The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

by Gabrielle Zevin

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?

The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself. No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset. No one cares why a thirty-nine-year-old man has thrown a plastic tub of vindaloo across a room like a toddler.

I chanced upon “The Luck of Roaring Camp” again a couple of years ago and I cried so much you’ll find that my Dover Thrift Edition is waterlogged. Methinks I have grown soft in my middle age. But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.

“Mr. Fikry, don’t you turn those Omar Sharif eyes of yours on me. I am outraged at you.” Mrs. Cumberbatch pushes past him and slams a plump paperback on the counter. “The book you recommended to me yesterday is the worst book I have read in all my eighty-two years, and I would like my money back.” A.J. looks from the book to the old woman. “What was your problem with it?” “Problems, Mr. Fikry. To begin, it is narrated by Death! I am an eighty-two-year-old woman and I do not find it one bit pleasurable to read a five-hundred-fifty-two-page tome narrated by Death. I think it is a remarkably insensitive choice.” A.J. apologizes but he is not sorry. Who are these people who think a book comes with a guarantee that they will like it? He processes the return. The book’s spine is broken. He will not be able to resell it. “Mrs. Cumberbatch,” he cannot resist saying, “it appears that you read this. I wonder how far along you got.” “Yes, I read it,” she replies. “I most certainly did read it. It kept me up all night, I was so angry with it. At this stage of my life, I would rather not be kept up all night. Nor do I wish to have my tears jerked at the rate at which this novel jerked them. The next time you recommend a book to me, I hope you’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Fikry.” “I will,” he says. “And I do apologize, Mrs. Cumberbatch. Most of our customers have rather liked The Book Thief.”

Reference to the book thief.

The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.

Maya knows that her mother left her in Island Books. But maybe that’s what happens to all children at a certain age. Some children are left in shoe stores. And some children are left in toy stores. And some children are left in sandwich shops. And your whole life is determined by what store you get left in. She does not want to live in the sandwich shop.

Why do monkeys want hats? Maya wonders. Monkeys are animals. Maybe the monkeys, like the bear in the wig who is a mother, represent something else, but what . . . ? She has thoughts but not words.

Sometimes A.J. has a woman come to the store to read books aloud to Maya and the other children. The woman gesticulates and mugs, raising and lowering her voice for dramatic effect. Maya wants to tell her to relax. She is used to the way A.J. reads—soft and low. She is used to him.

People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?

Finally, A.J. gets to the last title. It’s a charming memoir about motherhood, scrapbooking, and the writing life, written by a Canadian poet that A.J. has always liked. The book is only 150 pages, but it takes A.J. two weeks to get through it. He can’t seem to read a chapter without falling asleep or being distracted by Maya. When he finishes it, he finds himself unable to craft a response. The writing is elegant enough, and he thinks the women who frequent his store could respond to it. The problem, of course, is that once he replies to Amelia, he’ll be done with the Knightley winter catalog, and he’ll have no reason to contact Amelia until the summer list hits. He likes her, and he thinks it’s possible that she might like him, despite that horrendous first meeting. But . . . A. J. Fikry is not the kind of man who thinks it’s okay to try to steal another man’s fiancée. He doesn’t believe in “the one.” There are zillions of people in the world; no one is that special. Besides which, he barely knows Amelia Loman. What if, say, he did manage to steal her and it turned out they weren’t compatible in bed?

Rosie is a former college hurdles champion, and she likes to read sports history and particularly athletes’ memoirs. On their third date, she’s in the middle of describing a dramatic section from Jose Canseco’s Juiced when A.J. interrupts her, “You know they’re all ghostwritten?” Rosie says she knows and she doesn’t care. “These high-performance individuals have been busy training and practicing. When did they have time to learn to write books?” “But these books . . . My point is, they’re essentially lies.” Rosie cocks her head toward A.J. and taps her flame nails on the table. “You’re a snob, you know that? Makes you miss out on a lot.” “I’ve been told that before.” “All of life’s in a sports memoir,” she says. “You practice hard and you succeed, but eventually your body gives out and it’s over.”

