Read Online The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler - Free Book Online Page A

the camera underneath, the lens protruding. The thick webbing of the strap is swinging free; Nikon, Nikon, Nikon.
    “I got pregnant. I knew there was something—I felt—different.”
    The shutter whirrs, that familiar noise from photo shoots in movies.
    “What kind of different? Look into the lens. What kind of different?”
    “As if something had changed. But that might be my imagination—no, I don’t think it is. I knew I was. It just came to me. And so I bought a test, and—” I shrug. The shutter clicks.
    “Go on. Go on . Esme, please.”
    “And it was positive. There was a thick line. Not a ‘maybe’ sort of line.”
    “Oh, God,” says Stella.
    “Is that compassion or artistic excitement?”
    “I don’t know. It’s amazing,” she says. She appears from behind the camera. “I mean, oh, fuck!”
    “I know.”
    “What are you going to do?” she asks, and raises it up again at me. Click click click .
    I want to tell her about the clinic, that I’ve got the appointment. I try to heave the words to my mouth, but they won’t come.
    “Everyone always says they ‘take pictures’ or ‘get some shots’ or ‘capture images,’ ” I say (although to be fair I have never heard anyone in real life say they are going out to capture some images). “Have you noticed that? The verbs are all about acquisition. But cameras don’t really work like that. Cameras are receptive—they are just holes that let in light. But because men use them more than women, we get different words, words that don’t go with what happens. Imagine if men went about saying, ‘Hey, I’m just going to grab my camera because I want to receive some photos.’ ”
    “They’d hang up their cameras,” says Stella. She has let hers fall to her side. Then she grins. “Or, they would think about hanging them up, but the words aren’t as important as the action”—she puts her hand again at the base of the lens and lifts it up with a wicked smile—“and the action’s not as important as the shape. If cameras were vagina shaped, it would be a different story.”
    This makes me laugh, but she is still looking at me. She knows what I am doing.
    “You must need time,” she says. “Give yourself some time.”
    “I think that’s the thing I don’t want,” I say. “It isn’t as if things don’t happen when you take time. It doesn’t all stop while you think.”
    “No,” says Stella, raising her camera again. “But the important thing is that you stop while you think.”
    “I wouldn’t stop. I would change. I would get attached.”
    “That’s the risk. But the other risk is that if you run at it, you will do something that you’ll regret.”
    “Gosh, really? I wonder what that feels like.”
    “I know, honey. I’m sorry.”
    I turn away from her, and from the camera, and fiddle with an odd little wire thing she’s got on a table; it has four tiny cards hanging on it, the four suits. The red diamond is at the front.
    “Do you know something?” Stella says suddenly. “You’re actually living . I’m not. This is living, Esme.”
    “I’ve just called the clinic to make the appointment,” I say.
    There is a silence. Then a click. She has taken a picture of my back.
    “I’ve thought about it,” I say to the table, “and it’s the only real choice.”
    I look round at her. “I want to take your picture,” I say. “You should see your face.”
    “When are you going?” she asks.
    “Wednesday. They had a cancellation.”
    She says nothing.
    “The coffee is burning,” I say.
    She leaps to the stove, throwing the camera on a beanbag. “Okay,” she says. “It’s not burning. It’s just done. Wednesday. What does Mitchell say? Is he the father?”
    “Is he the father ?”
    She grins. “You never know—you might have met a decent guy in the last few weeks.”
    She does not have a high opinion of Mitchell. He first met her when he came with me to meet a bunch of Columbia people at a bar in August,