Imagine you’re a bird. You can be any kind of bird, but those of you who’ve chosen ostrich or chicken are going to struggle to keep up. Now, imagine you’re coasting through the skies above Los Angeles, coughing occasionally in the smog. Shiny ribbons of traffic spangle below you, and in the distance you see an impossibly verdant patch, like a green darn in a gray sock. As you get closer, the patch resolves into a cross-hatching of old houses and streets, and you have reached Larchmont. Congratulations, you’ve discovered a secret not even all Angelenos know. It’s a neighborhood like any other, but it boasts a forest of trees, planted generously along semiwinding streets that look like they were lifted wholesale from a Capra movie, and were actually all planted at once in the 1920s.
The houses are big but not showy, set back with front gardens that make the streets seem even wider than they are. Even today, most of the houses look the way they always have, thanks to historical preservation and a general consensus that the whole thing is hella cute. The trees have grown into truly beautiful examples of their kind; magnolias drift the streets with perfume, cedars strew them with russet needle carpets, and oaks make street cleaning and alternate side parking a necessity.
Larchmont Boulevard is the linear heart of Larchmont Village, populated by cafés, restaurants, boutiques, artisanal stores of many kinds, and one of the few remaining independent bookstores in Los Angeles. That’s where Nina Lee Hill works; spinster of this parish and heroine of both her own life and the book you’re holding in your lovely hand.
Knight’s has been in business since 1940, and though its fortunes have risen and fallen over time, a genuine love of books and a thorough knowledge of its customers have kept it in business. It is like all good independent bookstores should be, owned and staffed by people who love books, read them, think about them, and sell them to other people who feel the same way. There is reading hour for little kids. There are visiting authors. There are free bookmarks. It’s really a paradise on earth, if paradise for you smells of paper and paste. It does for Nina, but as our story opens, she would happily go back to the part where we were all being birds and poop on the head of the woman in front of her.
The woman was staring at Nina in what can only be described as a truculent fashion, jangling her extensive, culturally appropriative turquoise jewelry.
“I want my money back. It’s a very boring book; all they do is sit around and talk.” She took a breath and delivered the coup de grâce. “I don’t know why the manager told me it was a classic.”
Nina looked around for Liz Quinn, the guilty party. She could hear the distant rustling of washable silk as Liz went to ground in the young adult section. Snipe. Nina breathed in hate and breathed out love. She smiled at the customer. “Did you read it all the way through?”
The woman didn’t smile back. “Of course.” Not a quitter, just a whiner.
“Well, then we can’t refund your money.” Nina curled her toes inside their fluffy socks. The customer couldn’t see that, of course, and Nina sincerely hoped she looked calm and resolute.
“Why not?” The customer was short, but she managed to draw herself up a couple of inches. All that Pilates finally paying off.
Nina was firm. “Because we sold you a book and you read it. That’s pretty much the whole life cycle of bookstores right there. If you didn’t enjoy it, I’m very sorry, but we can’t do anything about it.” She looked down at the book on the counter. “You really didn’t like it? It’s generally considered one of the greatest novels of all time.” Nina resisted the impulse to pull out her imaginary blaster and blow the woman’s head off, and got a microflash of the bit in Terminator 2 where his silvery head splits in the middle and waves about. Liz was always telling her to be warmer toward the customers, and to remember they could go online and buy any book on the planet faster than Knight’s could order it. Nina needed to make it a friendly and personal experience, so they liked her enough to give the store a) more money and b) more time than they had to give