Chapter Twenty-Two:  Back to the Roots

Localad flies home, buys his old bookstore using the movie money, and sets up a printing press.

Localad flew home three weeks later, in early autumn, on a ticket he’d booked himself. No studio car collected him. No assistant sent an itinerary in six different colours. Nobody texted to confirm his “ground transportation requirements.” Nobody held a sign with his name printed at a size determined by his contractual importance.

He chose his own flight. He packed his own bag. He even selected his own seat, although the airline charged him twenty-eight dollars more for the privilege of deciding which part of the same aluminium tube he wished to occupy.

Localad found this quite luxurious. It was, he realised somewhere in flight over some mountains, the first genuinely free decision he had made in more than a year.

The flight landed at an airport two hours inland from Meridian Cove. Localad collected his suitcase himself, rented a car himself and drove himself home, discovering along the way, that independence involved considerably more paperwork than he remembered.

Meridian Cove appeared at the end of the coast road exactly where he had left it. This was quite characteristic, as the town considered relocation very showy.

Localad slowed as he came down the hill. The harbour spread beneath him, grey-blue beneath an autumn sky. Fishing boats knocked against the same pilings with the same hollow wooden complaints. Gulls circled above the waterfront conducting negotiations at a volume normally associated with industrial disputes.

The traffic light still blinked yellow. The municipal clock remained seven minutes slow and therefore, in local opinion, dependable. The diner’s neon signage continued to fail every third breath, producing a rhythm of DINER, DINER and occasionally DINER with unusual confidence.

Mrs. Alvarez was arguing with somebody outside the pharmacy.

Localad smiled. He had no idea what the argument was about. And he found this reassuring.

Then Gull Street curved towards the harbour. And there it was. Harbour & Page.

The sight of it struck Localad more forcefully than the Hollywood premiere had.

He pulled the rental car to the kerb and sat there for a moment with both hands resting on the steering wheel.

The shop was not beautiful. It leaned. It peeled. One gutter sagged in the middle with the exhausted dignity of something that had been promised replacement during three separate administrations. The painted lettering above the window had faded unevenly. The sign’s missing punctuation remained missing. The window display contained four new releases, two books that had been new releases several years earlier and a handwritten recommendation card from Marjory describing one novel as: BETTER THAN THE COVER SUGGESTS.

The building had spent generations absorbing sea air, pipe smoke, wet coats, spilled coffee and sentences read silently by people who had nowhere else to go.

Hollywood had possessed soundstages the size of aircraft hangars. It had possessed marble lobbies, private screening rooms, executive dining rooms and conference tables apparently made from trees individually interviewed before being felled.

None of them had ever felt as good as this. It was his very own place in the world. Which was by no means the same as saying it belonged to him. Not yet anyway.

Localad opened the car door.

The bell above the shop entrance gave its familiar cracked announcement before he had even reached the pavement.

Marjory appeared in the doorway. She stopped. Localad stopped. They looked at one another for just a second or two, too long to pretend this was ordinary.

Marjory crossed the pavement. She held him.

Localad had imagined several things he might say at this moment. He had rehearsed some of them on the plane. His imagination, as usual, had been majestic in all its suggestions but was now completely unavailable for comment at the required moment.

“I’m home,” he managed.

“Yes,” Marjory said against his shoulder.

The hug continued.

A passing tourist fast approached, hesitated, considered as to whether this represented some local ceremony, then stepped into the road to go around them.

Marjory eventually pulled back. She studied Localad’s face.

“You look different.”

“Good different?”

“Tired different.”

“Oh.”

“But not the same tired.”

Localad frowned. “There are categories?”

“There have always been categories. You had shop tired. Then writing tired. Then Hollywood tired. Hollywood tired was particularly unpleasant.”

“What did that look like then?”

“Like somebody had been renting your face and wasn't getting their deposit back.”

Localad laughed. It had surprised him.

Marjory looked at him more carefully. “That,” she said.

“What?”

“That’s different.”

“What is?”

“You just laughed without checking whether anybody important was in the room first.”

Localad looked through the shop window. “I feel different.”

“How?”

He considered it. “I think I remember who I am again.”

Marjory’s expression softened. Only slightly. She still distrusted excessive softness on structural grounds.

