Spring 2003 Charles River Review: The Freeman's Oath

The goddamn phone won't stop ringing.

I roll over and pull the sheets with me. I run my tongue across the smooth front of my teeth and I rub my feet together under the covers. My mouth tastes like beer, garlic, and ass. Not actually ass, of course. But really bad. Like beef stew.

The phone stops ringing. I'm sure it's close to one in the afternoon. I don't know. I haven't opened my eyes.

I roll back the other way, but I leave the sheets behind. I kick my legs out on top of them. The window by my bed magnifies the sun and I get hot. I stretch. My plaid boxer shorts are riding up, so I pull them down.

I flip to my back and open my eyes. I stare at the ceiling and reflect on the night before. Then I fish around in my sheets and come up with a floral print thong.

A very nice floral print thong. I'm guessing it cost 20, maybe even 30 dollars. Thirty dollars worth of thong right here in my hand. The flowers on it are very small, but very detailed. I think they're daisies. They sit close together on a light green background. If this thong were not a thong but a regular pair of underpants for, say, a wide-bottomed individual, the back of them would look like a very pleasant meadow. But, given the thong-ness of the thing, I'm reminded instead of a flowerbed trimmed to a single sad strip by an over-enthusiastic lawn mower.

"There you are," I say, out loud, to the underwear. I sit up and toss them toward my hamper in the corner. I miss, and they land on my bookshelf, knocking over a picture of my dead parents.

The phone is ringing again.

I shuffle off my bed and rifle through a pile of clothes. Where is the freakin' thing? With my bare left foot, I kick the hard plastic phone hidden underneath my jeans.

I pick it up. "Yel-low?"

Just dial tone. I chuck the phone in the general direction of the underwear. It falls noiselessly into my hamper. I walk across the room, pick the phone out of the hamper, and put it on the bookshelf. Then I pull the thong off my parents and drop it in the hamper.

I flop back on my bed. I can't remember her name. I try really hard and somehow think about cars. I drive a Volkswagen, with leather interior, but what I really want is a BMW, which would, of course, also have leather.

Mercedes. That's it. Her name is Mercedes.

I stretch and stare out the window to the left of my bed. I see the tops of trees that, just across the street, line the edges of Boston Common. The colors are turning, and the landscape looks like someone has sprinkled red pepper--the kind found in pizza joints, next to the parmesan--over a field of parsley. I feel content. I also feel that 27-year-old female lawyers with pierced navels wearing low-cut designer jeans and Prada shoes slumming in Brighton bars drinking Johnny Walker Red with the local Massholes are the hottest thing ever.

I lie there, thinking about thongs, cars, Mercedes, and pizza, when I accidentally, really, fall back asleep.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

I wake with a rush. Someone's banging on the door. I get out of bed, again, and yank on some jeans and a T-shirt and hustle downstairs. My feet make a flump-flump-flump as they fall on the worn carpet that covers the stairs that snake from the third floor of my brownstone down to the first.

I jerk open the door. The light is blinding. All I can see is the rough shadow of a man standing in the doorway. His arm is extended menacingly. I fall back in fear.

Then my eyes adjust and I see that it's just Paul, the UPS man.

"Paul, son of a bitch. Leave it on the hinges next time."

"Jon, were you still sleeping?" He asks this without looking up from his brown digital clipboard. He sounds like an older brother trying to sound like a friend.

I stare at him. "It's Saturday."

"So?" Paul continues. "Plenty of people work on Saturdays. Like me."

"Yeah, whatever," I say, turning my back. I run up to the kitchen, grab two sodas, and join Paul outside on the stoop.

Three years ago, after watching him load some particularly heavy boxes into his truck on a particularly sweltering day, I offered Paul a soda. I mean, the guy was sweating like a fat kid on the Fourth of July. It was the least I could do. I didn't expect Paul to mistake my gesture for an invitation to take his daily break right here on my stoop, but he did, that day and every day since.

I pop open my can and the soda feels good--crisp and cold. I hand the other to Paul.

Paul takes it and looks at me sideways. "You out late last night?"

"Yes, I was. With a girl."

"Oh, that's nice." Paul cracks a wide grin. "A girl you already know?"

"What, like, biblically?"

