The Last Bookstore in America

PART ONE

Chapter One

Emily Short and Lewis Hartman thought they had seen the last of books. Not books in the sense of novels or presidential biographies or nonfiction narratives that explore the hidden side of everything. There would always be plenty of those. No, Emily and Lewis thought they had seen the last of the dead tree variety of book. The stack on the nightstand. The shelves in the study. The slim volumes of poetry, the tattered paperbacks, the ponderous leather-bound and gilt-edged classics with red ribbons sewn into the bindings. Those had all but vanished, and Emily and Lewis didn't miss them. They were perfectly happy to read books on a little electronic device that had, quite frankly, captivated the nation.

And they did read.

Sometimes.

Well, they certainly downloaded a lot of books before their last vacation, even if they didn't get around to reading them. And they always read the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times, or what was left of them in their post-print incarnation, and they were very good at keeping up with all of their friends’ blogs and updating their Facebook pages, and there were always restaurant reviews and weather reports and stock tips and video clips. Not to mention e-mail and Twitter.

But if by books you mean eighty or ninety thousand words strung together into some kind of sustained narrative meant to be read as a cohesive whole -- well, no. It’s true that Emily and Lewis didn't read many of those anymore.

Which is ironic, considering that when Lewis was a boy, he once spent a summer working in his Uncle Sy’s bookstore in Eureka, California. That was surely the happiest summer of his youth. In just three short months, Lewis had a number of momentous, and possibly life-changing, experiences. He read Naked Lunch, Lolita, and any number of other books his parents wouldn’t have approved of; he was once asked to fetch a cold beer for Wallace Stegner, which he did, but not before taking an enormous, shockingly bitter gulp himself; he got to ride in a police car (which had nothing to do with Wallace Stegner or Lolita--he just got lost and needed a ride home); and he managed to stand up in front of a group of twelve mildly intoxicated adults and read a derivative but nonetheless brave little poem about pre-adolescent malaise at The Firebreathing Dragon’s weekly poetry reading.

It was a very interesting summer. Uncle Sy had no children of his own and no understanding of the level of supervision that children required. Young Lewis went seventeen days without a bath, and once ate nothing but olives and cocktail sausages for an entire weekend. It was glorious.

But Sy was not the sort of uncle to call or show up at Christmas or remember your birthday. If you weren’t in Eureka, inhabiting Sy’s dusty and never-quite-alphabetized world, you might as well not exist. After Lewis’ parents found out what had gone on that summer, they never let him spend another vacation with Sy, and it never occurred to Lewis to call or show up on his own.

So Lewis went on to business school, and from there he embarked upon a disappointing career as a pharmaceutical sales representative. He married Emily, a graphic designer who earned more than he did for what seemed like much less work. He rarely thought about uncle Sy at all, which explains why, when Billy Dalton called to talk to him about the probate of Sylvester Porter’s estate, Lewis simply said:

I’m sorry. I think you have the wrong number, and hung up.

Emily, who was sitting across from him at the bagel shop, said, What was that?

Lewis looked up with surprise. You heard me. Wrong number. He pressed his thumb into the sesame seeds that had dropped onto his napkin.

You didn’t get a name?

Lewis put his seed-encrusted thumb into his mouth and thought, insists on discussing wrong numbers. He was adding this to a list he'd been keeping of irritating traits that, now that he and Emily were married, he would have to learn to tolerate. Also on the list were thinks it's funny to talk to the cat about current events, points chopsticks in people's faces during animated conversations in Chinese restaurants, and insists on taking goofy photos in Santa hats on summer vacations for future use on Christmas cards. Emily had her good qualities -- she never spent more than half an hour getting ready to go anywhere, which to be honest made her faster than Lewis most days—but lately the list of irritating traits was beginning to weigh on him.

Emily was still waiting for an answer. He pulled his thumb out of his mouth and shrugged. I didn't catch the name, he said.

Emily pressed her lips together and thought, sucks on his thumb.

The phone buzzed again. Don't hang up, Billy said when Lewis answered. It's about your uncle Sy.

Chapter Two

Although it would have surprised many of his clients to learn this, Billy Dalton did, in fact, have a law office. He rented two dingy rooms in a warren of such rooms on the third floor of what used to be the most popular hotel in town. He shared the space with three other lawyers, a real estate agent, a husband-and-wife psychologist team (a miserable idea, Billy thought), and a man who sold blue-green algae capsules through a multilevel marketing scheme called VitaLife.

