Читать книгу The Bookshop Of Yesterdays - Amy Meyerson - Страница 12

CHAPTER SIX

In addition to its main campus, Cedars-Sinai had offices across the city. When I looked up Dr. Nazario, he worked in three different locations and didn’t have an open appointment for another six weeks. I tried to explain to the receptionist who answered my call that I wasn’t trying to schedule a consultation—I merely wanted to talk to the doctor about my uncle—and she started in on a long explanation of HIPAA privacy requirements.

“Is there any way I can get in touch with Dr. Nazario?” I asked.

“You can always email him,” she said.

“Does he check his email?”

“I’m not his secretary. You want his email or not?”

I jotted a quick note to Dr. Nazario and sent it into the internet void, hoping somewhat futilely that he might read it, let alone respond.

In morning rush hour, the drive from my parents’ house to Prospero Books took over an hour. The 10 to the 110 to the 101, through downtown where somehow the 5 also got involved and the cars piled up in the congestion that made Los Angeles’s freeways famous. When I arrived at the store, I wanted to see Billy’s San Andreas Fault mug beside the computer, his beaten-up leather satchel on the floor beside the desk chair. I wanted to see Lee racing to answer the phone, reminding all callers that, in Prospero Books, books were prized above all else. Instead, I saw Malcolm behind the front desk, reading. When he heard the back door open, he looked up expectantly until he saw me, sighing when he realized I was back again.

Morning was quieter than the afternoon. At nine, a handful of committed writers worked in the café. A modest crowd waited for their morning coffee as Charlie, the third member of the Prospero clan, frothed milk and ground beans.

Charlie was in his early twenties and had the Big Friendly Giant tattooed on his left forearm, a Wild Thing on his right deltoid. He sat in the chair beside me and rolled up his pant leg, exposing the freckled skin of his pale calf.

“I’m thinking of getting Willy Wonka here. Or maybe the giving tree, I’m not sure,” he said.

“Billy gave me The Giving Tree when I started kindergarten,” I remembered. The week before school, Billy had to go to Northern California, where a small earthquake had rattled the Santa Cruz Mountains. Billy knew I was nervous. A new school. New kids whom I imagined were already friends. He was sorry he couldn’t be there. He’d bought me The Giving Tree perhaps to teach me about friendship or to assure me that whatever happened at school, he would be my giving tree.