Paul raises his eyebrows. I smile at him, then look across Beacon Street to the Common. The ground looks cleaner than usual. Fallen leaves cover the smattering of trash on the old grass. I take a sip of soda. Then I inhale deeply, and the clean air makes the tobacco taste of Mercedes' mouth seem very far away.

"So, was it a date? Did it go well?" Paul asks.

"It wasn't a date. I picked her up at the bar. But we talked a lot. Seems like we have a lot in common."

"Like what?"

I pause for a second. I try to remember what, exactly, it is that I think we have in common. I take longer than I should.

"The eighties," I say, finally. "We both think eighties nostalgia is obnoxious."

"You're just saying that because no one thinks your Clash fetish is cool anymore."

I shrug my shoulders. "She came home with me. Then we had fantastic sex. Just like that. Then I woke up late, with her thong still in my bed. So yeah, to answer your question, it went well." I finish my soda.

"Did you tell her about me?"

Paul suffers from a delusional condition that allows him to think that any girl who goes out with me would automatically be more attracted to him.

"No, I didn't, but maybe if she calls I'll try to mention your name."

"Did you really ask her to call you? C'mon."

"No. I didn't. But once in a while, a second date--you know, after we have the drapery-clawing sex--would be nice."

"You're killing me." Paul finishes his soda with one long gulp. "Don't sweat these things. You've got other cats to skin." He tosses me an overnight envelope marked SATURDAY DELIVERY--URGENT.

I take it slowly. "Do I want this?"

"I have no idea, but anything marked ‘final notice' can't be good." With a smile, he claps me on the shoulder. "Gotta go."

He jogs down the steps and into his truck. From the driver's seat he shoots me another grin, then he revs the engine, which produces a loud, gravelly diesel growl. The windows in the neighborhood rattle. He plunks the truck into gear and is gone.

I like Paul. He's direct. Plus shucking and jiving on the stoop each afternoon is relaxing.

Urgent envelope in hand, I walk back into the brownstone.

I inherited this fabulous address from my father. I also inherited the antiquarian book business he operated from the first-floor library. I am now tethered by debt to this business because in the three short years I've been running it, I have made very little profit.

Most people think the rare book business is quiet. Old calf-bound books lined up like belles at a ball, waiting to be chosen, while the outside world rushes by. Pipe tobacco wafting through a room. A small crackling fire, and two septuagenarians with licorice in their pockets discussing the advantages of a particular copy of this book or that. "Yes, I believe I will buy this book." "Wonderful, we won't see another copy for 50 years." "Is cash all right?" "Why, yes, it is." "Thank you." "And thank you."

It isn't like that. Customers don't pay cash. Some don't even pay. Other dealers guard their sources. A new bookseller has to make connections and get directions to the inside track.

I don't want to make connections or get directions. I don't want anything from anybody.

But money's going out faster than it's coming in--a situation which, I presume, has brought the present urgent envelope to my door.

I go straight to the library, which sits to the right of the narrow parquet main hall that runs through to the small backyard where my mother's garden used to be. The room is much deeper than it is wide. Custom cherry bookshelves line the walls, right to the scrolled molding that borders the ceiling. A ladder runs on a metal track around the room to provide access to the highest shelves. Toward the front of the room is a large map case, with ten immense drawers, the top of which offers a useful flat surface upon which to lay prints, maps, or girls. Toward the rear of the room is my father's desk. The desk is made of oak, with a chocolate leather top.

When my father ran the business, this desk was the nerve center of the entire New England book trade. Behind it, my father was constantly on the telephone, talking to a world's worth of customers, librarians, or other booksellers. When he wasn't on the telephone, he was typing letters on his old steel blue Royal typewriter. My father was always communicating with someone, as if he were running a stock brokerage rather than an antiquarian book business. Now, the Royal sits on a small table in the corner, replaced by my computer, and the room is generally silent.

I sit at the desk and look at the envelope.

I know this could be the big one.

I've been expecting it for some time. My high-society Beacon Hill address doesn't come cheap.

I open the envelope. All it contains is a single, short letter, dated the previous day. It reads:

Mr. Jonathan Day, Proprietor

The Day Company

Mr. Day,

We regret to inform you that, given your most recent failure to remit the latest mortgage payment for the property 14 Beacon Street in Boston, Massachusetts, we are compelled to transmit to you this notice of intended foreclosure. If, in six months' time, you are not current with your mortgage statement, we will initiate a foreclosure of this property.