A secretary named Connie Slack showed up every morning at eight to sit in a kind of makeshift reception area at the top of the stairs and greet clients, if any showed up. Billy had failed to attend the meeting where the decision to hire Connie was made, but if he had been there, he would have insisted that they not hire a secretary named Slack. But as it turned out, Connie never missed a day of work, and she did anything her employers asked her to do—although there wasn’t much to do. People took their own calls, responded to their own e-mail, and even billed their clients through a nifty mobile banking app on their Gizmo. That left Connie with the responsibility of caring for a ficus tree and making sure the fire extinguisher passed inspection once a year. But having a receptionist was one of the benefits of this shared office arrangement, and most people felt that without Connie, there would be no reason to have an office at all.

Billy agreed that offices didn’t have much of a point. He preferred to do his lawyering out on the streets. The law doesn't happen in an office, he believed. It happens in bars and alleys and even in bookstores. Especially in bookstores.

It had been a miserable six months since Sy’s death. Sy was Billy’s best friend, a fixed point in his life that Billy had assumed would never move. Over the last twenty years Billy must have crossed the Dragon’s threshold thousands of times, dropping into a chair across from the counter where he could observe the theatrics that seemed to surround Sy: the unwanted and often alarming advice he delivered to children about the advantages of dropping out of school and pursuing their own education on their own terms; the lengthy and pointless investigations into petty crimes like graffiti and shoplifting that kept the Eureka police department’s foot patrol engaged in a genial and long-running dialogue with shopkeepers; the literary debates that ended with Sy shouting down and expelling anyone who disagreed with him. Billy picked up some of his best cases by lingering around the Dragon’s counter, listening in on Sy’s harangues of his customers for some hint of an impending divorce or a winnable lawsuit. There was always something happening at the Dragon. Billy never missed a day of it.

After Sy died, Billy continued to hang around the store. He had not gotten over the feeling that Sy might reappear at any time, might materialize in his squeaky old chair behind the counter as if he had never left at all. This feeling, Billy knew, would fade eventually, or—worse—would be ripped away from him all at once one day, knocking him off his feet with the force of its departure. He believed that sometimes the dead had a way of sticking around, lingering long after the funeral and then one day just vanishing, shocking friends and lovers who had grown accustomed to the idea that the dead were not really dead, just unusually quiet and non-corporeal. This could be called denial, but Billy preferred to experience it as a sort of transitional phase, a friendly haunting.

There was another reason to spend so much time at the bookstore. Sy’s will had gone missing, and probate was hopelessly hung up while Billy searched for it. He knew Sy had left the store to a nephew, but nobody remembered the nephew’s name. It had been over twenty years since he’d drafted the will; Billy wasn't even sure he’d passed the bar at that point. He was doing wills for free back then in the hopes of drumming up some clients. It never occurred to him that the clients would actually die someday, and that he'd need to produce a copy of the will and act upon its instructions.

But it eventually turned up in a box of old pamphlets on Victorian medicinal remedies that Sy must have bought the same year he and Billy wrote out the will. Billy located it by lying flat on his back and sliding under the bookstore's massive oak desk, which gave him access to file boxes that had been stashed there since --- well, since the days when Sy actually cared about sorting papers into file boxes.

Jesus, said Billy, when he pulled out the pamphlets advertising Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral and Sarsaparilla Tonic. How long have these been here?

Are they priced? asked Ginger, who had come in on her day off because Crawford had failed to show up again.

No, said Billy. He slid out from under the desk and looked up at Ginger. She had scaled a ladder to reach some volume on the wall of books behind the counter. She'd taken to wearing these pleated schoolgirl skirts that she found at a thrift store. There was sort of a post-Catholic school punk irony to the look, but ever since Ginger started dying her hair green to cover up the gray, Billy had lost interest. He didn't even bother sliding over a couple of feet to try to get a look up her skirt. How would you price them?

I wouldn’t, she said. Toss them.

Really? he said, showing her a handful. You’re getting rid of these?

What’s anybody going to do with a pamphlet? she said, heaping extra scorn on the word. As if the weight of all the unsold books around her weren’t bad enough. Now he dared confront her with a pamphlet.

But these are cool, he said Listen to this. ‘Ayer's cherry pectoral with opium, for the cure of coughs, colds, influenza, hoarseness, croup, bronchitis, incipient consumption, and for the relief of consumptive patients in advanced stages of the disease.’ You’re going to take opium for hoarseness? That’s fantastic!

Ginger was unmoved. Fine. They’re yours. Did you find the will?

It's right here, he said. He probably signed it the same day all this stuff came into the store.

What did he leave me?

