The Only Twenty-Four-Hour Bookstore in New York 5/6
J2 RPS AU
NC-17
Part 5 of 6
Master post
Art
A week later he and Chad are once again sitting in the office with papers spread across the desk, Chad's tablet and Jared's laptop both displaying different bids from construction and window companies, looking at all of the numbers and time frames and trying to figure out how they'll pay for it.
"Kickstarter," Chad says.
"What?"
"Crowd-funding. We'll crowd-fund the difference."
Jared must be having an especially stupid day, because he rubs his eyes, squints at Chad, and repeats "What?"
"We'll get this much from the insurance company, right, and if we go with these guys," he taps Jared's laptop screen, "we'll have to close a couple days. So there's some money we lose there, plus the difference between what we'll get from the insurance and what the repairs will cost. If we take out a loan at... shit, where'd it go?" He shuffles papers and finally retrieves the information he got from the bank. "That's the loan, that's the rate, that's...." He grabs his tablet, closes the page showing the construction bid, brings up the calculator, and starts tapping out numbers. Jared tries to follow. "This is what we'll owe the bank," Chad says. "That’s the loan, plus interest. If we crowd-fund, we get that for free."
"No we don't. Besides, I don't think that's what Kickstarter's for." He sighs. "We have to go to the bank. I'm still paying off the loan I took out to buy this place. I'm going to be in debt the rest of my life, but I can't close the store."
"We won't have to close the store. People crowd-fund their bookstores all the time - moving costs, construction, expansion. St Mark's Bookshop did it when they moved. Some woman crowd-funded the money to open a store in Queens. We'll think of some good incentives. Ask your boyfriend if he knows anyone who can offer something." Chad looks triumphant. "We'll ask for more than we need, because I think these guys are underbidding" - he points to the laptop screen again - "and if we end up with extra, we'll donate it."
"I don't know. I feel weird asking other people to pay our costs. We should be able to take care of it. It's our store."
"How long has it been here? Including when it was still Hermann's House of Books. Since the 80s, right? Didn’t you tell me you sometimes get people coming in whose parents used to come here? Do you have any idea how big our customer base is?"
Jared does know, in fact. He just needs someone to remind him.
"Big enough," Chad clarifies unnecessarily. "And if it gets around social media, we can get pledges from people who’ve never even been here, just because they think the place should continue to exist."
"What if we don’t raise enough?"
"We’ll use Indiegogo or GoFundMe. They let you keep whatever you raise."
"I still don't know."
"I do. Give me half an hour and I'll knock up a financial comparison. Go get a coffee. Walk Sadie around the block. Make sure AJ isn't antagonizing any customers." He makes shooing motions with his hands. "I know what I'm talking about, Moose. You look after the store, I look after the money. Right? So let me look after the money."
"But - "
"I know, you hate the idea of asking strangers for money. Think of it as a donation."
"We're not a non-profit."
"Go!"
So Jared goes. He walks Sadie to Union Square and back, thinking about crowd-funding and how he can possibly ask people to give him money so he doesn't have to take out a loan like a normal business owner. There are some definite advantages to crowd-funding - no loans repaid with interest, for one thing - but they won't see the money right away, and they really need to get someone to come fix the front of the store as soon as possible. Osric and his girlfriend have started painting designs on the plywood and Kim had the brilliant idea to ask customers and students from NYU and kids from the Catholic school down the street to help decorate. But at the same time, it's darker in the store, and the plywood and the inexplicable leak on the floor just remind him that there's a possibility he might actually lose the place.
Maybe they can take out a loan and use Kickstarter to repay it. Or whoever they go with to fix the store, they'll just ask them to start in two months.
Except Jared doesn't want to wait two months.
"There's nothing about this that doesn't suck," he tells Sadie as they walk back. She whacks his leg with her tail while they wait for the light to change. He figures that's her way of comforting him until she can jump on him and lick his face off.
He calls Jensen.
"Chad wants to Kickstart our construction costs," he explains.
"I thought Kickstarter was for creative pursuits," Jensen says. "I donated to a campaign to restore a bunch of rolls of film that a guy's grandfather shot during World War I, and one of Chris' friends used it to fund studio time so she could finish her album. That kind of thing."
"Chad says bookstores use it all the time. I feel weird asking other people to pay for a new window, though."
"Insurance won't cover it?"
"Not all of it. We'll probably have to take out a loan, but it will take us so long to pay it back. We have a really small profit margin. Most independent bookstores do. Our insurance already went up."
