Chapter 18

Her name was Film.

She came in on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of December, when The Last Page was doing the particular kind of business it did in the weeks before the holidays — steadily busy, the kind of busy that had a warm, purposeful quality to it, people coming in with lists and coming in without lists and coming in just because a bookstore in December felt like the right place to be.

Lookmhee was at the front display, rearranging it for the season — she had a theme she had been thinking about for two weeks, something about books as gifts not just for other people but for yourself, something about the permission to want things — when the door opened and Film walked in.

She was tall, with a canvas bag over one shoulder and the slightly distracted look of someone who had been walking and thinking at the same time and had arrived somewhere without fully deciding to. She looked at the display. Then at the room. Then at Lookmhee.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m looking for something but I don’t know what it is.”

Lookmhee straightened up from the display. “That’s my favorite kind of request,” she said.

Film looked at her. Then she smiled — warm and easy and slightly surprised, the smile of someone who had expected a different kind of answer. “Good,” she said. “Then we’re starting well.”

She was, as it turned out, looking for a gift.

Not for someone specific — that would have been easier. She was looking for the kind of book that could be given to someone she had just met and liked but did not yet know well, someone who seemed like a reader but whose tastes she hadn’t mapped yet, something that said I noticed you without saying I presume to know you.

“That’s a very specific brief,” Lookmhee said.

“I know.” Film set her canvas bag down and looked at the shelves. “I overthink gifts.”

“Most people do.”

“I’ve been thinking about this one for two weeks.”

“That’s dedication.” Lookmhee looked at the shelves too, running through the mental catalogue she kept. “Tell me about the person. Not what they like — tell me what they’re like.”

Film looked at her sideways. “You’re good at this.”

“It’s the job,” Lookmhee said. “But also — the what they’re like tells you more about the right book than the what they like does. Anyone can give someone a book in their genre. The right book is usually adjacent to their genre. It’s the thing they didn’t know they were looking for.”

Film was quiet for a moment. Then she said: “She’s precise. She pays attention to things other people miss. She’s — the kind of person where when she says something you feel like you’ve been seen, but you’re not sure when she looked.”

Lookmhee went still.

She looked at the shelves for a moment.

Then she said: “I know exactly the book.”

✦ ✦ ✦

She found it in the essays section — the slim collection about the grammar of gestures, the things that went unsaid, the language of small actions. The one she had written a recommendation card for, months ago now, the card that was still in the display because Dao had told her to leave it.

She handed it to Film.

Film read the back. Read the first page standing there in the aisle. Looked up.

“How did you know?” she said.

“The way you described her,” Lookmhee said. “Someone who sees things and shows it through attention rather than words — this is the book for that person. It’s about exactly that.”

Film looked at her for a moment with an expression that was open and a little wondering. “Do you do this for everyone?”

“I try to,” Lookmhee said. “Some people are easier to read than others.”

“What am I?” Film said. Not coyly. Just — curious.

Lookmhee looked at her. At the canvas bag and the thoughtful eyes and the smile that came easily and the two weeks of thinking about a gift for someone she had just met.

“Someone who pays attention to people,” Lookmhee said. “And cares about getting things right.”

Film looked at her for a beat longer than was entirely neutral. Then she smiled the warm, easy smile again. “I’ll take it,” she said. “The book, I mean.”

“I know,” said Lookmhee.

✦ ✦ ✦

She came back on Saturday.

Not a Saturday morning — that was Common Ground, that was Sonya, that was untouched — but a Saturday afternoon, when Lookmhee was covering the second half of the shift alone because her colleague had a thing and Dao had a supplier meeting.

Film came in with two coffees from the place on the corner — not Common Ground, a different one, one Lookmhee had been to once and found perfectly adequate — and held one out.

“I was passing,” she said.

“You live in the other direction,” said Dao, who had apparently not left yet and was putting her coat on by the door.

Film looked at Dao. Dao looked at Film with the mild, appraising expression she used on everyone.

“I took the long way,” Film said pleasantly.

Dao made a sound that communicated several things simultaneously — none of them unkind, all of them observant — and left.

Film handed Lookmhee the coffee.

Lookmhee took it. She looked at it. She thought about the coffees left at her door without notes every morning, which were a different thing entirely, which she was not going to think about right now.

“Thank you,” she said.

“The book was perfect,” Film said. She leaned against the counter with the easy manner of someone comfortable in spaces they had just arrived in. “She cried. A little. She said it was the first time someone had given her a book that felt like it understood her.”

Lookmhee felt something warm in her chest at that. “That’s what books are for.”

“That’s what you did,” Film said. “The book was just the vehicle.”

Lookmhee looked at her coffee. “You’re generous.”

“I’m accurate.” She smiled. “Your word, from the other day.”

Lookmhee looked up. “You remembered that.”

“I pay attention,” Film said. “You said so yourself.”