Snow is beginning to fall, and the flakes catch in Maya’s whiskers. He wants to take a picture, but he doesn’t want to do the thing where you stop to take a picture. “Whiskers become you,” A.J. tells her. The compliment to her whiskers sets off a stream of observations about the recital, but A.J. is distracted. “Maya,” he says, “do you know how old I am?” “Yes,” she says. “Twenty-two.” “I’m quite a bit older than that.” “Eighty-nine?” “I’m . . .” He holds up both his palms four times, and then three fingers. “Forty-three?” “Good job. I’m forty-three, and in these years I’ve learned that it’s better to have loved and lost and blah blah blah and that it’s better to be alone than be with someone you don’t really fancy. Do you agree?” She nods solemnly, and her mouse ears almost fall off.

“No one travels without purpose. Those who are lost wish to be lost.”

“You’re quoting The Late Bloomer,” Leonora says after a long pause. “It really was your favorite.” “It was,” Amelia says. “ ‘When I was young, I never felt young.’ Something like that. Do you remember the rest of the quote?” “No,” Leonora says.

“It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us,” the passage goes, “but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone.”

Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you’re the only person in the room. —A.J.F.

“Someone who died?” A.J. says over dinner. “What about Daniel Parish? You were good friends with him.” “When I was a child,” Maya says. “Isn’t he why you decided to be a writer?” A.J. says. Maya rolls her eyes. “No.” “She had a crush on him when she was little,” A.J. says to Amelia. “Da-ad! That isn’t true.” “Your first literary crush is a big deal,” Amelia says. “Mine was John Irving.” “You lie,” A.J. says. “It was Ann M. Martin.” Laughing, Amelia pours herself another glass of wine. “Yeah, probably right.”

A sentence occurs to her: The day my father shook my hand, I knew I was a writer.

I just don’t want to read about them. Endings can be happy or sad, I don’t care anymore as long as it’s earned. She can settle down, maybe open a little business, or she can drown herself in the ocean. Finally, a nice-looking jacket is important. I don’t care how good the insides are. I don’t want to spend any length of time with an ugly object. I’m shallow, I guess.” “You are one heck of a pretty woman,” Lambiase says. “I’m ordinary,” she says. “No way.” “Pretty is not a good reason to court someone, you know. I have to tell that to my students all the time.” “This from the woman who doesn’t read the books with the ugly covers.” “Well, I’m warning you. I could be a bad book with a good jacket.” He groans. “I’ve known a few of those.”

For the record, everything new is not worse than everything old.

“You must keep up with the times,” she continues. “Why must I? What is so great about the times?” A.J. has often reflected that, bit by bit, all the best things in the world are being carved away like fat from meat. First, it had been the record stores, and then the video stores, and then newspapers and magazines, and now even the big chain bookstores were disappearing everywhere you looked. From his point of view, the only thing worse than a world with big chain bookstores was a world with NO big chain bookstores. At least the big stores sell books and not pharmaceuticals or lumber! At least some of the people who work at those stores have degrees in English literature and know how to read and curate books for people! At least the big stores can sell ten thousand units of publisher’s dreck so that Island gets to sell one hundred units of literary fiction!

CHRISTMAS AND NEW Year’s are over; his mother is happily returned to Arizona; Maya is back to school and Amelia to work. The real gift of the holiday season, A.J. thinks, is that it ends. He likes the routine. He likes making breakfast in the morning. He likes running to work.

THAT NIGHT IN bed, after the lights are off, Lambiase pulls Ismay close to him. “I love you,” he tells her. “And I want you to know that I don’t judge you for anything you might have done in the past.” “Okay,” Ismay says. “I’m half asleep and I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “I know about the bag in the closet,” Lambiase whispers. “I know that the book’s in there. I don’t know how it got there and I don’t need to know either. But it’s only right that it be returned to its rightful owner.” After a long pause, Ismay says, “The book’s ruined.” “But even a damaged Tamerlane might still be worth something,” Lambiase says. “I searched the Christie’s website and the last copy on the market sold for five hundred sixty thousand dollars. So I figure maybe a damaged one is worth fifty thousand or something. And A.J. and Amy need the money.” “Why do they need the money?” He tells her about A.J.’s cancer, and Ismay covers her face with her hands. “The way I see it,” Lambiase says, “we wipe the book down of fingerprints, put it in an envelope, and return it. No one has to know where or who it came from.” Ismay turns on the bedside lamp. “How long have you known about this?” “Since the first night I spent at your house.” “And you didn’t care? Why didn’t you turn me in?” Ismay’s eyes are sharp. “Because it wasn’t my business, Izzie. I wasn’t invited in your home as an officer of the law. And I didn’t have a right to be looking through your stuff. And I figured there must be a stor...

