Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore (8 page)

He unwinds the thin gray scarf around his neck and makes an odd circuit around the front of the store, rapping his knuckles on the front desk, casting his eyes across the short shelves and then up to the Waybacklist. He makes a quiet sigh. Something is up.

“Today is the day, my boy,” he finally says, “that I took over this bookstore, thirty-one years ago.”

Thirty-one years. Penumbra’s been sitting at this desk for longer than I’ve been alive. It makes me realize how new I am to this place—what a fleeting addition.

“But it wasn’t until eleven years later,” he adds, “that I changed the name on the front.”

“Whose name was up there before?”

“Al-Asmari. He was my mentor and, for many years, my employer. Mohammad Al-Asmari. I always thought his name looked better on the glass. I still do.”

“Penumbra looks good,” I say. “It’s mysterious.”

He smiles at that. “When I changed the name, I thought I would change the store, too. But it hasn’t changed that much at all.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, many reasons. Some good, some bad. It has a bit to do with our funding … and I have been lazy. In the early days, I read more. I sought out new books. But now, it seems, I’ve settled on my favorites.”

Well, now that you mention it … “Maybe you should think about getting some more popular stuff,” I venture. “There’s a market for independent bookstores, and a lot of people don’t even know this place is here, but when they discover it, there’s not a lot to choose from. I mean, some of my friends have come to check it out, and … we just don’t have anything they want to buy.”

“I did not know people your age still read books,” Penumbra says. He raises an eyebrow. “I was under the impression they read everything on their mobile phones.”

“Not everyone. There are plenty of people who, you know—people who still like the smell of books.”

“The smell!” Penumbra repeats. “You know you are finished when people start talking about the smell.” He smiles at that—then something occurs to him, and he narrows his eyes. “I do not suppose you have a … Kindle?”

Uh-oh. It feels like it’s the principal asking me if I have weed in my backpack. But in a friendly way, like maybe he wants to share it. As it happens, I do have my Kindle. I pull it out of my messenger bag. It’s a bit battered, with wide scratches across the back and stray pen marks near the bottom of the screen.

Penumbra holds it aloft and frowns. It’s blank. I reach up and pinch the corner and it comes to life. He sucks in a sharp breath, and the pale gray rectangle reflects in his bright blue eyes.

“Remarkable,” he says. “And to think I was still impressed by this species”—he nods to the Mac Plus—“of magic mirror.”

I open the Kindle’s settings and make the text a little bigger for him.

“The typography is beautiful,” Penumbra says, peering in close, holding his glasses up to the Kindle’s screen. “I know that typeface.”

“Yeah,” I say, “it’s the default.” I like it, too.

“It is a classic. Gerritszoon.” He pauses at that. “We use it on the front of the store. Does this machine ever run out of electricity?” He gives the Kindle a little shake.

“The battery’s supposed to last a couple of months. Mine doesn’t.”

“I suppose that is a relief.” Penumbra sighs and passes it back to me. “Our books still do not require batteries. But I am no fool. It is a slender advantage. So I suppose it is a good thing we have”—and here he winks at me—“such a generous patron.”

I stuff the Kindle back into my bag. I’m not consoled. “Honestly, Mr. Penumbra, if we just got some more popular books, people would love this place. It would be…” I trail off, then decide to speak the truth: “It would be more fun.”

He rubs his chin, and his eyes have a far-off look. “Perhaps,” he says at last. “Perhaps it is time to muster some of the energy I had thirty-one years ago. I will think on it, my boy.”

*   *   *

I haven’t given up on getting one of those old logbooks to Google. Back at the apartment, in the shadow of Matropolis, sprawled out on the couch, sipping an Anchor Steam even though it’s seven in the morning, I tell my tale to Mat, who is poking tiny bullet holes in the skin of a fortresslike building with pale marbled skin. Immediately he formulates a plan. I was counting on this.

“I can make a perfect replica,” he says. “Not a problem, Jannon. Just bring me reference images.”

“But you can’t copy every page, can you?”

“Just the outside. The covers, the spine.”

“What happens when Penumbra opens the perfect replica?”

“He won’t. You said this is, like, from the archives, right?”