They talked for the rest of the afternoon shift — not continuously, not in the way that excluded the work, but in the easy back-and-forth of two people who found each other’s company natural. Film had opinions about books, specific and considered ones, and she listened as well as she talked, which Lookmhee had learned was rarer than it should be.

She was good company. That was the simple, honest truth of it. She was warm and clever and easy to be around and she had brought coffee and she had remembered accurate.

When the shift ended and Lookmhee was locking up, Film said: “Can I take you for dinner sometime? As a thank you. For the book.”

Lookmhee stood with her keys in her hand and looked at Film.

She thought about the folded page in a work bag across the hall. About very soon now. About a hand held in a lobby and music through a wall and six weeks of coffee at the door.

She thought: this is not complicated. I know where I am. I know what I want.

She thought: but Film is asking and Film is kind and I have not been asked in a while and I do not know exactly when very soon is.

She thought: I should say no.

She said: “Sure. That would be nice.”

✦ ✦ ✦

She told Freen first. Of course she told Freen first.

She went to the second floor after her shift, knocked on Freen’s door, and when Freen opened it Lookmhee said: “A girl from the bookstore asked me to dinner.”

Freen’s face went through several expressions in quick succession. “Oh,” she said.

“I said yes.”

Another set of expressions. “Oh,” she said again, differently.

“Can I come in?”

Freen stepped back wordlessly. Lookmhee came in. She sat on Freen’s floor because that was where people sat in Freen’s apartment — there was a couch but it was covered in things and the floor had better cushions anyway.

Freen sat across from her.

“Tell me about her,” Freen said carefully. In the tone she used when she was being gentle.

Lookmhee told her. The canvas bag and the gift question and the coffee on Saturday and the easy conversation and the dinner invitation.

Freen listened with her hands in her lap and her eyes careful and her expression very specifically not the excited one she had when she was happy about something.

When Lookmhee finished, Freen was quiet for a moment.

“Do you like her?” she asked.

“She’s — yes. I like her. She’s good company.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Lookmhee looked at her lap. “I don’t know yet. It’s been two days.”

Freen nodded slowly. “And—” she paused, choosing her words, “—where does Sonya fit into this?”

The name sat in the air between them.

“Sonya and I haven’t—” Lookmhee started.

“I know.”

“Nothing has been—”

“I know that too.”

“So it’s not—”

“Lookmhee.” Freen looked at her steadily, with the directness she had when she was being serious, which was less often than most people assumed. “I’m not saying you did anything wrong. I’m just asking where she fits.”

Lookmhee was quiet for a long moment. She looked at her hands. She thought about very soon now and she won’t have to and the folded page and the coffee machine bought specifically for one purpose.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. Honestly. “She hasn’t said anything. We haven’t — there’s nothing official. There’s nothing I can point to and say—”

“There’s everything,” Freen said softly. “You can point to everything.”

Lookmhee closed her eyes briefly.

“I know,” she said. Very quietly.

“So why did you say yes?”

A long pause.

“Because,” Lookmhee said slowly, “I have been waiting for a very long time for something that feels close but hasn’t arrived yet. And Film asked. And sometimes when something hasn’t arrived yet and something else presents itself you — ” she stopped.

“You take the easier thing,” Freen said. Not judgmental. Just accurate.

“Maybe.” Lookmhee looked at her. “Or maybe I’m just — going to dinner. As a person who is allowed to go to dinner.”

Freen looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Both of those things can be true.”

“Yeah.”

“Just—” Freen hesitated.

“What?”

“Just be honest with yourself about which one it is.” She said it gently. The way Freen said hard things — wrapped in enough warmth that they didn’t cut, just landed.

Lookmhee looked at the floor.

“Yeah,” she said again. “I know.”

✦ ✦ ✦

She did not tell Sonya.

She told herself this was because there was nothing to tell — it was dinner, it was a thank you, it was two people who had just met and one of them wanting to be polite about a gift that had made someone cry. It was not a thing that required reporting.

She also told herself this was the truth, which it partly was and partly wasn’t, and she was honest enough with herself to know which part was which.

She went home that evening and stood in the hallway outside her door and looked at 4C for a moment.

The light was on. The music was faintly audible. Sonya was home, doing whatever Sonya did on Saturday evenings — manuscripts, probably, or the careful organized quiet of someone who spent their time intentionally.

Lookmhee looked at the closed door.

She thought: I could knock. I could go in and tell her and see what she says. I could ask her, directly, what very soon means in actual calendar terms. I could stop being patient and start being direct and find out whether the thing I have been waiting for is still coming.

She thought: I could.

She stood there for another moment.

Then she went into her apartment, made tea, sat at her desk, and opened her notebook to a blank page.

She wrote: I said yes to dinner.

She looked at it.

Then she wrote underneath: I don’t know if I did that for the right reasons.

She closed the notebook.

She picked up her tea.

She listened to the music through the wall and felt, for the first time in a long time, something that was not quite peace.

✦ ✦ ✦