dan.

  Still fresh off the bus from Arkansas, Stewart felt from Dan’s tone that they were on the verge of a fistfight. “I never saw that girl before,” he said, maintaining an appearance of calm.

  Dan turned his head so that he was looking at Stewart out of the corners of his eyes, wary of this obvious bullshit. “So you have no idea who that girl was? She just came in here out of the blue and started yelling at you, and you didn’t do anything at all to provoke it?”

  “I never saw her before, but she’s friends with a girl I know.”

  “Well, how do you know this other girl?”

  That was a complicated question. But Dan was losing patience, so Stewart said, “We went on a date.” It was kind of a lie, but at least it was true.

  Like Stewart had flipped a switch, Dan sat back and said “Oh.” He relaxed into his chair, all of a sudden twenty percent less intense. He nodded. “Gotcha.”

  “It wasn’t, like, a serious thing....”

  “Hey, hey, I understand. Women. Only, try not to bring your personal business around the store. Okay?”

  “Sure. But, I mean, if she does come by again, I can’t really stop her....”

  “Hey, Stewart, I told you—I understand. Just do your best, all right? That’s all anybody can do.”

  As he sent him back down onto the floor, Dan clapped him on the shoulder. Stewart almost felt like he was going to get a promotion.

  Back downstairs, Stewart retook his place at the register. Peter, the manager, looked at him curiously, but when Stewart’s shrug indicated he wasn’t inter
ested in discussing it, Peter nodded and asked him to go out on the floor and do some shelving.

  Charles was shelving too, somewhat lackadaisically, and he let himself go almost into a trance as he watched Stewart. Charles had been hired only the week before, and so took an interest in his fellow newbie. Plus Stewart was from Arkansas. On the one hand, that seemed moderately exotic; on the other hand, Charles himself was from Spokane, which was not exactly cosmopolitan, either. And though he’d been in New York nearly two and a half years he still felt like a new arrival.

  Even though there were still books on the cart he’d been assigned, Charles went to help Stewart with his. He timed it so that he and Stewart stepped up to the cart at the same moment. “Hey,” he said.

  Stewart barely glanced at him, a look that suggested it was weird for Charles to be talking to him when they had all this work. “Hey,” he said, and walked off with a stack of books, not pausing to chat.

  Charles worked on his own cart until he was able to again time a simultaneous arrival at Stewart’s. “So,” he said quickly, before Stewart could escape, “can I ask you something? What was all that, earlier? With that girl?”

  “Just some crazy person.”

  “Really? I mean, do you know her, or...?”

  “Listen, I don’t want Dan to come out and see me yakking on the clock, what with me being new and having been involved in that big scene earlier.”

  “Oh, sure, sure. I mean, I’m new, too, so....”

  They each went back to working on their own carts. Even though Stewart’s was more difficult—there were fewer copies of each book, and books from all over the store, which meant he had to run all over and hunt for the right spot on the shelf, whereas all Charles’s books were from General Fiction and, while he had about the same number of volumes, he had only about half as many titles—despite that, Stewart finished and went back to refill his cart well before Charles. That made Charles slightly uneasy. He’d been telling himself it was okay that he was slower than everyone else, since he was still new, but Stewart was a week newer than him. Of course, there had been those few minutes when Charles had been helping with Stewart’s cart, instead of doing his own.