Sincerely,
Marcus Pickering, Branch Manager

I read the letter twice more, then lay it on the desk. I drum my hands across it while I think. I think about where I'm going to get the money, what books I have on the shelves, how I might pay for more books, how I'm going to find these books, and what I'm going to do to sell them, and on and on.

I'm trapped.

I feel like I'm approaching the zenith of a roller coaster with a queasy stomach--all of the anticipation, none of the joy.

Thing is, I'm a good bookseller. I have customers and everything, albeit most left over from when my father ran the show. But success is funny, like there's a line, the infamous bar. The amount of effort required to clear this bar is only fractionally greater than the amount needed to smack right into it. Which, of course, lands me in the "almost" pile every time.

I need a boost.

But fuck it. I go back upstairs, change my clothes, and go out for a run. Out there on the pavement, on the paths along the river, on the cobblestone streets of the North End, through the Public Garden, on the sidewalks all over the city, that's where I feel control. I come back refreshed and the matter of the letter on my desk is ignored, for now.

I head up to the second floor where the kitchen and living room are located. Both rooms are small but well suited for bachelor use. The kitchen floor is tiled in basic white squares, but the living room shares the same parquet pattern as the hallway downstairs. When I lived here with my parents, space was tight, but since Mom didn't really cook and since we didn't have a television, no one felt claustrophobic. The first thing I did after Mom died was buy a TV. Dad hung on for ten more years, all of which he spent in the library. I doubt he even noticed. That I bought a television, that is. He felt Mom's death acutely.

In one long pull I drink the glass of water I'd set out on the counter for myself before my run. I prefer water that is room temperature, but I still keep the Brita in the fridge. Over in the living room, I stand next to my olive-green couch, click on the TV, and tune to the 24-hour New England sports channel. The Sox are in the playoffs as the wild card. They won last night, but I'm pretty sure they'll drop the rubber game tonight.

The sweat on my shirt has made me cold, so I head up to my bathroom on the third floor. The bathroom sits right between my bedroom and the guest bedroom, which was my room as a kid. The reading material I keep in here is sufficiently diverse that should an inquisitive but inexperienced 12-year-old boy ever visit this room, he'd leave knowing everything he'd need to about cars, sports, fine wine, and making a woman feel like a woman.

I shower quickly, after which I step on the scale in my bedroom. One hundred and fifty-five pounds. I'll be 28 in a month. I'd like to be 150 by then.

Still standing on the scale, I notice that the message light of my answering machine is blinking. I step off and push play.

Hi, Jon. This is Mercedes calling. I tried calling a few times before, but I didn't want to leave a cheesy message. But here I go. I had a wonderful time last night. Maybe tonight if you're free, we could--

Nice. She called me first. And early, too. I write down her number, dress in some comfortable jeans, and shove the digits in my pocket. I go back down to the library to do some work.

Most booksellers are cons. They don't actually steal and cheat (well, some do), but many more make their living by conning people into thinking they're brilliant. Take this one bookseller I know, up north in Marblehead. Calls his business the Marblehead Book Barn. That's a bad sign right there. Any antiquarian book business with "book" in the title is bound to be all hat and no cattle. The Book Nook. The Book Shelf. Bob's Book Bazaar. Please.

Anyway, this guy, proud proprietor of the Marblehead Book Barn, likes to tell people he specializes in early printed Americana. Books printed in the United States or the colonies before 1800. That's a popular area of collecting, not to mention scholarship. Lots to do with the Revolution. It also happens to be my specialty. So I'm out there one day, about two years ago, and I see this little pamphlet printed by one Ezekiel Russell in 1772 in Boston. The General Practice of the Churches of New-England, Relating to Baptism, Vindicated; Or, some Essays on this Important Question . . . by John Cotton. Perfectly interesting colonial sermon. And common as dirt.

But whatever, if the price is right, I'm thinking I might as well buy it. So I ask Mr. Book Barn how much. I mean, I'm almost embarrassed to admit I'd buy this piece of crap, so I bet 100, 150 max.

Book Barn says, "One thousand dollars."

I'm flabbergasted. "Are you serious?"

