Emma turned her hand clockwise, then counterclockwise, watching the red fabric.
“I must let it come apart, she said, and when it fell off my wrist, those wishes would come true. I could not cut it off. Nao corta-la. I thought it was fun for a while, a little bit mystical, but this thing has been on my skin for more than six months! It looks ratty, but I want my wishes to come true. Don’t look at me like that! I guess I believe in magic.”
Apollo took her hand and pulled it toward him.
I am the god, Apollo, he thought. I am the god, Apollo.
He picked up the plastic knife on the table, and with one move he cut the red string off her wrist. It fell onto the plastic tabletop. Emma shivered. He held on to her hand.
“I promise you,” he said. “With me, all three of your wishes will come true.”
In this moment Emma Valentine faced a choice. She could see this moment as proof that Apollo Kagwa was an arrogant dick, or she could decide he was bold and worthy. He’d made his move, and now she must make her decision.
EARLY EVENING BY the time Apollo arrived at the two-story row house in Ridgewood, Queens. As he scuffed up the front stairs, he laughed at how, when he lived in the two-bedroom in Flushing with Lillian, these sorts of places—not apartments but actual homes—had seemed so high-toned. He’d ask her why they didn’t live in one, and she’d say, Those are for owning not renting. Even now that he and Emma had an apartment of their own—on the island of Manhattan—he couldn’t stop himself from admiring the row house, gawping at the second-floor windows, the rain gutter running along the roof. Apollo Kagwa, thirty-seven now, but he still felt like that little boy.
When Apollo rang the bell, he heard a woman calling from inside, and then the locks clicked and the curtains of the first-floor window slid aside a few inches so he could be seen there on the stoop by someone he couldn’t see. Then another voice, deeper, male, and the door stopped being unlocked. Apollo felt thrown back to the days when he’d been left waiting outside some nervous bookseller’s storefront, or all the times the owner of a private residence refused to let him in. I am the god, Apollo, he thought. I am the god, Apollo. These days the mantra came automatically, as commonplace as breathing. He took out his cellphone while he waited and sent Emma a text. He wondered if she’d already made it to the restaurant.
Will be late for dinner, but I’ll be there.
“Hold on!” a woman shouted from the other side. “I’m here!”
The door shook in its frame, locks clacked then clicked, then clacked back again.
“Come help,” the woman growled. “Don’t you see me?”
The curtain in the front window fluttered, another set of footsteps, heavier and faster. Two clicks, and the knob turned, the door opened. A man in his early thirties stood in the doorway, and behind him was a small, much older woman. White folks, they looked like a pair out of some old central European woodcut. Those gaunt, lined faces and stiff postures.
“It’s that easy!” the man said, shouting at her over his shoulder. He seemed too old to sound so childish.
The woman pulled at the man’s arm so he’d move.
“Mrs. Grabowski?” Apollo asked.
“You’re the book man?” she asked.
“I’m the book man.”
Apollo held out his card for her, but the man snatched it fast, then retreated into the house. Apollo decided to call the man Igor, no matter what his real name turned out to be. The old woman, Mrs. Grabowski, smiled tightly and waved Apollo in.
They entered a dining room where six cardboard boxes were laid out on the dining table. There was a sectional couch in the adjoining room, a large flatscreen television on a stand, and little else.
“You said your husband died,” Apollo began.
“Ex-husband,” Mrs. Grabowski said. She looked around the dining room. There was a dining table here, but no chairs. The off-white walls so dusty, they appeared gray. Black garbage bags were heaped in one corner of the dining room. One of them lay open, and a few dingy sport coats, weathered slacks, spilled out. Mr. Grabowski had succumbed to bachelorhood in his old age.
“My son and I have lived around the corner in recent years.”
“At least you stayed close,” Apollo said.
Mrs. Grabowski shrugged. “This is Little Ukraine. Where else could we go? Now we have to clear it out by the end of the week. The owners want to rent to someone else.”
She had an accent, though she might’ve been living in the United States for twenty years. Lillian never lost that faint British lilt that had got her hired by Glamour Time over forty years ago. Apollo used to get such a laugh out of hearing his mother pronounce aluminum like a Brit. Al-loo-min-ee-um.
Igor waggled the business card as if he was a bouncer checking ID.
“Did you go to school to do this?” Igor asked.
“Those are the books?” Apollo said, pointing to the boxes on the table. He didn’t wait for her to answer—he just wanted to clear some space between himself and Igor. Keep it moving, Igor.
“He enjoyed reading,” Mrs. Grabowski said as Apollo opened the flaps of the first box. “But his eyes became worse with age.”
Igor didn’t like being ignored. He raised his voice. “You heard of Bauman’s?” he demanded.
His mother looked at him. “Please don’t be foolish,” she said.
Apollo didn’t even have to peek inside the box to be sure this one was worthless. The scent of mildew—water damage—rose into the air like a specter. He moved on to the next box, but the same smell greeted him.
“Bauman’s Rare Books,” Igor said. “They have already made an offer for my father’s collection.”
The old woman turned now and slapped her son’s arm. She spoke in their native tongue, and as Apollo moved on to the third box, he felt himself shrinking. He’d come all the way out here for what would no doubt turn out to be six boxes of stained, curled, and torn books.
He did this instead of going straight to the dinner with Emma. One of her oldest friends, Nichelle, was visiting town and made reservations for them at Bouley. Just say that name with the proper French accent to guess how much the meal would cost. And here he was in Ridgewood, listening to a Ukrainian family bicker in Ukrainian. Or were they speaking Russian? He had traveled all this way so this twit Igor could try and tell him that Bauman’s Rare Books made an offer on Mr. Grabowski’s collection of sour-smelling paperbacks. He had come all this way to have his authority and experience questioned by a man who assumed superiority as a kind of birthright. But a good book man never turns down the chance at some rare find.
Especially not a book man with a child on the way.
Igor took out his cellphone, and as he tapped at the screen, he spoke in English again. “I’ve got the direct line for the Baumans,” he said.
Apollo reached the sixth box. Hardcovers this time, and a quick sniff suggested mildew hadn’t been introduced to the batch. This time he reached in and checked the books.
“Which Bauman?” Apollo asked. “David or Natalie?”
A few works of nonfiction about Vietnam.