“Well,” she said, “try to remain who you are now, for at least ten minutes before starting another project.”

“I can do that.”

“No manuscripts.”

“Fine.”

“No publishing plans.”

“Fine.”

“No film adaptations.”

“Definitely fine.”

“No reorganising the Fantasy shelves because you’ve suddenly developed opinions about genre taxonomy.”

Localad looked through the window. “What have you done to Fantasy?”

“Nothing.”

“Those shelves look different.”

“Localad.”

“I’m only observing.”

“You've been home forty-three seconds.”

“I said I could manage ten minutes. I didn't say consecutively.”

Marjory sighed. He remained project-free for six.

The manuscript was in the drawer beneath the counter. The original. All four hundred and thirty-one handwritten pages of it.

Localad stood looking down at it. For eighteen months he had seen Purradise everywhere except here. On scripts. On production schedules. On contracts. On studio whiteboards. On call sheets. On posters thirty feet high. On merchandise prototypes. On the side of a bus. And once, rather disturbingly, on a promotional beverage.

But here was the actual thing. Paper, ink, his own handwriting. The rubber band wrapped around it had gone brittle with age. Localad touched it and it snapped immediately. He stared at the broken rubber band before him.

Marjory looked over from the register. “Well,” she said. “There goes the original production budget.”

“It lasted twenty years.”

“Then it had a better run than most studios.”

Localad picked up the manuscript. “Did you read it while I was gone?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“It wasn't mine.”

“You could have.”

“I could also have opened your post and worn your trousers but there are boundaries.”

“You'd look terrible in my trousers.”

“I'd look better than you do.”

“That seems unnecessarily personal.”

“You've been away. I'm catching up.”

Localad smiled, then he carried the manuscript over to the chair behind the counter and began reading.

He read it over the following week. The shop read it alongside him. The radiator knocked, the shelves settled and the loose floorboard over in Poetry announced every visitor with a greater reliability than the bell ever could.

Outside, the rain moved against the windows and the sea breathed beyond Gull Street.

At night, after Marjory went home and the last customer had been gently encouraged to remember that private residences existed, the shop gathered darkness into its corners while Localad further encountered his own unaltered sentences.

Jasmine was still there.

Jasmine. Twenty-six years old. A woman. Still carrying her dead sister’s sword through four hundred pages of grief that never once needed to be shouted in order to be understood.

She was neither Brand nor Brick Holland. She had no opening battle. She had no market-tested villain. She did not deliver a speech explaining her emotional journey while running away from any explosion.

The knights were all eleven again. Not five. Not three plus “a composite character.” Eleven of them. All Gloriously inconvenient. Each had a history. Each had failed differently. Each had reasons for falling and reasons, eventually, for rising.

The Wound remained open. Nothing exploded inside it. Nobody defeated it. Nobody discovered it was secretly a portal that could be closed by simply retrieving three enchanted stones in time for the start of the third act. It simply remained. Because some wounds always did.

Localad reached the final page shortly after midnight on Thursday. He read the last line.

The wound in the sky did not close; it simply, finally, stopped being the only thing she could see.

He sat very still. Then he read it again.

Localad wept. Not because the ending was perfect. He could see many things he could change now. A word here. A rhythm there. One adjective on page 217 that had apparently escaped parental supervision. But it was all his. Entirely his.

The next morning Marjory found him asleep in the chair with the manuscript on his chest. She put a coffee beside him.

Localad opened one eye.

“You stayed all night.”

“I finished it.”

“And?”

He sat up. “It’s good.”

Marjory nodded.

“No, I mean it.”

“I know.”

“It’s actually good.”

“I know.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“For approximately twenty years.”

Localad took the coffee. “I thought maybe I’d remembered it wrong.”

“You did.”

His face fell.

Marjory took a book from the returns pile. “You remembered it as something that needed Hollywood to prove it was good.”

Localad said nothing.

“That,” she continued, “was the part you remembered wrong.”

In other news, the film money had already paid off the bank. And that, Localad had sometimes thought, was perhaps the one single adaptation choice that Hollywood had made, that had unquestionably improved the original storyline.

There was still money remaining too.