I knew my husband after all. I knew his type. He had cheated on me from the day we were married and probably before that, too. But I loved his books or at least that first one. And I felt like somewhere down deep inside him the person who wrote it must be there. That you couldn’t write such beautiful things and have such an ugly heart. But that is the truth. He was a beautiful writer and a terrible person.

Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.

A question I’ve thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/ acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.*

“Do you remember when Friedman writes how you can’t truly describe a hospital room? How a hospital room when the one you love is in it is too painful to be described or some such crap? How did we ever think that was poetic? I’m disgusted with us. At this stage in my life, I’m with all the people that never wanted to read that book in the first place. I’m with the cover designer who put the flowers and the feet on the front. Because you know what? You totally can describe a hospital room. It’s gray. The art is the worst art you’ve ever seen. Like stuff that got rejected by the Holiday Inn. Everything smells like someone is trying to cover up the smell of piss.” “You loved The Late Bloomer, Amy.” She has still never told him about Leon Friedman. “But I didn’t want to be in some stupid play version of it when I was in my forties.”

“I remember a woman who told me about the importance of shared sensibility. I remember a woman who said she broke up with a bona fide American Hero because they didn’t have good conversation. That could happen to us, you know,” A.J. says. “That is an entirely different situation,” Amelia insists. A second later, she yells, “FUCK!” A.J. thinks something must be seriously wrong because Amelia never curses. “What is it?” “Well, the thing is, I rather like your brain.” He laughs at her, and she weeps a little. “Oh, enough with the tears. I don’t want your pity.” “I’m not crying for you. I’m crying for me. Do you know how long it took me to find you? Do you know how many awful dates I’ve been on? I can’t”—she is breathless now—“I can’t join Match.com again. I just can’t.” “Big Bird—always looking ahead.” “Big Bird. What the . . . ? You can’t introduce a nickname at this point in our relationship!” “You’ll meet someone. I did.” “Fuck you. I like you. I’m used to you. You are the one, you asshole. I can’t meet someone new.” He kisses her and then she reaches under his hospital gown between his legs and squeezes. “I love having sex with you,” she says. “If you’re a vegetable when this is done, can I still have sex with you?” she asks. “Sure,” A.J. says. “And you won’t think less of me?” “No.” He pauses. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the turn this conversation has taken,” he says. “You knew me four years before you asked me out.” “True.” “You were so mean to me the day we met....

When he isn’t throwing up or restlessly half sleeping, he digs out the e-reader his mother had given him last Christmas. (The nurses deem the e-reader to be more sanitary than a paper book. “They should put that on the box,” A.J. quips.)

Short stories are better. He has always preferred short stories anyway. As he is reading, he finds that he wants to make a new list of short stories for Maya. She is going to be a writer, he knows. He is not a writer, but he has thoughts about the profession, and he wants to tell her those things. Maya, novels certainly have their charms, but the most elegant creation in the prose universe is a short story. Master the short story and you’ll have mastered the world, he thinks just before he drifts off to sleep. I should write this down, he thinks. He reaches for a pen, but there isn’t one anywhere near the toilet bowl he is resting against.

Bonbon about a bookseller with an unusual way of extorting money from customers. In terms of characters, it is Dahl’s usual collection of opportunistic grotesques. In terms of plot, the twist is a latecomer and not enough to redeem the story’s flaws. “The Bookseller” really shouldn’t be on this list—it is not an exceptional Dahl offering in any way. Certainly no “Lamb to the Slaughter”—and yet here it is. How to account for its presence when I know it is only average? The answer is this: Your dad relates to the characters. It has meaning to me. And the longer I do this (bookselling, yes, of course, but also living if that isn’t too awfully sentimental), the more I believe that this is what the point of it all is. To connect, my dear little nerd. Only connect.