“Right—”

“So it’s the surface that matters. People want things to be real. If you give them an excuse, they’ll believe you.” Coming from the special-effects wizard, this is not unconvincing.

“Okay, so all you need is pictures?”

“Good pictures.” Mat nods. “Lots of them. Every angle. Bright, even light. Do you know what I mean when I say bright, even light?”

“No shadows?”

“No shadows,” he agrees, “which is, of course, going to be impossible in that place. It’s basically a twenty-four-hour shadow store.”

“Yep. Shadows and book smell, we’ve got it all.”

“I could bring over some lights.”

“I think that might give me away.”

“Right. Maybe a few shadows will be okay.”

So the scheme is set. “Speaking of dark deeds,” I say, “how’s it going with Ashley?”

Mat sniffs. “I am wooing her in the traditional way,” he says. “Also, I am not allowed to talk about it in the apartment. But she’s having dinner with me on Friday.”

“Impressive compartmentalization.”

“Our roommate is nothing but compartments.”

“Does she … I mean … what do you guys talk about?”

“We talk about everything, Jannon. And do you realize”—he points down to the pale marbled fortress—“she found this box? She picked it out of the trash at her office.”

Amazing. Rock-climbing, risotto-cooking PR professional Ashley Adams is contributing to the construction of Matropolis. Maybe she’s not such an android after all.

“That’s progress,” I say, raising my beer bottle.

Mat nods. “That’s progress.”

THE PEACOCK FEATHER

I
’M MAKING PROGRESS
of my own: Kat invites me to a house party. Unfortunately, I can’t go. I can never go to any parties, because my shift at the store starts at precisely party o’clock. Disappointment twists in my heart; the ball is in her court, she’s bouncing me a nice easy pass, and my hands are tied.

too bad
, she types. We are chatting in Gmail.

Yes, too bad. Although, wait:
Kat, you believe that we humans will one day outgrow these bodies and exist in a sort of dimensionless digital sublime, right?

right!!

I’ll bet you wouldn’t actually put that to the test.

what do you mean?

This is what I mean:
I’ll come to your party, but I’ll come via laptop
—via video chat.
You’ll have to be my chaperone: carry me around, introduce me to people.
She’ll never go for this.

omg brilliant! yes let’s do it! you have to dress up, though. and you have to drink.

She goes for it. But:
Wait, I’m going to be at work, I can’t drink
—

you have to. or it will hardly be a party now will it?

I sense an incompatibility between Kat’s belief in a disembodied human future and her insistence on alcohol consumption, but I let it slide, because I’m going to a party.

*   *   *

It is 10:00 p.m. and I am behind the front desk at Penumbra’s, wearing a light gray sweater over a blue striped shirt and, in a joke I hope I will be able to triumphantly reveal at some point later in the evening, pants of crazy purple paisley. Get it? Because no one will be able to see me below the waist—okay, yes, you get it.

Kat comes online at 10:13 p.m. and I press the green button in the shape of a camera. She appears on my screen, wearing her red
BAM!
T-shirt as always. “You look cute,” she says.

“You’re not dressed up,” I say. No one else is dressed up.

“Yeah, but you’re just a floating head,” she says. “You have to look extra-good.”

The store melts away and I fall headfirst into the view of Kat’s apartment—a place, I remind you, that I have never visited in person. It’s a wide-open left, and Kat pans her laptop around like a camera to show me what’s what. “This is the kitchen,” she says. Gleaming glass-faced cupboards; an industrial stove; a stick-figure
xkcd
comic on the refrigerator. “The living room,” she says, sweeping me around. My view blurs into dark pixelated streaks, then re-forms itself into a sprawling space with a wide TV and long low couches. There are movie posters in neat narrow frames:
Blade
Runner
,
Planet of the Apes
,
WALL
.
E
. People are sitting in a circle—half on the couches, half on the carpet—playing a game.

“Who’s that?” a voice chirps. My view swivels and I am looking at a round-faced girl with dark curls and chunky black glasses.

“This is an experimental simulated intelligence,” Kat says, “designed to produce engaging party banter. Here, test it.” She sets the laptop down on the granite countertop.

Dark Curls leans in close—eek, really close—and squints. “Wait, really? Are you real?”