Not an enormous amount by Los Angeles standards. In Los Angeles, the remaining sum would probably have purchased a modest kitchen renovation or approximately fourteen minutes of a producer’s enthusiasm.

But in Meridian Cove, it could change everything.

The building housing Harbour & Page had been leased by Localad’s family for three generations. His grandfather had rented it. His father had rented it too. Localad had also inherited the privilege of paying somebody else for the continued right to repair their plumbing. So he decided it was time to actually buy it.

The Title deed arrived on a wet Tuesday afternoon. Localad stood behind the counter holding the freshly minted document in both hands.

Marjory came out of the back room carrying a box of crime novels. “Well?”

“It’s mine.”

“The paper?”

“The building.”

“I know. I just wanted to see how long you'd take.”

Localad looked around. “This all feels indecently adult.”

Marjory put down the box. “You own the leaking roof.”

“I do.”

“The defective wiring.”

“All mine.”

“The upstairs window that only closes during droughts.”

“Mine.”

“The boiler?”

Localad hesitated. “Unfortunately, that too.”

“What about that patch of mould in the stockroom that's shaped like Wales?”

“I've always thought it looked more like Belgium.”

“Yay, you own Belgium.”

Localad smiled. Then Marjory pointed upward.

“And the bell?”

They both looked towards the door. The cracked brass bell hung from its equally cracked mount.

Localad nodded slowly. “I may finally repair that.”

“No.”

He looked at her. “No?”

“No.”

“But it’s broken.”

“It works.”

“It sounds like a teaspoon falling into a drawer.”

“It has character.”

“It has metal fatigue.”

“It has tenure.”

“Marjory—”

“That bell survived your grandfather.”

“Yes.”

“Your father.”

“Yes.”

“Three recessions.”

“Probably.”

“The internet.”

“Barely.”

“And Hollywood.”

Localad considered this. “That is a really persuasive résumé.”

“You can repair the mount.”

“The bell stays?”

“The bell stays.”

They compromised by only repairing the mount and preserving the cracked bell. It was, Localad reflected, the healthiest creative negotiation he had participated in for the last eighteen months.

Once the property was settled, Localad next called a short-run printer two towns inland. Marjory was standing beside him when he made the call. The printer asked what he wanted.

Localad looked down at the manuscript. “Three thousand copies of my book please.”

Marjory raised an eyebrow.

“Exactly as written,” Localad continued. “No changes. And I'll send you the manuscript to work with.”

The printer asked about formatting.

“Simple.”

Cover design?

“Again, simple. A plain matt black cover with just a title and ‘a novel by Localad’ in smaller letters below it, ISBN number and barcode on the back. I’ll sort the ISBN.”

Typography?

“Serif.”

“That's not very specific,” Marjory whispered.

“I know what I like.”

“You know approximately what you like.”

Localad waved her away.

The printer asked whether he had any endorsements.

“No.”

Advance praise?

“No.”

Comparable titles?

Localad paused. “Hell no!”

There was a silence at the other end. The printer, evidently accustomed to authors, tried again.

“What about back-cover copy then?”

Localad had thought about this. He had spent several evenings considering blurbs. A sweeping fantasy epic. No. A breath-taking journey of grief, courage and redemption. Absolutely not. For readers who loved — He particularly disliked that construction. It sounded as though books could only be sold by introducing them as somebody else's friends or relatives.

“Localad?” Marjory whispered.

“I’m thinking.”

“You've been thinking for forty three seconds. The printer probably believes you've died on him.”

Localad picked up a pencil. Then he wrote: THIS IS THE BOOK. NOT THE MOVIE. He read it aloud.

There was silence. Then Marjory broke out laughing. Not politely, nor kindly, she laughed so hard she had to support herself against the counter.

“What?”

“That’s your complete marketing strategy?”

“Yes.”

“Six words?”

Localad counted. “That’s seven words if you count ‘the’ twice.”

“I was speaking emotionally.”

Marjory wiped her eyes. “It's your strongest arithmetic yet.”

The printer was still on the phone.

“Sorry,” Localad said.

“That happens more often than you'd think,” the printer replied.

Localad looked again at the sentence. “No quotes. No comparisons. No epic journeys. Just that.”

“Three thousand copies?”

“Three thousand.”

Marjory folded her arms. “That's a hell of a lot of books.”