Ginger. He didn’t even know you then.

Is it really all going to that kid? The house and everything?

If the kid wants it.

You should have never let him do that, Billy, Ginger said, climbing down from the ladder and holding the second volume of a Tibetan-Chinese dictionary over his head like she intended to drop it on him. What kind of lawyer lets his client leave everything to a ten year-old?

He’s not ten anymore, Ginger, Billy said. He’s got to be over thirty by now. Probably married. Kids.

Kids? Ginger said, slamming the dictionary on the desk. Hasn’t anybody thought about what we’re going to do when little Lewis finds out that—

Ginger. Please. said Billy. Give it a rest.

He groaned and pulled himself to his feet. The store swam dangerously around him, the buckling plywood shelves looking as though they might finally give way. He took a deep breath and his vision cleared.

You all right? Ginger asked, with something that passed for concern in her voice. The last six months had aged Billy; his hair, which he kept tied in a forlorn wisp of a ponytail, had finally gone entirely grey. His eyes were permanently bloodshot; his skin was turning to tissue.

I’m fine, he said. Hand me the phone.

Use your own phone, Ginger said. And get out from behind the counter. We’re running a store here.

Billy fished his phone out of his pocket and settled into Sy’s old chair to deliver the news to Lewis.

Chapter three

Lewis put the phone down and stared at some point in the air above Emily's head. She watched him and waited. Finally he spoke.

You remember my uncle Sy, right?

The one who didn't come to our wedding?

Yeah. He placed both of his palms on the table as if he was trying to steady himself.

Did he die? Emily asked, having figured that much out from Lewis’s side of the conversation.

He -- He couldn't bring himself to say it.

Lewis? What is it?

He tried again.

He left me the bookstore.

"The bookstore? He still has the bookstore? Emily leaned forward and took Lewis's hands. Honey, that has to be --"

One of the last bookstores in America. I know.

Chapter Four

For the last several years, reporters had been tracking the dwindling number of bookstores in America. Every time one closed they would trot out a list of the few stores that remained open around the country. It was like keeping a list of the last surviving veterans of some distant war. Eventually the only survivors were the people who had lied about their age and enlisted as teenagers just before victory was declared, then lived an unusually long life afterward. The odd bookstore that stayed open was, like that teenage soldier, a fluke. An outlier.

Reporters, attached as they were to the days of paper and ink and steady paychecks, loved to speculate about which store would be the last bookstore in America. Stores that sold new books were the first to go, as publishers simply stopped printing new books and the bookstores were left with nothing to sell. It then fell to used bookstores and dealers of rare antiquarian books to keep the tradition of printed books alive, but even they were not faring well. Autograph collectors picked up signed copies; art lovers would sometimes buy an old volume for the engravings, and handsome hardcovers sometimes went to interior decorators who wanted to furnish a room in some old-fashioned style. But a used paperback? Just to read? Hardly anyone wanted those anymore.

The Firebreathing Dragon was generally believed to be too remote and too obscure to last much longer. Mackey's Books in Chicago was a more likely candidate, as was Out of Print in Brooklyn. They were each fine old institutions rooted in affluent, nostalgic neighborhoods. Mackey's had owned its own building since 1913, protecting it against rent increases, and Out of Print was recently purchased by a wealthy real estate attorney indulging his daughter's literary fantasies. Both seemed much more secure than the Dragon, especially now that its erratic and ill-tempered founder was gone.

But the sad fact was that the rate at which bookstores were closing seemed to be accelerating. The last few holdouts were toppling quickly, like those elderly war veterans who were only hanging on long enough to attain the rank of oldest living survivor. Once they saw their names in the paper, they could finally let go. Now the last few bookstores were closing at the rate of two or three per month and it actually seemed possible that, by the end of the summer, there might not be a single bookstore left.

Lewis should have known that the Dragon was on the bookstore death watch list. He noticed those stories when they came across the screen; he just never read past the first couple of lines. He assumed that Sy’s bookstore had faded away years ago, leaving Sy to shuffle around his weird old house on a hilltop overlooking Humboldt Bay.

Chapter Five

Wait a minute. When did you say he died? Emily said that night as she got into bed.

Six months ago. Heart attack. Out of the blue. Lewis was perched on the edge of the bed, staring at his toes, a sure sign that he was pondering something.

That’s what I thought, she said. So how is it that the store is still open? Who's been running it all this time?

Oh. I didn't even think to ask. I guess we'll find out when we get there.

Get where?

Eureka. Lewis did not look at her as he said this. He heard her slide out of bed and walk over to him.