"Yes, of course," he says. Then he really gets on his horse. "This is a lovely pre-Revolution, pre-Revolution, political sermon, which draws a parallel between the sacrament of baptism and the colonial need to be cleansed of the original sin of British rule. No other sermon of this era expresses so eloquently the emotional undercurrents coursing through the local populace in the years just prior to the war. It's unusually rare."

Total horse shit. The Reverend John Cotton probably wrote it the night before, somebody in the audience probably thought it was good, and the intrepid Mr. Ezekiel Russell probably thought he could make a little bank if he printed and sold it. End of story.

I put the book back on the shelf. Despite Book Barn's fulsome praise, there's no way anyone who knows anything about books is going to blow a grand on that dog. Sure, my business is in trouble, but I'm not stupid. I know which books are worth it and which ones aren't.

When I describe a book, either in writing about it or speaking to a customer, I do my best to be fair and level. Every book is what it is. Take the one I'm working on now. An Oration Delivered March 5, 1774 . . . To Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March 1770. A lovely copy of a famous speech attributed to John Hancock. The text is important--it capitalizes on lingering public anger over the Boston Massacre to spark the drive toward independence. It's not Common Sense, but it's a good thing nonetheless.

Price is everything. I bought it for 1,000 bucks. I know it's worth two, maybe even 2,500. But I can't afford to push the boat out. I need to move it, and what I think I can get for it eventually is immaterial. Booksellers who love their books too much end up setting them on fire just to heat their homes.

I make it 1,750 and put it on the shelf. Whoever buys it will probably ask for a discount, so, in the end, I'll get 1,500. A 500-dollar profit doesn't get me very far towards paying off a mortgage in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I price a few more books before leaning back to check the clock. It's almost seven. I stretch and appreciate the mild soreness in my legs left over from my run. With my hands behind my head and my feet on my desk, I look over my books. Most are bound in old brown calf, but some are in various types of morocco (goatskin--really) dyed green, red, blue, even purple. Some have writing on the spine; some have spines printed in gold letters. Others have elaborate gilt patterns running from head to toe. But from this distance, they all look brown. Brown. Brown. Brown. Half of them have been here for three years, since my father died.

He was always in the groove. A 5, 10,000-dollar sale was all in a day's work. Like he expected it. He made way more money than he ever needed. His leftovers have funded my three-year stint on cruise control. He was happy as could be, and home all day long, so he spent plenty of time with Mom and me. This is what he loved. Books thrilled him. Me, I like books. I like that women dig I like books. But I'm not thrilled by them. I'm not thrilled by anything. I consider the whole world with the same casual distance with which I consider the underside of my fingernails.

I'm not a misanthrope. I'd like to find something that thrills me.

I remember Mercedes' number in my pocket. I pull it out and give her a call. She answers on the first ring.

"Mercedes? Hi, it's Jon."

"Oh, there you are," she says. From the message on my machine, I was expecting sunshine and daisies. But she sounds flat.

"Uh, yeah. Sorry. I was working."

"Don't worry," she says. "The important thing is you called. Did you want to make plans tonight?"

Not anymore, I think. But I say, "Sure, there's this--"

"Coffee shop?" She cuts me off. "Were you going to suggest that coffee shop down the hill from you? Rona's? That would be fine. I'll be there at eight. I'm looking forward to it. Oh, and bring my underwear, would you?"

Click. What the hell was that? I was going to suggest this bar downtown at nine. I've never been to Rona's. I'm not even that crazy about coffee. I shake my head and put the receiver down.

Still, there I am, at Rona's, at eight. I look around. The pale yellow walls give the place a mellow vibe that contrasts with the teens-in-black patronage. The menu is written in multicolored chalk. No one knows I have a thong in my jacket pocket.

I make another sweep. Mercedes isn't here.

8:03.

8:07.

I feel awkward just standing in the doorway. I step in line to order something.

The barista, the way-too-young-for-me barista, is stunning. Her face is all right angles, but when put together, adds up to 360 degrees of beautiful in a clean and simple way. I snap out of it and order a decaf.

Just as I step aside with my drink, Mercedes taps me on the shoulder.

"Hey," she says.

I turn to face her. She's cute, no doubt. Her black hair is pulled into a ponytail that just barely touches the collar of her knit sweater. She's wearing small, designer glasses. I can't remember if she wore them last night. But despite her more casual outfit, I'm aware of an edge. The ponytail, the sweater, the glasses, her whole outfit should suggest soft and gentle. But it doesn't. She's hard and that is that.

