The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel Read Free

herself with the plaque. Alice is a nice enough place, but she imagines she won’t have reason to be back anytime soon.
    She texts her boss in New York:
Doesn’t look like there’ll be any orders from Island.
    The boss replies:
Don’t fret. Only a little account, and Island does the bulk of its ordering in anticipation of the summer when the tourists are there. The guy who runs the place is weird, and Harvey always had better luck selling the spring/summer list. You will, too.
    AT SIX O’CLOCK, A.J. tells Molly Klock to leave. “How’s the new Munro?” he asks.
    She groans. “Why does everyone keep asking me that today?” She is only referring to Amelia, but Molly likes to speak in extremes.
    “I suppose because you’re reading it.”
    Molly groans again. “Okay. The people are, I dunno, too human sometimes.”
    “I think that’s rather the point with Munro,” he says.
    “Dunno. Prefer the old stuff. See you on Monday.”
    Something will have to be done about Molly, A.J. thinks as he flips the sign to closed . Aside from liking to read, Molly is truly a terrible bookseller. But she’s only a part-timer, and it’s such a bother to train someone new, and at least she doesn’t steal. Nic had hired her so she must have seen something in the surly Miss Klock. Maybe next summer A.J. will work up the energy to fire Molly.
    A.J. kicks the remaining customers out (he is most annoyed by an organic chemistry study group who have bought nothing but have been camped out in magazines since four—he’s pretty sure one of them clogged up the toilet, too), then deals with the receipts, a task as depressing as it sounds. Finally, he goes upstairs to the attic apartment where he lives. He pops a carton of frozen vindaloo into the microwave. Nine minutes, per the box’s instructions. As he’s standing there, he thinks of the girl from Knightley. She had looked like a time traveler from 1990s Seattle with her anchor-printed galoshes and her floral grandma dress and her fuzzy beige sweater and her shoulder-length hair that looked like it had been cut in the kitchen by her boyfriend. Girlfriend? Boyfriend, he decides. He thinks of Courtney Love when she was married to Kurt Cobain. The tough rose mouth says
No one can hurt me,
but the soft blue eyes say
Yes you can and you probably will.
And he had made that big dandelion of a girl cry.
Well done, A.J.
    The scent of vindaloo is growing stronger, but seven and a half minutes remain on the clock.
    He wants a task. Something physical but not strenuous.
    He goes into the basement to collapse book boxes with his box cutter. Knife. Flatten. Stack. Knife. Flatten. Stack.
    A.J. regrets his behavior with the rep. It hadn’t been her fault. Someone should have told him that Harvey Rhodes had died.
    Knife. Flatten. Stack.
    Someone probably had told him. A.J. only skims his e-mail, never answers his phone. Had there been a funeral? Not that A.J. would have attended anyway. He had barely known Harvey Rhodes.
Obviously.
    Knife. Flatten. Stack.
    And yet . . . He had spent hours with the man over the last half-dozen years. They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?
    Knife. Flatten. Stack.
    And how rare is it to find someone who shares your tastes? The one real fight they’d ever had was over David Foster Wallace. It was around the time of Wallace’s suicide. A.J. had found the reverent tone of the eulogies to be insufferable. The man had written a decent (if indulgent and overlong) novel, a few modestly insightful essays, and not much else.
    “
Infinite Jest
is a masterpiece,” Harvey had said.
    “
Infinite Jest
is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no choice but to say you like it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life,” A.J. had countered. “Style, no substance, my friend.”
    Harvey’s face had reddened as he leaned over the desk. “You say that about any writer