"Do you want my advice?"
All Jared has wanted from him over the past week was reassurance that everything will be okay, an ear to rant into, and a little comfort. But now he doesn't know what to do, and he could use some advice.
"Do it," Jensen says, without waiting for an answer. "Chris and I will help. I can get the whole bar involved. We'll donate stuff. Danny will tell everyone she knows."
Jared remembers Danneel's friends, whose real names he never learned, who came to the store to do Genevieve's hair and makeup so she could be beautiful when Danneel proposed. They have services they might offer if asked, and from what he knows of Danneel, she might conceivably ask.
He could mention it to Mark and David, his dog run friends. He's sure at least one of Mark's musician colleagues would appreciate the continued existence of an all-hours bookstore in the city. Mark's wife is a professor at Hunter College, and he'd be surprised if her students had never taken advantage of the store at two in the morning. And David is an all-hours nerd with an all-hours nerd following, and even if he has nothing concrete to donate, he can use his time to spread the word.
Jared might not even have to ask anyone outright to help him. He can just mention his problem and someone will say "Sure, I'll tell my friends" or "I can donate an incentive". He's met enough people in his life and shared enough problems - his and theirs - to understand that people generally want to help.
He knows his bookstore is important to other folks besides himself and his employees. He keeps up with industry news and trends. He's aware of what's going on in his neighborhood and in New York as a whole. He likes to think he's pretty well-informed, and what that information has told him is that in cultural and abstract ways, The Moose and Mayhem is valuable.
"Thank you," he tells Jensen. "You're working tonight, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Jensen says. "It's line-dance night. Someday you should come."
"I can't dance. Call me after you close?"
"Will do. I'm sorry I can't come over, but I gotta be here early in the morning."
Jared squashes his disappointment.
"I can come by tomorrow afternoon," Jensen continues. "I'll bring you food."
"I love you," Jared says matter-of-factly. "I really do."
"I... didn't think that was an issue." Jensen sounds almost confused, as if Jared is answering a question he hasn't asked, or reassuring him of something he didn't need reassurance for.
"I know. I just thought I'd tell you."
"I love you too. You sound like you finally know what to do."
"I do. We'll use Kickstarter and raise the money. Chad's right. You're right. I'll talk to you later. Have fun line-dancing. Bye." He hangs up.
By the time Jared gets back to the store and leaves Sadie up front with AJ, Chad has drawn up a list of pros and cons, itemized their costs as best he can (admittedly with the vaguest numbers possible), and come up with a rough total of what their crowd-funding campaign should aim for.
"This is what I'm thinking," he tells Jared. "We run the campaign first and hire a construction company based on what we get. We'll probably use these guys. That's their estimate, plus some extra for overruns, plus Kickstarter's percentage. If we're lucky enough to have any left after the window's in, we'll donate it to a literacy campaign, or to one of those programs that buys books for inner-city libraries and schools. We shouldn't keep it."
"I talked to Jensen and he said he'd help," Jared says. "He can probably get his bar into it."
"Good. I told you it would work out."
"What if we don't make our goal?"
"We will. Okay. Let's figure out what incentives we have to offer."
"We're doing what?" Chris says, raising an eyebrow at Jensen.
"Helping Jared with a Kickstarter campaign."
"Why?"
"Because he's my boyfriend and I want to help," Jensen says. "Obviously."
"Okay." Chris shrugs. "Does he know what he's doing?"
"With Kickstarter? I think so. If he doesn't, Chad does."
"How much are they asking for?"
"I don't know."
"What do they need from us?"
"I don't know that either."
Chris sighs. "You're not a lot of help here, Jen."
"I don't have any more information. I just thought I should let you know that I volunteered us to help out. I thought we could donate some bottles. Good stuff. I could offer prints of some of my photos or a portrait session. Tom knows a thousand people through Mike who he could ask to - "
"If it's a bookstore Kickstarter," Chris interrupts, "shouldn't all the incentives be bookstore-related? You know. Books. Literary perks." Jensen is reordering his thoughts, because that never occurred to him and it probably should have, when Chris adds "You took some nice pictures of the public library."
"You think the Strand would get pissed if I snuck in there and photographed their shelves?"
"For someone else's Kickstarter?" Chris raises the eyebrow again.