The contrast between Mercedes now and the Mercedes I remember from last night is jarring. The Mercedes from last night danced from the waist down and looked up at me with doe eyes through her well-tended lashes. I check to see if she's wearing thicker shoes, because right now, I feel like she's looking down at me.

"I've already nabbed a table in the corner." She gestures to a table for two in a Goth-free nook. She leads the way over and we sit.

"Thanks for the call this morning," I say. "Sorry I took so long to get back to you."

I'm not sorry.

"Oh, don't worry," she says, patting me lightly on the hand. "I figured you probably had your nose in some book."

Oh. My. God. Was she for real? Nose in a book? Who does that?

I take it well. I even smile. "That's how it is when you own your own business--even Saturdays are work days." She can't see me, but I'm tapping my foot like crazy. I'm also thinking about busting cartoon-style through the wall at a full sprint for home.

"It must be wonderful, no one telling you what to do, no pushy clients to answer to."

"Better pushy clients than no customers, though, right?"

"I guess. I shouldn't complain. I'm a lawyer and an overpaid one, too. But there's more to it than making 150,000 a year--"

She makes 150,000 a year? I shudder. I should have stuck with the law-school route.

I take a sip of coffee. My God, I don't even like coffee, but this is phenomenal. What's in here? Crack?

"--anyway, you probably think I'm shallow," Mercedes continues, "mentioning how much I make and everything. But when you told me you sold old books, that you get to be around them all day, all that wonderful history--"

Now I interrupt her. "It's no big deal. It's a business, like anything else. Books. Widgets. Pencil trolls."

"You don't really believe that, do you? That sounds depressing."

"It's not depressing, it's just a living. You sell your legal acumen. I sell books. Simple."

Mercedes looks over my shoulder then settles back into her chair. "Maybe I look at it differently."

"How do you mean?"

"Put it this way--everyone is looking for something in a potential relationship, right?"

"Don't expectations take some of the mystery out of it?"

"There's no mystery to it," she says. "First you identify the need, then you fill it. Simple. Take last night, for example. I was horny as hell. Big case this week just went to trial and now I've got nothing to do but wait. Who knew I'd end up sleeping with a guy as interesting as you?"

I raise my eyebrows. Yeah, who knew?

"Don't get me wrong," she says, "I'm glad I did. I've got a feeling you have exactly what I'm looking for."

"And what's that?"

"Cultural capital."

"Excuse me?"

"Cultural capital. It's like this. All my friends are lawyers, doctors, finance guys. It's all so terribly repetitive, this yuppie thing. You're different. You've got a fascinating job and the right address. I would imagine that when you tell people what you do, they're intrigued. They listen, and you capitalize on that. Hence, cultural capital."

I'm immediately on the defensive. "That's crazy. It's not like that at all."

"Oh, yes it is," she says. "It worked on me, didn't it? Why are we sitting here?"

You tell me. "You make it sound like some kind of trick."

"It's not a trick. You're just smart. You play to your strengths. So do I. C'mon, we'd make a great team." She tucks her elbow against her waist and holds her coffee away from her as if to say the prosecution rests.

My mind is whirring so fast I can hardly see straight. Who slipped her The Secrets of Being a Single Male Bookseller handbook? How the fuck did I get here, pinned down in a coffee shop by a rabid attack lawyer who wants to suck the cultural capital from the marrow of my bones? I chance a glance out a nearby window.

Busted. I've been quiet too long.

"Hello? Jon?" Mercedes says, waving her hand in front of my eyes. "You still here?"

"Here I am," I say, turning my palms to the ceiling.

As I say this, I feel something inside me give. I, so far the passive object of bad fortune, have never defined my position before. But here I am. Smack in the middle of it. Personally and professionally. Then the fog rolls back from my mind's eye and I see a vast new land stretch out before me. A land of last opportunities, a land of pariahs and scoundrels cast out of the rational world. A land of frontiers for those who have exhausted the patience of civilized nations.

Sure, I'm talking to a girl named Mercedes in a coffee shop, but I'm really talking out loud to the whole world. Bring what you got.

Here I am.

PS--Mercedes, you're not getting your thong back.