The Suburban Strange (11 page)

That night at the front desk at the bookstore Celia halfheartedly thumbed through books on witchcraft, hoping to clarify anything at all. Lippa’s two friends arrived, and as they passed the front desk the three of them noticed Celia’s choice of reading material.

“Are you interested in the occult?” Lippa asked while her friends looked on.

Celia thought of a plausible answer. “Not really. I have a friend who is, and I was just curious. Are you?”

“In a roundabout way, we are. We are conspiracy theorists,” Lippa said, sharing a smile with her friends. “We like to study all those stories about things that aren’t easily explained: the occult, hermetism, alchemy. Fascinating, aren’t they?”

Celia thought Lippa could join the Rosary, if she was going to rattle off mysterious lists like that. “I really don’t know much about those things.”

“You should join the Troika.” Lippa gestured at herself and her two friends, who peered around her at Celia, their faces crinkling into curious smiles. “We like to read about them.”

“The Troika?”

“Every group has to have a name, doesn’t it? C’mon, ladies, I have the tea on in back. Let us know if you’re interested, Celia.” Lippa took her friends back to her office.

Celia opened an encyclopedia of Wicca, but she was distracted by what Lippa had said. The Troika studied things like witchcraft, but did that mean they believed it was real? Might Lippa be able to help her figure out Mariette? She heard the bookstore door open again, and Celia closed the book. A tall man dressed in black was entering, and her heart turned over in her chest. It was the Leopard. He noticed her immediately and came up to the counter.

“Hi,” he said. In the dim store he looked exactly as he did at Diaboliques. It felt as if he carried some of the darkness of the club into the bookstore with him.

“Hi,” she said, setting aside the book, feeling nervous, hoping she wouldn’t sound nervous, trying to keep her thoughts from running off in all directions.

“I wondered if I’d ever get to speak to you.” His voice was a little deeper than she’d expected, and he pronounced his words carefully, as though he didn’t speak very often.

“Really?” Now that he was only a few feet from her, the counter separating them, he was bigger than she remembered. She looked up into his eyes and thought she saw sparks among the gray of his irises.

“Maybe not. I’m Tomasi.” He offered his hand a little awkwardly.

“I’m Celia.” His hand was smooth and warm around hers, and she felt herself blushing.

“So, you work here? This is a great store.”

“It is. I’ve only been here for a month or so.”

“You like to read?”

“I do, but I haven’t really read anything.”

“I know how you feel. The more I read, the more I realize I’ve barely scratched the surface.” He looked around, and she was in agony about how stilted the conversation was.

“All my friends say that, too. They’re all older, and they make references I don’t get. They mentioned a book called
Boo Radley,
but I can’t find it.”

“He’s a character in
To Kill a Mockingbird,
” Tomasi said, and she was grateful he didn’t care that she didn’t know. “That’s a great book.”

“Now you’re finding out just how much I haven’t read,” Celia said, reddening again.

“We’re young. We’ve barely begun to read,” he said, his voice warming. “We have our whole lives to read all this.” Celia thought he seemed both at home and uneasy there in the store. She felt it too. This place suddenly felt unfamiliar with him in it.

“I guess. What do you like?”

“My problem is I like everything,” Tomasi said. “I read something older, like Thomas Hardy, and I love it. I read something new, like Salman Rushdie, and I love it. I read someone like James Joyce, and I don’t think I understand it completely, but I love it.”

“I haven’t read any of them,” Celia said.

“They’re all here.” Tomasi lifted one arm toward the stacks, silent centurions standing guard over the conversation.

“Would you recommend a book for me to read?” Celia asked.

“Hm.” Tomasi thought a moment. “
The Awakening,
by Kate Chopin. It’s not too long, but it’s brilliant. I remember I finished it on a bus, and I was so amazed, I almost turned to the stranger next to me and started telling her about it.” Tomasi strode off toward the literature section, and to Celia he was still the Leopard. In his dark jeans and close-fitting black sweater, he looked like an off-duty soldier from a foreign army. She tried to imagine him riding a bus. Soon he returned with a copy of the book, which he handed to her.

