The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman Page 0,56
still wanted to take her out. Wanted to see if he could get under that organized layer.
Nina was still flipping through the planner. “But I can do the week after. Probably.”
Probably? “Do you have a piece of paper?” Tom asked, his smile fading.
Nina found him one and handed it to him, frowning. He took a pen from the pot next to the register and scribbled on the piece of paper. He handed it to her.
“That’s my number. If you get a cancellation, text me. I’ll see if I can fit you in.”
He turned and walked out of the store, trying to cover his disappointment and—at least from where Nina was standing—being completely successful.
“Well, that’s a load of balls,” said Polly, when Nina told her about it later.
Nina looked dubiously at her. “Is it? Or is it that I’m lame for being too wedded to my schedule.”
Polly was nothing if not fair minded. “Well, there’s that, too. I mean,” she added quickly, “I’m not saying you’re lame; I’m saying sometimes you get a little anal about your schedule.”
“I do?”
Polly leaned back against the nearest bookcase and nodded. “Do you remember the time the Spin studio flooded and you were completely thrown, because you had scheduled a Spin class and you weren’t sure if you could fit anything else in?”
Nina tugged her away from the bookcase, straightened the books, and frowned at her. “Well, Spin takes eighty-two minutes, and that’s what I had allotted.”
“Exactly. The very fact that you know Spin takes eighty-two minutes . . .” Polly paused. “Wait. Spin class is forty-five minutes long.”
Nina nodded. “Yes, but it takes three minutes for me to walk there from here, seven minutes for me to change, a minute to adjust the bike and get a towel, two minutes afterward to cool down enough to leave the gym without dripping on everything, fourteen minutes to walk to Chipotle and get a salad, and then ten minutes to walk home from Chipotle to my place.”
“How on earth can you predict that getting dinner will take fourteen minutes? What if there’s a long line, or their salad bar catches fire?”
“They don’t have a salad bar. Plus, lettuce isn’t the engine of combustion you seem to think it is.”
Polly looked exasperated. “That’s not the point. I’m saying life is unpredictable. Any number of random things could happen.”
“Of course,” said Nina. “My plan is based on averages and experience. It takes that much time, like, most of the time, so I plan accordingly. I can be flexible. I can roll with the punches.”
Polly snorted. “What about when Phil got worms and you had to take him to the vet?”
“That’s a great example,” replied Nina, starting to be a little stung. “I cleared my schedule completely that day. No hesitation at all.”
Polly laughed. “Yeah, because you couldn’t work out how to reschedule everything to allow for the vet appointment, so instead of trying, you canceled it all.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that you’re inflexible.” Polly smiled at Nina. “And that you’d rather blow it all up than spend time fixing things. But it doesn’t really matter, unless you care that you missed out on a date because of it.”
Nina shook her head. “He wasn’t right for me, anyway. He didn’t read.”
“Reading isn’t the only thing in the world, Nina.”
“It’s one of only five perfect things in the world.”
“And the other four are?”
“Cats, dogs, Honeycrisp apples, and coffee.”
“Nothing else?”
“Sure, there are other things, even good things, but those five are perfect.”
“In your opinion.”
“Yes, of course in my opinion. Everyone has a different five perfect things.”
Polly thought about it. “I can get behind that. Mine would be movies, steak frites, Jude Law in his thirties, clean sheets at night, and indoor plumbing.”
“Mine would be making a profit, keeping a bookstore open, books that get shelved, orders that get filled, and employees who don’t stand around talking,” said Liz as she appeared suddenly behind them.
“See?” said Nina airily, picking up a list of customer orders. “Everybody has five.”
Sixteen
In which Nina reads, and texts, and reads again.
There are people who have no time for books. Nina had met those people; usually they came into the bookstore to ask for directions and would then look about confusedly when they realized they were surrounded by these strange paper oblongs. Maybe they had rich fantasy lives, or maybe they were raised by starfish who had no access to dry printed material, who knows, but Nina judged them and felt guilty for doing so.