“I know.”

“What if they don't sell?”

Localad looked around Harbour & Page. For eighteen months, that question would have terrified him. He had lived among opening-weekend projections, tracking numbers, audience awareness, demographic quadrants and people capable of describing millions of dollars as disappointing. Now he looked at the old shelves, the damp window, the cracked bell, the manuscript beside him.

“Then we'll have three thousand books.”

“That will make moving through the stockroom difficult.”

“We've survived worse.”

“We have?”

“And if they do sell…”

Marjory waited.

Localad smiled. “Then we'll just have to print 3,000 more.”

She studied him for a moment. “That simple eh?”

“That simple.”

“No franchise strategy?”

“No.”

“No cinematic universe?”

“No.”

“No after-market merchandise?”

“Absolutely not.”

“But I was considering mugs.”

Localad stared at her. Marjory held her expression for several seconds. Then smiled. “You're very easily fooled now.”

“I've had a difficult year.”

They placed the order.

That evening, after closing, Localad and Marjory stood outside Harbour & Page together. The rain had stopped. The street shone beneath the lamps, and beyond the buildings came the quiet movement of the harbour.

The repaired bell mount had held. The old cracked bell moved gently in the wind. Clink. - Teaspoon - Tool-box - Spanners - Existential doubt.

Localad looked up at the building. It was his building now. And it still felt awfully strange. Marjory stood beside him with her hands in her coat pockets. “What now?” she asked.

Localad considered the question. For the first time in a long time, nobody else was waiting for his answer. No executives. No producer. No lawyers. No journalists. No audience-research department. Just Marjory.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I open the shop.”

“And after that?”

“I sell some books.”

“And after that?”

“Lunch, probably.”

“Wow, ambitious.”

“I've changed.”

Marjory smiled. “And the day after that?”

Localad looked through the window at the shelves. At the counter where he had written Purradise. At the drawer containing the manuscript Hollywood had bought without ever quite understanding what it had purchased.

“I don't know.”

Marjory nodded. “Good.”

“Good?”

“You spent the last year surrounded by people who always knew what came next. Not knowing should come as a relief.”

“They certainly thought they did.”

“And look how that turned out.”

Localad laughed quietly. Across the harbour, a fishing boat sounded its horn. “Do you think three thousand was too many?”

“Yes.”

Localad turned to her. “Well you could have said something.”

“I did.”

“When?”

“When I raised my eyebrow.”

“That could have meant anything.”

“Not after twenty years, it couldn't.”

They stood in silence. Not an uncomfortable silence. They had known each other far too long for those. This was one of their older silences, the kind accumulated between two people who had spent enough years together to understand that conversation did not always require words and, occasionally, benefited enormously from their absence.

The harbour moved quietly beyond Gull Street. Marjory looked towards the water.

Localad looked at Marjory. She noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring at me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

“I was just looking in your direction.”

“My face is in my direction.”

“Yes, and that has always seemed a bad way to organise....”

Marjory slowly turned towards him. There was amusement in her expression, but something else too. Something a lot quieter.

Localad looked away. He had faced studio executives. He had sat opposite lawyers. He had walked a premiere carpet beneath several hundred cameras while wearing shoes that had cost more than his first car. But none of these experiences had prepared him for Marjory looking at him and waiting.

“You know,” she said, “you never asked.”

“Asked what?”

“What happened here while you were gone.”

Localad frowned. “I assumed you ran the shop.”

“I did.”

“And terrorised customers.”

“Only the deserving ones.”

“Reorganised sections without consulting me.”

“Your filing system was based largely on intuition and resentment.”

“It worked.”

“It worked for you. Archaeology also works too, if you're prepared to spend over six months finding something.”

Localad smiled.

Then Marjory looked back towards the harbour. “I meant me.”

The smile faded. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

“That doesn't sound like nothing.”

“It mostly was.”

She pushed her hands deeper into her coat pockets. “I opened the shop. I closed the shop. I ordered books. I paid invoices. I stopped Mrs. Alvarez returning a cookbook because she disagreed with the author's attitude towards coriander.”

“Reasonable.”

“She hadn't even bought it here.”

“Less reasonable.”

“I went home. I slept. I came back.”

Localad waited.