“Thank you. I will definitely read this.” On the cover a woman in white stared directly out of a painting at Celia. Celia wanted to study Tomasi’s face, his eyes, but it was so much easier to look down at this woman’s pensive expression or to examine the mottled surface of the counter.

There was a moment when she didn’t know what to say, and it seemed as if he didn’t, either. A Philip Glass piece roiled in the speakers overhead. “You like Diaboliques?” he finally asked.

She looked up and got to see the mercury in his eyes again. “I do, I love it. I just found out about it, about all of that, the music, everything, this fall.”

“I just started going, too. I like it, but I don’t know if I take it as seriously as the other people there.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Celia said, feeling a little guilty, as though she were betraying the Rosary somehow. “I mean, I like dressing up for it, and how it almost feels like a show, but sometimes at home I just jump around to the songs I like.”

“I know! When he plays something like ‘This Corrosion’ by Sisters of Mercy, people should go nuts. You know, the one with the New York Choral Society at the beginning, all dramatic and religious, and then it just blows up.”

“I love that song.”

“It’s kind of an overplayed classic, and I don’t listen to it at home anymore, but in a club, when it’s really loud and everyone’s reaching up toward the lights like they’re in some kind of ecstasy, it’s pretty awesome.”

“I’m still learning about all the music.”

“It’s what keeps me coming back. And I like seeing you.” Tomasi looked uncomfortable the moment he said it. “Well, I’ll see you Friday,” he mumbled, and strode out the door. Celia said goodbye, but she wasn’t sure if he heard her.

He’d gone like a wind. She caught his profile as it passed outside the shop window, and she was tempted to go to the door to try to glimpse him on his way down the street. Instead, she looked down at
The Awakening
on the counter in front of her, proof he really had been there. The woman on the cover stared back up at her.
Well,
Celia thought,
his name is Tomasi. I like his voice, and he doesn’t waste words. He wears the same clothes during the day that he does at Diaboliques. I wouldn’t have guessed he liked literature, but I like that he does. Did he come in here to buy something?
After this meeting, Tomasi was even more mysterious to Celia, and she didn’t expect she would feel any different under his gaze come Friday. But she would speak with him this time, and that gave her an immediate thrill.
Just wait until Regine sees . . .

The gentle clicking of Lippa’s gum told Celia she had come up next to her. Lippa noticed the book on the counter. “He’s not your boyfriend. You were too nervous. But you like him.”

“I don’t know him very well at all,” Celia heard herself protest, and knew she only was proving Lippa right.

“You don’t have to know someone to like him. Sometimes it’s easier if you don’t know him at all—at least, for a while. The two of you definitely look like you’re going to the same party, though.” The expression made Celia smile. “So, what do you think?”

“I think—I’d like to talk to him some more,” Celia said. “We’d never spoken before.”

“Very mysterious.” Lippa raised an eyebrow. “I like that. I like mysterious things.”

“I think you are mysterious,” Celia said.

“Yes, but you have to be careful. When you are young and mysterious, men write songs about you. When you are old and mysterious, boys throw stones at you.” Lippa tilted her head at Celia and then went back to the office.

READING
THE AWAKENING
WAS
like hearing Tinderbox. Celia was absorbed into its world and held, transfixed. She finished the book in a few days, and she was so shocked by the ending, she started all over again, trying to make sense of it. If the books she'd read before then were the equivalent of those coarse high school dances, The Awakening was in league with Diaboliques. The primary reason Celia hadn't fallen in love with reading, she realized, was that she simply hadn't read the right books. Each new song, and now this new book, made her yearn to find more. At the bookstore Celia stood in the literature section as though it were a newly discovered shrine, wishing she could remember the other authors Tomasi had mentioned. Overwhelmed by the possibilities, she finally decided to pick a book by an author whose last name began with "A," and then "B," and read her way through the alphabet. It was arbitrary, but at least it helped her to narrow down her options. Jane Austen was the winner.