"Yeah, maybe not. I should take pictures of The Moose and Mayhem. But I was thinking that one of the things we could offer is a party after the campaign's over, so people who live local can get their perks and celebrate the bookstore getting its funding. We'll close the bar, serve finger food, offer drinks at a discount. The first shot is free, or your first beer. If you pledge so much to the campaign, you'll get two drink tickets. Like that. Obviously we'd have to make that twenty-one and older."
"How many people are we talking?"
"I have no idea. We won't go over capacity."
Jensen calls Jared later to ask if he and Chad know how much they're going to ask for and to float the idea of a post-campaign celebration party at the bar. Jared thinks that's brilliant. He sends Jensen information on what the campaign looks like, what he and Chad are asking for, what their timetable is, what perks they've come up with so far.
"What the hell's cosplay?" Chris asks, when Jensen shares all that information with him.
"It's when fans dress up as their favorite characters from TV or the movies. Comic book fans do it a lot. One of Jared's employees is really into it. I guess it's a valuable perk."
Unsurprisingly, a number of the perks are, as Chris pointed out, bookstore-related. People can donate for a random selection book. There are signed editions, first editions, an opportunity to host your own book signing party or poetry slam. There is also, oddly enough, a pair of tickets to a matinee performance at the Metropolitan Opera.
"They really think they can raise this much?" Chris asks.
"I guess so," Jensen says. "This is going to be the weirdest collection of crowd-funding perks ever assembled."
Tom is no help and isn't sure Mike will be either. Alona says she can offer dog-walking, even though she knows it isn't much. Danneel immediately volunteers one of her friends for hairstyling services, and another friend for elaborate stage makeup.
"They made Genevieve beautiful when I proposed," she explains. "You saw the pictures."
Jensen learns that Kickstarter doesn't allow alcohol as a perk. Chris isn’t upset that this means they can't offer any bottles of good bourbon as pledge rewards. But the post-campaign party is still a go. Traci gets completely into the spirit by suggesting that she could give someone cooking lessons as a perk, if Jared thought it was a good idea, and in the meantime she has some great ideas for party appetizers that she's dying to try out. If Chris and Jensen like them, maybe Chris could add them to the menu permanently.
The Kickstarter goes live in the middle of October, and Jensen realizes he's much more invested than he thought he would be when Chris points out that he's been checking the campaign's progress almost every hour for three days.
"You really do love this guy, don't you," Chris observes.
"You're just figuring that out now?" is Jensen's response. And then, because he knows it's going to come up, because it's Chris' new obsession, "We're not ready to start serving lunch."
"I wasn't going to mention it."
"You were. I could hear it on your tongue. We can barely staff brunch in addition to regular Sundays. And don't tell me we have the money to hire servers - we don't. I look at the books too, you know."
"Line-dance nights are bringing in more than they used to. I can't believe the hipsters aren't sick of us yet." He leans over and raps on Jensen's forehead with his knuckles. "Knock on wood." Jensen shoves his arm away.
"But we still have to finish paying off the kitchen," Jensen points out, "and we're paying Traci now too. You said we should try offering bands more money. I think we should wait six months and see how the kitchen's doing before we start expanding our food hours."
"Six months is next month. I've already mocked up a lunch menu." He looks insufferably pleased with himself. Jensen sighs.
"Fine. Next month we'll try lunch. Maybe Alona will want some extra hours during the day. We'll still have to hire actual servers. If we can get a couple people before we start serving lunch, we can train them at night and give Alona and Tom and Danny - and us - some breathing room."
Because the one thing that they still haven't adjusted to is the fact that most nights, weekends and line-dance nights especially, Chris and Jensen both have to be at the bar to make sure things are running smoothly, and to pick up any slack.
What this mostly means for Jensen is that on the nights he goes across the river to see Jared, he's wiped out by the time he gets to the bookstore, with just enough energy to kiss Jared hello and chat for a few minutes before he needs to take his ass up to Jared's apartment and put himself in Jared's bed. At least Sadie is used to him by now and doesn't fight him for space. The plywood covering and protecting the front of the bookstore is painful to see, but Jensen imagines that as hard as it is for him, it must be exponentially harder for Jared.
On the other hand, the plywood has been decorated inside and outside the store, so if nothing else, it looks more personalized. Jensen has even drawn a bottle and a pair of highball glasses with "Drink at Two Brothers, Red Hook" written underneath. And one night he brings his camera to Jared's place, with the hope that Jared will let him take some pictures in the morning.
Jared does. When Jensen gets a chance to process them a couple of days later, he has to call.
