Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

“Oh, their hamburgers are delicious.”

Mrs. Hershfeld looks at her as if she’s committed treason. Us versus them again. Isabelle realizes her mistake immediately and her first impulse is to apologize and placate, and then she thinks better of it and forges ahead.

“And then down at the corner of that same block is a wonderful old bookshop, Noah’s Ark — right, Mrs. Hershfeld? It reminds me of a shop I used to go to all the time when I was in college — Seaman’s, it’s called — where the books are piled up everywhere and you can spend hours just browsing until you find this hidden gem, a book you’ve heard of and always wanted to read but never could find. Oh, I love stores like that.”

“Well, the next time you’re in, tell Meir you live next to me and see what you get. He spends his days sitting at the front counter pretending he’s one of us working people, but all he really does is get fatter and fatter by the day.”

And the next day Isabelle walks into the bookstore to find part of Mrs. Hershfeld’s rant to be accurate. Her brother, Meir Schapiro, is a very large man. And he’s sitting at the front counter, reading a book and working his way through a bag of Doritos. To the right of the front door, in a shallow alcove, are a secondhand sofa and two easy chairs around a small steamer trunk serving as a coffee table — somewhere to rest and read and fall in love with a book.

Meir looks up when he sees Isabelle come in, says, “Welcome,” as if he means it, and goes back to his book, leaving Isabelle to browse and dawdle.

She makes a tour of the shelves lining the walls, then repeats the walk around, only this time she edges closer and closer to the center. It’s all here, everything she loved about Seaman’s: stacks crammed with secondhand books, volumes on esoteric subjects — witchcraft, Malaysian basket weaving, American foreign policy in the Depression — and early, out-of-print novels by established writers. It’s here that she finds Daniel’s third book and takes it to Meir at the front counter.

“Ah, Daniel Jablonski,” Meir says as he looks over the book. “Not one of his best, I’m afraid.”

“But still worth reading, don’t you think?”

Meir lifts his shoulders in uncertainty. “The first two — gems.”

“I know!”

“But this one…” Meir shakes his head.

“Yes?”

Meir thinks for a minute. He wants to get this right. The girl seems so eager for his opinion. Or maybe just eager in general, full of life. Attractive, very attractive to a man who’s eating himself into a certain grave. “The first novel, about his father, was like spun gold. Shining, as if each word had to be there, in that order, making those sentences. There wasn’t a false step.”

“And tough, too, don’t you think?”

“Honest, I would say.”

“Very,” Isabelle agrees.

“And the second book, about his marriage dissolving, it felt just as raw.”

“But the writing was even better.”

“You felt he’d hit his stride as a writer.”

“Yes!” Isabelle is so happy to be exchanging praise about Daniel with this complete stranger, she’s slightly giddy.

“But when he decided to write this one,” Meir says as he picks up the book, “I don’t know. It’s about Harry Bridges and the San Francisco longshoremen’s strike of 1934. Did you know that?”

“Not until I saw it here.”

“Maybe he thought it would elevate his game, you know, historical subject, but instead it just shouts Look at me, I’m trying to be significant .”

“And that’s so unlike him.”

“The critics hated the book.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“And they were brutal—‘self-important,’ ‘stillborn,’ ‘lifeless,’ they called it. And even worse. So”—and here Meir smiles at her—“read it at your own peril. Either you will see some glimmer of his early brilliance in it or you will be disillusioned with Jablonski for good. Risky business, reading it.”

“I’ll take the risk. I’m inclined to see the glimmers.”

“A hopeful girl,” Meir says, “I like that.” And he’s smitten.

And from that first conversation about Daniel’s work comes Isabelle’s job at Noah’s Ark, Used Books.

When Daniel and Stefan leave Colorado Springs, their exit has nothing to do with Daniel’s disdain for his students. They leave to keep Stefan out of harm’s way. All through the winter and early spring, on the days that Daniel teaches, Stefan continues to haunt the High Plains Ice Hall.

Over the months he has honed his routine to a tight choreography. And he never deviates from it. There is immense satisfaction for him in the repetition of predictable events. He enters from the same glass door every day, farthest left of the four that make up Gate B. With purpose he makes his way up to the very top row of Section 210, where he waits patiently for his reward, the first sighting of Mitsuko Kita as she floats onto the ice to begin her practice. The despicable coach (and jailer, as Stefan thinks of him) is always there, as well, stern-faced, punitive, from time to time calling out abrupt and harsh instructions, but Stefan tries to ignore him. If he dwells too much on the small Japanese man, it ruins his day.

Instead Stefan goes to work: he makes his way down to the third row of section 109, mere feet from the ice, takes the first seat on the aisle, and assembles himself for his task. He pulls a spiral notebook from his backpack, its green cover curling from extensive use, and then a series of pens, which he lays across his lap. The red one is for mistakes and errors of judgment, the black for moves Mitsuko has mastered. Here Stefan’s comments are cut-and-dried. What is working, what isn’t. Every move is given a numerical value. But the purple pen — that is for his personal observations. And here he allows himself more leeway. His system is meticulous and foolproof, he feels. He secretly hopes that one day Mitsuko will be able to take a look at his immaculate charts and know exactly where she is — her strengths, her weaknesses, even the path to perfection.

There are other people in the arena watching the skaters as they work through their practices, so Stefan’s observation and recording garner no scrutiny. He stays put in his seat on the aisle and doesn’t raise any kind of alarm. He never approaches the skater. He never intrudes.

It is as he follows Mitsuko home to her apartment that he gets into trouble. Even though he walks at least a block behind, hoping to blend in with the rest of the pedestrians, it isn’t long before both the tiny skater and her coach, Hideo Suzuki, begin to notice him. He’s always there. He takes the same position every time, across the street from her apartment house, leaning against a leafless tree, to watch her walk into the building, waiting for the glass door to click shut behind her so he can experience that moment of exquisite relief — she’s safe for now! And then he waits for the Japanese coach to move off down the street and turn the corner and be gone.

But Hideo Suzuki has taken to circling the block and surreptitiously watching Stefan watch Mitsuko’s building, making sure the large young man doesn’t make a move toward his skater. And Stefan doesn’t. He’s not ready. His notes aren’t complete. His courage hasn’t been gathered yet, so he simply stands across the street, his eyes on the second-floor window where sometimes, if he’s lucky, he can catch a glimpse of Mitsuko as she walks through her living room.

“You’re six-foot-four!” Daniel roars at him some weeks later, when he has made his way, somehow, to the police station to claim his wayward son. “And you dress like a homeless person! Didn’t it occur to you that someone might notice you?”