You are kidding, right?

Still he didn’t look up at her. Now her feet were right next to his, those perfectly manicured feet Lewis loved to wrap his hands around when she sprawled across from him on the giant sectional sofa they installed in their living room after their wedding. The sectional was the first of many pieces of equipment that married life seemed to require: after spending nearly fifty thousand dollars on the wine country wedding and the honeymoon in Hawaii, it hardly seemed right to come home to a house full of poorly-assembled Ikea furniture. A handsome Mission-style bed made of warm cherry, a wine refrigerator to store the bottles that arrived by mail from each of three wine clubs they’d joined, and a whole-house media system with integrated controls in every room seemed, at the time, like smart purchases, long-term investments in their own prosperous future. Now Lewis awoke almost every night in a sweat, the numbers roiling in his head. Student loans. Car payments. Credit cards. It was overwhelming and sickening. He wanted out.

And Emily didn’t.

Emily wasn’t a bad person; she wasn’t shallow or vain; she wasn’t spoiled or unreasonable. She just wanted a comfortable, urban life filled with good things. She shopped with serene confidence, always choosing the toaster with the best reputation, the sneakers that could cure bad posture and burn more calories, the handwoven slipcovers that she changed with the seasons: celery green in spring, pumpkin in fall, a warm sunflower in summer and an icy blue in winter.

Emily’s was a comfortable and orderly world. And she never worried about the money. It would come. She felt that the best way to live a life filled with good things and exotic vacations was to just start living it. She wasn’t about to wait until she was old to see Budapest or hang her clothes in a cedar-lined closet. The time to get what she wanted was now.

And she most certainly did not want to move to Eureka and take possession of a failing bookstore.

Just drive up with me and see it, Lewis said, meeting her eyes at last. He wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned his head against her. Can’t we just go look?

Emily knew that she should have refused to go. She should have insisted that they have nothing to do with his uncle Sy’s crazy old enterprise on the North Coast. Lewis knew nothing about books or bookstores, and even if he did, what good would it do him? That bookstore was already dead. It just didn’t know it yet.

But she didn’t refuse to go. She put her hand on top of Lewis’ head and let it rest there. She could feel his heart pounding against her. He was unhappy—she knew that. So why should she be the one to tell him no? He would take one look at his inheritance and realize that there was nothing to do but sell it off and pocket what little money they could get for it.

Of course he would. This would be nothing but a weekend out of town. What was the harm in that?

You’re right, she said. He looked up at her in surprise. We should at least go have a look. You’re finally going to get me to go to Eureka.

He let out a long, slow breath. You’ll love it, he said.

Chapter Six

A hundred years ago, the Firebreathing Dragon’s building housed a carriage shop. It was the only place in town to get whips and saddles, bridles and bits, couplers and axles and steel wheel rims and rain aprons. You could buy an entire carriage and roll it right out the front of the store onto Second Street, which was the most lively street in this booming port town. A life-sized replica of a horse, made of leather and stuffed with horsehair, was mounted on a platform and wheeled onto the wooden-plank sidewalk in decent weather.

A long and skinny structure with thirty foot-high ceilings and a second-floor mezzanine, the building lent itself perfectly to the business of carriages. Iron hooks hung from the elegant Victorian banister, and suspended from those hooks were bridles and lines and saddles. Carriages sat on a polished showroom floor in the middle of the building, and on sunny days, light poured down on them from two skylights in the ceiling, each of which were framed in the kind of florid plasterwork common to buildings in those days. Upstairs the walls were lined with racks of wooden boxes holding all manner of obsolete technology: iron clips and leather coils, bells and rein rails, whip sockets and shaft tips. Things that became useless, quite suddenly, thanks to Henry Ford and his bright ideas.

The shop suffered the fate of all horse-and-buggy shops. Car dealerships opened on the edge of town, where they could catch the eyes of motorists passing through on their way to San Francisco or the gold mines in Trinity County. Old Town became a red-light district for loggers and fishermen, and the horse-and-buggy shop, after being boarded up for a few years, re-opened as a saloon.

The irony of this was not lost on Sy, who framed a 1905-era photograph of the store in its horse-and-carriage glory and hung it behind the counter. When the possibility emerged that an electronic gadget might actually replace the book, Sy fell into the habit of talking to the picture as if he was addressing the store’s long-dead owner. He even gave the owner a name: Walter.

How does a horse-and-buggy man know when to give it up, Walter? he used to shout as he watched people walk past his shop without giving it a glance. Or, when his long-time customers would come in and tell him that they would never surrender to