We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels.

Reading has become difficult. If he tries very hard, he can still make it through a short story. Novels have become impossible. He can write more easily than he can speak. Not that writing is easy. He writes a paragraph a day. A paragraph for Maya. It isn’t much, but it’s what he has left to give. He wants to tell her something very important. “Does it hurt?” she asks. No, he thinks. The brain has no pain sensors and so it can’t hurt. The loss of his mind has turned out to be a curiously pain-free process. He feels that it ought to hurt more. “Are you afraid?” she asks. Not of dying, he thinks, but a little of this part I’m in. Every day, there is less of me. Today I am thoughts without words. Tomorrow I will be a body without thoughts. And so it goes. But Maya, you are here right now and so I am glad to be here. Even without books and words. Even without my mind. How the hell do you say this? How do you even begin?

“Maya,” he says. “There is only one word that matters.” He looks at her to see if he has been understood. Her brow is furrowed. He can tell that he hasn’t made himself clear. Fuck. Most of what he says is gibberish these days. If he wants to be understood, it is best to limit himself to one word replies. But some things take longer than one word to explain. He will try again. He will never stop trying. “Maya, we are what we love. We are that we love.” Maya is shaking her head. “Dad, I’m sorry. I don’t understand.” “We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.” She is still shaking her head. “I can’t understand you, Dad. I wish I could. Do you want me to get Amy? Or maybe you could try to type it?” He is sweating. Conversing isn’t fun anymore. It used to be so easy. All right, he thinks. If it’s gotta be one word, it’s gotta be one word. “Love?” he asks. He prays it has come out right. She furrows her brow and tries to read his face. “Gloves?” she asks. “Are your hands cold, Dad?” He nods, and she takes his hands in hers. His hands had been cold, and now they are warm, and he decides that he’s gotten close enough for today. Tomorrow, maybe, he will find the words.

AT THE BOOKSELLER’S funeral, the question on everyone’s mind is what will become of Island Books. People are attached to their bookstores, more attached than A. J. Fikry ever would have ever guessed. It matters who placed A Wrinkle in Time in your twelve-year-old daughter’s nail-bitten fingers or who sold you that Let’s Go travel guide to Hawaii or who insisted that your aunt with the very particular tastes would surely adore Cloud Atlas. Furthermore, they like Island Books. And even though they aren’t always perfectly faithful, even though they buy e-books sometimes and shop online, they like what it says about their town that Island Books is right in the center of the main strip, that it’s the second or third place you come to after you get off the ferry.

“I hoped they’d find someone else to run the store. But the truth is, Island Books wouldn’t be the same without A.J., Maya, and Amelia anyway,” Lambiase says. “Wouldn’t have the same heart.”

“Turns out I really like bookstores. You know, I meet a lot of people in my line of work. A lot of folks pass through Alice Island, especially in the summer. I’ve seen movie people on vacation and I’ve seen music people and newspeople, too. There ain’t nobody in the world like book people. It’s a business of gentlemen and gentlewomen.”

“I don’t know, Izzie. I’m telling you. Bookstores attract the right kind of folk. Good people like A.J. and Amelia. And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books. I like paper. I like how it feels, and I like the feel of a book in my back pocket. I like how a new book smells, too.”

“I worry about what Alice is going to be like if there isn’t a bookstore here,” Lambiase says as he finishes his coffee. “Me too.”

“Are you sure you’re up to this? We aren’t super young,” Ismay says. “What about no winters? What about Florida?” “We’ll go there when we’re old. We’re not old yet,” Lambiase says after a pause. “I’ve lived in Alice my whole life. It’s the only place I’ve ever known. It’s a nice place, and I intend to keep it that way. A place ain’t a place without a bookstore, Izzie.”

I love Island Books with all my heart. I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place. With bookstores like this, I feel confident in saying that there will be a book business for a very long time. —Amelia Loman”