“Have you read
The Awakening,
by Kate Chopin?” she asked Regine in the car.

“No, is it new?”

“No, it was published in 1899. It’s so good I read it twice.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s hard to explain without giving it away. A woman who won’t accept the limitations of her life,” Celia said.

“Will you lend it to me?” Regine said.

“Sure.” Celia slipped it out of her bag and presented it.

“See, I didn’t have to hold my breath very long before I learned something from you.” Regine smiled at her. “I wonder if Liz has read this. How did you find out about it?”

“Someone at the bookstore recommended it,” Celia said. She deliberated for a moment and then plunged in. “You know the guy at Diaboliques who stares at me?”

“Yeah?”

“He came into the bookstore last week. He loves to read.”

“Wow! You talked to him? He recommended this? What’s his name?” Regine was genuinely curious, and Celia thought her tone was partly protective, partly alarmed that something interesting had happened to her when Regine hadn’t been there to see it.

“Tomasi.”

“Beautiful name. Where does he go to school?”

“We didn’t talk about that. We didn’t get to talk that long.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to meet Tomasi on Friday,” Regine said. “I just know there are some creepy guys at Diaboliques. You know that’s why I was so cautious, right?”

“I understand,” Celia said. “It’s okay. I like that you guys look out for me.”

9. THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

D
URING THAT WEEK, AS
October pinched off the last warm afternoons, everyone at Suburban buzzed about the upcoming eve of the next girl’s sixteenth birthday. She was a bit dramatic about it, and spent her curse day shrieking at any sudden movement, but by the end of the day nothing had happened. Everyone waited for the next morning to find out if she had broken the curse. She arrived in splendor and paraded around, collecting accolades and trying to capitalize on having thwarted a superstition, even though she had no idea how she had done it.

“Leave it to the class slut to break the curse,” Regine said archly.

“That’s not nice!” Liz said.

Regine stood her ground. “Okay, leave it to the girl who
has a reputation
for being the class slut to break the curse.”

“I’m sure that has nothing to do with it,” Liz said.

“I’ve heard she
is
kind of a slut,” Celia whispered to Marco.

“So is the curse broken, then?” Brenden asked.

“Sure, the curse is broken. The stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Liz said. “Forget that. I want to know about—what’s his name? Tomasi? I hear you’ve started a book club with your new friend from Diaboliques.”

“No,” Celia giggled. “He just recommended a book to me.”

“I’ve only had it two days and I’m already halfway through it. You should borrow it when I’m done,” Regine told Liz. “I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it.”

“The end will blow your mind,” Celia added.

“So does this mean the embargo is lifted and she can talk to the poor guy?” Marco asked.

“That’s not what ‘embargo’ means,” Regine said. “But yes, I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

“Why should you meet him?” Brenden said. “He hasn’t recommended a book for
you
.”

“Hey, you know perfectly well why we were telling her to be careful. And it’s not like we’re just going to turn her loose now. I’d do the exact same thing again.” Regine sniffed.

“Okay,” Brenden said, winking at Celia.

She was tickled by how they all had taken such an interest in this development. It would have been enough to savor her experience with Tomasi on her own, but it was more delicious to share it with them. Celia thought about telling Mariette that she had been right when she had predicted Celia would speak with Tomasi soon.

But in chemistry Mariette surprised Celia by bringing up the curse before Celia had the chance to say anything. “So, that girl who turned sixteen without anything happening to her—she’s, well, sexually active?” Mariette asked.

“Sexually active?” Celia tried to tease her for being so clinical, but Mariette didn’t take the bait. “She has a reputation, but I don’t really know. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Do you think it has something to do with why nothing happened to her? The curse, I mean?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she figured out some way to avoid it.”

“So, maybe it’s over?”

“Maybe. Somehow I don’t think so,” Mariette said, and Celia was shocked to see her silent for a while, lost in thought. When Mariette spoke again, it was to change the subject. “Has anyone from the other chemistry class asked you to tutor them?”

“A couple people have asked me for help with homework problems. Why?”