“And every few days,” Marjory continued, “you called.”

“I did.”

“At increasingly ridiculous hours.”

“Time zones.”

“You once rang me at four seventeen in the morning to ask whether Jasmine would ever use the word ‘destiny.’”

“She wouldn't.”

“I know. I told you that.”

“You said, ‘If you make her say destiny, I will personally fly to Los Angeles and beat you to death with your own manuscript.’”

“I was tired.”

“It was useful feedback.”

Marjory smiled. Then it disappeared again. “And then you stopped calling as much.”

Localad looked down. “I know.”

“You started sounding different.”

“I know.”

“Like every conversation was being overheard by somebody.”

“Sometimes it was.”

“I know.”

That surprised him. “How?”

“Because I've known you for over twenty years.”

“Twenty-three.”

Marjory glanced at him. “You counted?”

“No.”

“But you just corrected me.”

“That isn't counting. That's accuracy.”

She smiled again. 

Localad watched her smile disappear into the darkness between them. “I missed you,” he said. The sentence arrived before he could stop it.

Marjory became very still.

Localad immediately wished language came with a retrieval function. “I mean I missed all this. Obviously. The shop. Meridian Cove. The harbour. The bell. Even Mrs. Alvarez, although I reserve the right to reconsider that once she speaks to me.”

“Localad.”

“And the weather. Los Angeles has weather, technically, but it seems too professionally managed.”

“Localad.”

“And —”

“Stop!”

He stopped. Marjory looked at him. “You were doing quite well.”

“I panicked.”

“I noticed.”

“I meant it.”

“Which part?”

Localad swallowed. This, he thought, was totally absurd. He had written four hundred and thirty-one full pages about grief, love, loyalty, loss and the terrifying business of continuing to live after the world had altered itself beyond recognition. He had written speeches for actors. He had argued character motivation with strange people who used the phrase “emotional architecture” without any embarrassment. He had spent over twenty years surrounded by words. And now, when he need them most, he possessed none.

“You,” he said.

Marjory said nothing.

“I missed you.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Yes.”

“That seems unfair.”

“Why?”

“Because I've only just worked it out.”

Marjory laughed softly. “Oh, Localad.”

“How long have you known?”

“That you missed me?”

“That I…” He gestured helplessly. “That.”

Marjory considered him. “Would you like the kind answer?”

“No.”

“About fifteen years.”

Localad stared at her. “Fifteen?”

“Possibly sixteen.”

“And you said nothing?”

“I've said many things.”

“Not about this you haven't.”

“I once asked whether you wanted to have dinner with me.”

“We have dinner all the time.”

“I was wearing a dress.”

“You own dresses.”

“I bought a new one.”

“I thought it looked nice.”

“You said it looked structurally ambitious.”

“It did.”

Marjory closed her eyes. “Oh, good grief.”

“What?”

“I have loved an idiot.”

Localad stopped breathing. Marjory stopped too. The sentence hung between them. There are moments upon which entire lives pivot, although they rarely announce themselves properly. No orchestra arrives. No camera moves in for a closer look. Nobody had thoughtfully arranged the lighting. Sometimes there's only a wet pavement, a failing bookstore and a cracked bell moving in the wind.

Localad stared at her. “You said loved.”

Marjory looked suddenly alarmed. “I did.”

“Past tense?”

“Grammar is what you're concerned about here?”

“It seemed significant.”

Marjory sighed. “Fine.” She stepped closer. “I have loved a total idiot for approximately fifteen years.”

Localad's heart performed an action for which some profound medical terminology probably existed. “And currently?”

“Currently he's making me regret the administrative burden.”

Localad smiled. “You love me.”

“Don't make it unbearable.”

“You actually love me.”

“I can stop.”

“No, I don't think that's how it works.”

“You'd be surprised what I can achieve when irritated.”

Localad laughed.

Then neither of them spoke. They were very close now. Close enough that Localad could see the tiny lines beside Marjory's eyes. He wondered when they had appeared. He then wondered how many of them he had caused.

“Marjory?”

“Yes?”

“I think I love you too.”

“You think?”

“I've only had about thirty seconds to process this.”

“You've had fifteen bloody years!”

“Apparently I wasn't using them efficiently.”

“That has been my general assessment.”