"It's super busy here," Jared says, sounding harried. "Can I call you later?"
"Yeah, sure," Jensen tells him. He leans back in his chair, looking at the thumbnails of digital photos on his computer screen, remembering that Jared grabbed the camera and turned it on him. He should process those few photos too, and send them along.
He does those first.
To: moose@mooseandmayhem.com
From: jackles@twobrothersnyc.com
Subj: Looks like me
Thought you might like these. We should do that again.
He lets himself think about Jared's face hanging over his, Jared's weight on top of him, Jared's cock buried inside him. He thinks about the hardness of Jared's muscles and the softness of his hair and the sharpness of his elbows. He thinks about Jared's voice waking him up in the morning. He thinks about the comfort of Jared lying next to him, fast asleep.
To: jackles@twobrothersnyc.com
From: moose@mooseandmayhem.com
Subj: Re: Looks like me
Shit, Jensen, warn me when you send me naked pictures. I'm all alone in the store and I can't stick my hand down my pants when someone might come in and need something.
Jensen laughs. That was exactly the response he was looking for.
He wants to go see Jared on Halloween, because he's never been to the Greenwich Village Halloween parade, but there's too much to do and he can't leave. His sacrifice is rewarded by a good-sized dinner crowd at the bar and Chris insisting that he wear a costume. Jensen knows that Jared has dressed Sadie up as Princess Leia, complete with hair buns and a white dress, and that Jared himself has gotten his hands on a Boba Fett costume, and that he wants Jensen to match for when Jensen comes over later.
"Han Solo?" Chris asks, as Jensen comes out of the bar office after having changed into the most last-minute Halloween costume ever. The only thing that didn't come out of his own closet is the plastic reproduction blaster hanging at his hip, which he lucked into finding at a costume shop. Chris is wearing chaps and a cowboy hat and way too much fringe. Jensen elects to not comment.
By nine o'clock Two Brothers is crowded with Halloween revelers and drinkers in costume. Tom showed up for his shift in a Green Lantern t-shirt, explaining that Mike wanted him to be Superman but he refused to wear the cape. Alona is wearing a powder-blue short-sleeve dress with a white apron over it and a black headband in her hair. Jensen doesn't recognize her outfit at all.
"I'm Alice!" she explains. "You know, from Alice in Wonderland?" She pulls a little bottle with a handwritten label out of the pocket of her apron and shows it to Jensen. The bottle is filled with something purple and the label says "Drink me" in spidery script. Alona grins.
"What's in it?" Jensen asks.
"Water and food coloring. I melted some wax around the cork so it wouldn't leak." She puts the bottle on the bar's back counter next to the register. "Don't drink it."
"Don't worry."
Danneel got the night off. Chris is in the kitchen, hygienically wearing an apron over his fringe. Jensen knows from past years that Halloween is busy. The bar tries to encourage a crowd by having a locally popular band, but tonight seems especially nuts.
He's carrying a double handful of drinks to a table when someone slams into him, causing him to spill everything, mostly on himself.
"God damn - " is as far as he gets before the person apologizes over her shoulder and vanishes into the crowd. "Shit."
He hustles back behind the bar, drops off the mostly-empty glasses, fills new ones, tries to deliver them a second time.
"What happened to you?" Alona asks, when he gets back from his second attempt to serve drinks.
"Fucking crowds," Jensen huffs. "I know I shouldn't complain. I gotta go change." He looks up and down the bar. "Where's Tom?"
"I don't know. I'm coming!" she calls to the crowd pushed against the counter. "Hold your caterpillars!"
"Be right back." Jensen pats her on the shoulder and heads towards the office, where they keep a couple of clean shirts, just in case.
Tom is standing just outside the office, practically yelling into his phone.
"You don't have to buy everyone a drink if you hog the stone in the last end," he's saying. "That's not an official rule. Someone's yanking your chain."
"Tom," Jensen says, pointing back towards the bar. "The place is really busy."
"I gotta go," Tom tells whoever is on the other end of the phone. "It's really - what? I can't. I'm here until late." He shrugs apologetically at Jensen. "Tell her to take a cab. Or you go get her. She's not - Mike. Stop. Jensen's giving me the stink-eye. I have to get back to work." He swipes at his phone and puts it in his pocket. "Sorry about that," he tells Jensen. "Carpooling problems."
"Bar problems," Jensen answers. "Alona's swamped."