Kat doesn’t abandon me. It would be easy to do: set the laptop down, get called away, don’t come back. But no: for a whole hour she shepherds me around the party, introducing me to her roommates (Dark Curls is one of them) and her friends from Google.

She brings me over to the living room and we play the game in the circle. It’s called Traitor, and a skinny dude with a wispy mustache leans in to explain that it was invented at the KGB and all the secret agents used to play it back in the sixties. It’s a game about lying. You’re given a particular role, but you have to convince the group that you’re someone else entirely. The roles are assigned with playing cards, and Kat holds mine up to the camera for me.

“It’s not fair,” says a girl across the circle. She has hair so pale it’s almost white. “He has an advantage. We can’t see any of his tells.”

“You’re totally right,” Kat says, frowning. “And I know for a fact that he wears paisley pants when he’s lying.”

On cue, I tip my laptop down to give them a view, and the laughter is so loud it crackles and fuzzes out in the speakers. I laugh, too, and pour myself another beer. I’m drinking from a red party cup here in the store. Every few minutes I glance up at the door and a dagger of fear dances across my heart, but the buffer of adrenaline and alcohol eases the prick. There won’t be any customers. There are never any customers.

We get into a conversation with Kat’s friend Trevor, who also works at Google, and a different kind of dagger slips through my defenses then. Trevor is reeling out a long story about a trip to Antarctica (who goes to Antarctica?) and Kat is leaning in toward him. It looks almost gravitational, but maybe her laptop is just sitting at an angle. Slowly, other people peel away and Trevor’s focus narrows to Kat alone. Her eyes are shining back, and she’s nodding along.

No, come on. There’s nothing to it. It’s just a good story. She’s a little drunk. I’m a little drunk. However, I do not know if Trevor is drunk, or—

The bell tinkles. My gaze snaps up. Shit. It’s not a lonely late-night browser or anyone I can safely ignore. It’s one of the club: Ms. Lapin. She’s the only woman (that I know of) who borrows books from the Waybacklist, and now she is edging into the store, clutching her ponderous purse like a shield. She has a peacock feather stuck into her hat. That’s new.

I try to focus my eyeballs independently, one on the laptop and one on Lapin. It doesn’t work.

“Hello, good evening,” she says. Lapin has a voice that sounds like an old tape stretched out of shape, always wavering and changing pitch. She lifts a black-gloved hand to straighten the peacock feather or maybe just to check that it’s still there. Then she slides a book out of her purse. She’s returning
BVRNES
.

“Hello, Ms. Lapin!” I say too loud and too fast. “What can I get for you?” I consider using my spooky prototype to predict the name of her next book without waiting for her, but my screen is currently occupied by—

“What did you say?” Kat’s voice burbles. I mute the laptop.

Lapin doesn’t notice. “Well,” she says, gliding up to the front desk, “I’m not sure how to pronounce it, but, I think it might be Par-zee-bee, or perhaps, perhaps Pra-zinky-blink—”

You have got to be kidding me. I try my best to transliterate what she’s saying, but the database comes up empty. I try again with a different set of phonetic assumptions. Nope, nothing. “Ms. Lapin,” I say, “how do you spell it?”

“Oh, it’s
P
,
B
, that’s a
B
,
Z
,
B
, no, sorry,
Y
…”

You—have got—to be kidding—me.

“
B
again, that’s just one
B
,
Y
, no, I mean, yes,
Y
…”

The database says: Przybylowicz. That’s just ridiculous.

I race up the ladder, pull
PRZYBYLOWICZ
so violently from the shelf that I almost make its neighbor
PRYOR
pop out and drop to the floor, and return to Lapin, my face set in a mask of steely annoyance. Kat is moving silently on the screen, waving to someone.

I have the book wrapped up, and Lapin has her card out—6YTP5T—but then she glides over to one of the short shelves up front, the ones with the normal books. Oh, no.

Long seconds pass. She works her way across the shelf marked
ROMANCE
, the peacock feather bobbing when she tilts her head to read the spines.

“Oh, I think I’ll get this, too,” she says finally, returning with a bright red Danielle Steel hardcover. Then it takes her approximately three days to find her checkbook.