Localad hesitated. Then, with all the courage of a man who had once signed a sixty-page Hollywood screen contract without properly understanding page fourteen, he slowly leaned towards her.

Marjory put a hand against his chest.

He stopped.

“Before you do whatever you're attempting to do,” she said, “I want one thing made absolutely clear.”

“All right.”

“I am not your reward for surviving Hollywood.”

Localad blinked. “No.”

“I am not the woman waiting at home so the hero can go discover what really mattered all along.”

“No.”

“And if you ever describe me as your happy ending, I will push you into the harbour and watch you drown.”

Localad considered this. “What about an unresolved but cautiously optimistic final act then?”

Marjory just stared at him. “That,” she said, “I could tolerate.”

She kissed him. It was not in the least bit cinematic.

Localad's nose collided briefly with hers. Marjory laughed into his mouth. Localad nearly pushed the two of them backwards into a puddle. There were no fireworks going off, no earth quakes rumbling in the background. There was no swelling music, no conveniently timed shooting stars and no crowds gathering to cheer and wish them both well going forward. Instead, the diner sign across the street had completely lost its rhythm. A gull screamed something defamatory from a chimney across the road. And the cracked bell above Harbour & Page moved awkwardly in the wind producing the well respected sound of a silver teaspoon falling into an old rusty tool-box full of spanners.

Surely, if there was ever a need for a Hollywood re-write, then this should have been the perfect opportunity. For these two though, it was a perfect moment in time, it was theirs to affectionately look back on in the future.

After a while, Marjory stepped back. Localad looked slightly stunned. 

“You really didn't know?”

“Know what?”

“That I've been in love with you for years.”

“No.”

“Not even when I stayed over?”

“You work here.”

“I don't work here.”

Localad frowned. “You don't?”

“I've been helping you run the place for seventeen years.”

“Is there a distinction?”

“Yes. One involves wages.”

Localad looked horrified. “Have I not been paying you?”

“I own thirty percent of the business.”

“Oh?”

“You signed the paperwork.”

“I sign things?”

“Yes,” Marjory said. “We've established of late, that this is just one of your many weaknesses.”

Localad thought about this. “So technically we're business partners.”

“We have been for eleven years.”

“And now we're…”

Marjory waited.

Localad decided not to finish the sentence. “Tea?” he said instead.

She smiled. “Tea.”

They walked towards the door. The shop had not become new. Neither had Localad. There were still cracks. Still leaks. Still things that could not be repaired without destroying some part of what made them themselves.

Perhaps that was the mistake everyone had made. Hollywood too had seen something imperfect and immediately asked how it might be fixed.

Localad had spent eighteen months trying to explain that not everything unfinished was broken. Some wounds remained open. Some bells stayed cracked. Some people came home different. Some people, apparently, could spend fifteen years standing beside the person they loved most, without even noticing, which suggested that Localad's celebrated powers of observation had several important regional limitations too.

At the door, Marjory stopped.

“What?” Localad asked.

“You're doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Thinking something profound that you're planning to use later.”

“I wasn't.”

“You were.”

“I was thinking about tea.”

“Liar.”

Localad unlocked the door. Marjory stepped inside. Then she turned, caught the front of his coat and kissed him again. This one was a lot better organised. When she finally released him, Localad stood in the doorway looking at her.

“Tea,” she reminded him.

“Yes.”

“Localad?”

“Yes?”

“Come inside you fool.”

He did. The bell rang above him. The door closed.

Harbour & Page stood exactly where it had always stood: leaning slightly towards the sea, missing punctuation, carrying several decades of dust but now it was owned, finally, by the family that had spent three generations pretending it already was. Tomorrow there would be three thousand books to worry about. There would be customers, bills, leaks, the boiler and a stain the shape of Belgium. There would also be the complicated and largely unmarketable business of finding out what Localad and Marjory actually were to one another now that they had finally stopped pretending they were nothing. And there would be no sequel guarantee. No franchise rights. No options period. No further notes for revision.

For once, Localad thought, not knowing what happened next felt less like failure than freedom.

The shop had not become new. Neither had Localad, nor had Marjory. They had all, simply, finally, become each other's.

 Thank you for reading thus far. Click here to read the full story from the beginning.