Tom heads back to the front of the bar and Jensen goes into the office. The desk is covered with paperwork and bourbon tasting notes and receipts and invoices and an empty paper coffeecup and winter menus and for some reason an old copy of The Village Voice. Jensen takes off the vest and pulls his wet shirt over his head, drops it on the couch, and puts on a spare. He shoots a glance at the stack of receipts and invoices that need to be organized and clipped together, but he just gave Tom a hard time for being back here rather than behind the bar. So he leaves the mess, locks the door behind him, and returns to the crush of drinkers and dancers and Halloween revelers in costume.
Across the river, in the Village, Jared is playing spooky music in his store. He propped open the door to broadcast outside, to entice any Halloween revelers who happen to be wandering by. He even has a plastic pumpkin full of candy on the counter as extra incentive. He took Sadie to the dog parade over the weekend, so he's already had a chance to test out the Leia hair buns. People seem to be enjoying them, if the number of folks asking to take her picture is any indication. He makes a mental note to poke around online tomorrow to see if she made it into any blogs or neighborhood Instagram accounts.
Genevieve has the night off but Osric is here, having volunteered to work some lateish hours before he and his girlfriend march in the parade. He's wearing a shiny blue dress that looks like it was made out of snake scales - if snakes came in that color - brown boots, and a long blonde wig. There's a little plush dragon pinned to his shoulder. When he came to work and Jared didn't recognize him, he looked offended.
"Daenerys Targaryen!" he huffed, affronted. "Daenerys Stormborn! The Khaleesi! The Mother of Dragons! The Breaker of Chains!" He sighed. "You said we should come as literary figures."
"I'm not a literary figure," Jared admitted, although if you count the Star Wars tie-in novels, he probably was. He hadn't actually read any of them and didn't know if Boba Fett showed up or not.
"You should see Sita. She's Khal Drogo." Osric looked pleased and Jared felt stupid. "You never read A Game of Thrones, did you. You don't watch it either."
"No."
Osric rolled his eyes, unpinned the dragon from his shoulder, and put it on top of the register. Jared is relieved every time someone recognizes Osric's costume, and still a little ashamed that he didn't.
Kim worked the afternoon until she had to leave to take her daughter trick-or-treating, but at least he knew who she was. Black pleated skirt, white blouse with short puffy sleeves, white knee socks, Mary Janes, bow in her hair, little plush pug, cocktail napkin from the Plaza Hotel.
A little girl came in with a teenage boy who looked like her brother, and she took one look at Kim, pointed, and shrieked "Eloise!" Kim had Jared take their picture, because the little girl was likewise dressed as the Plaza's most famous six-year-old resident.
When it was time to relieve Anton earlier that morning, AJ arrived in a surprisingly nice three-piece suit, and when Jared asked who he was supposed to be - because there are a lot of besuited literary characters - AJ crooned "Hello, Clarice" in the creepiest voice Jared had ever heard come out of his mouth.
Now, Jared leans on the counter, helps himself to a mini Snickers from the plastic pumpkin, and tries to look out the one remaining window at the sidewalk traffic, listening with half an ear to Osric and a couple of teenage girls speculating on who's going to die in the next Song of Ice and Fire novel. Osric's right - he should probably read at least the first book in the series. But even the paperbacks are doorstoppers, spider-whomping volumes, and he has too many other books to read.
He comes out from behind the counter and attempts to straighten up the displays in front - the recommendations for the month are unsurprisingly all fall- and Halloween-themed books, but in a couple of days he should switch out the spooky books for more Thanksgiving-y books. He notes with satisfaction that the Lovecraft collection finally sold. It makes an empty spot on the table, though, so he starts shifting things around to cover the gap until he can fill it with something else.
"We don't know any more than you do, I promise," Osric is saying to the girls. "We can't make him write any faster."
"Yeah, but we want it now," one of the girls says. She looks Latina and is wearing a Mexican peasant skirt and fringed shawl over a green turtleneck, and from the way she's drawn a unibrow on her face, Jared's pretty sure she's supposed to be Frida Kahlo. "The show's moving faster than he is."
"Remember what Neil said," the other girl tells her friend. She has fair skin, freckles, and short hair dyed day-glo pink, and is dressed in yellow and black like a bee.
"I know, I know," Frida grumps. "George R R Martin is not my bitch. I don't care."
