Lostport

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Erin Ritchie checked her watch—almost three-fifteen—and wondered where Mr. Roth was. He’d gone to the bank to make the day’s deposit, such as it was, and should have been back by now. She hoped he hadn’t slipped on the sidewalk again. He had never told her his exact age—he once joked that he was a mere boy when the Canal was built—but he had to be close to eighty, the way he moved carefully through the store, sometimes keeping one hand along a wall or a shelf, looking spindly and nearly weightless, his skin as dry as parchment. She had offered more than once to do the banking—three blocks each way, treacherous on most winter days—but he would tell her that administration was still his job; when he couldn’t do the banking or the books anymore it would be time to wrap things up.

Mr. Roth had owned Volumes for at least thirty years; Erin thought Sheer Volumes would be a better name, the way he kept buying books. Three more cartons this morning, most of them worthless, just as she’d begun making headway on the boxes he’d accepted the day before. He’d buy anything: old textbooks, tattered romances, mysteries from the pulp era, anything to do with the Second World War. Manuals for computer programs that were out of date when Steven Jobs was still working in a garage. Biographies of people no one cared about—did anyone really want or need to know Erik Estrada’s life story? He was a sucker for anyone who’d cleared out their basements and attics.

Erin had been working for Mr. Roth for six months, taking the job a month after she and Grant split up. She had never worked in a bookstore or any kind of retail, but she had a BA in English Lit from Buffalo State University and an eye for organization. When she had first started, she could barely move through the aisles, and there were books piled so precariously on the shelves that any customer pulling one out could precipitate an avalanche. She had helped Mr. Roth clear out some of the dogs that would never move; had set up some themed displays—newer releases, local authors, up-and-comers, true crime; had dusted the top shelves until her eyes watered and her throat went raw.

The job didn’t pay much: ten dollars an hour and the most she could work was thirty hours a week; nine to three Monday to Friday, working around Corey’s school schedule; and every other Saturday when he stayed at his father’s. But it was getting her out of the house and seeing people, mostly the older women of the town who combed through the romances and mysteries. Very few young people, all the kids glued to their pods, pads and other screens. Very few men. Not that she was looking to date or anything, not yet, but it would still be nice to be looked at once in a while. She believed she looked better now in her thirties than she had in her twenties when she stepped into the great bloody pothole of a marriage she was just now crawling out of, but who knew it besides her and a husband she didn’t want near her anymore?

 Three-twenty-five now. If Mr. Roth wasn’t back in five minutes, she’d be late picking Corey up. Again. And if Grant found out she’d hear and hear about it. But she worried more about her son than herself. He’d gone so quiet since the split, turned so far into himself. She suspected he was being bullied at school; there were always predators looking to cut a weak kid from the pack, isolate him and take anything worth taking. He’d come home last week with torn pants and one cheek raw; he said he had slipped in the schoolyard but it looked to her like someone had given him a face wash in the snow. The week before he couldn’t find the iPod Touch she’d bought him for Christmas, said it was probably in his locker at school, but he’d never left it there before. She wondered if there was anyone she could ask about it—a teacher or one of the kids from his elementary school who had gone on to the same junior high.

Three-thirty. She was going to be late for sure. It was a ten-minute walk to the school when the sidewalks were clear; more like fifteen on a day like today, when they were slick with new snow and you had to waddle like a race walker. Could she close up before Mr. Roth got back, lock the door and put up the sign that said “Back in five minutes? “No, there was still one customer, a young black man kneeling in front of the shelf that had all the war books.