Jared smiles to himself, not wanting to get involved but remembering all the variations of that exchange that he's heard - and had - over the years. The perils of being a voracious reader, and then a bookstore employee, and then a bookstore owner. You want the next book now. You always want the next book now. And you can't always have the next book now.
The girls chat with Osric for another fifteen minutes before leaving. They pat Sadie on the way out. They don't buy anything, but Jared wasn't really expecting them to. He got the impression from the bits of conversation that he overheard that they just wanted to talk to someone face-to-face about books.
"It's too bad you can't march in the Village parade," Osric says to Jared.
"I know. At least I took Sadie to the dog parade on Saturday. I put the pictures of her on Facebook and Instagram. Oh, someone took your Kickstarter perk." He grins. It wasn't a small pledge.
"Yeah? That's good news. That must've been today, because I checked it last night. Sita wants the opera tickets but they're out of our reach."
It's on the tip of Jared's tongue to tell Osric that he doesn't have to donate to his own place of employment's Kickstarter, and neither does his girlfriend, but who's more invested in helping the store pay for a new window - and help keep it open and out of debt - than its own employees? Jared knows Osric's girlfriend hasn't made a pledge yet. No one's taken the opera tickets, but it's only been two weeks and he and Chad only put them up a few days ago.
A couple wanders in, a guy and a girl, probably in their twenties and dressed in regular clothes. The girl heads for the back of the store but the guy looks Jared up and down, gestures to Sadie in her white dress, and asks "Why aren't you Han?"
"Frozen in carbonite," Jared says, grinning, thinking Han's in Brooklyn.
The guy grins back and gives him a thumbs-up, then gives Osric the same once-over before wrinkling his forehead, apparently in thought, and saying "I know who you are. I know I know who you are. Who are you?"
Osric gets as far as "Dae - " before the guy points emphatically and exclaims "Dany Targaryen! I knew that. Good costume, man. But where are your dragons?"
"Drogon's sitting on the register," Osric says, pointing.
"Harry!" the girl calls from over by the history section. "What am I looking for? What's it called?"
"Oh, right," the guy says, trying to include both Osric and Jared in the conversation. "It's a collection of essays, like personal essays? From Holocaust survivors. They were interviewed for the Shoah Foundation? Or by the Shoah Foundation? It's called, uh, shit, my mom texted me." He gets out his phone and starts tapping and scrolling. The girl comes up to the front of the store. "I Alone Have Escaped to Tell Thee, that's it. A guy my grandparents knew has an essay in it. He belonged to their synagogue in Milwaukee. He was my mom's gynecologist when she was in college, and can I tell you? I never want to have a conversation like that with my mom ever again. Do you have it?"
"Doesn't sound familiar," Jared says, and he should know. The history section is his purview, just as Kim is the YA expert and Anton is the person to ask about art and architecture and AJ knows all about horror and suspense. He goes back behind the counter to check the system, and sure enough, they don't have it. "I can order it if you want. We deliver locally, ship non-locally, or hold it for you here."
"Yeah, that'd be cool, thanks. I'll come get it."
He gives Jared his name and phone number, and he and the girl look around for a few more minutes before taking some candy and taking off.
Osric's girlfriend comes to get him at nine and Osric asks Jared to take their picture. Jared admits that he wouldn't know who Sita was dressed as if he hadn't already been told, and she tells him not to worry about it, no one expects girls to be Khal Drogo for Halloween.
"No one really expects boys to be Dany either," she adds, patting Osric on the shoulder. He preens and fluffs his wig.
"Go have fun," Jared tells them.
"We always do."
And then he's alone, although with Sadie and the sporadic stream of evening shoppers, he doesn't feel alone.
At ten he closes the store long enough to walk Sadie around the block, accept compliments on her costume, and take her up to the apartment. People are still coming in and out of the store, most of them dressed up. A bald guy in a long black coat and an eyepatch buys Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts as an apology gift for showing up so late to his friend's Halloween party. Jared wonders how crazy Two Brothers is, and how exhausted Jensen is going to be when he finally shows up.
He checks the Kickstarter, checks the store's Facebook page, orders the collection of Holocaust survivor essays as well as a couple of things he didn't get a chance to order during the day, and texts Jensen.
Thinking about you, wanted to say hi. :)
He doesn't expect a response. He doesn't even expect Jensen to see it until after the bar closes. He just wants Jensen to know.
He looks at the plywood covering the front of his store and wishes he was a better doodler. The growing collection of doodles and random scribbling is kind of cute and reassures him that The Moose and Mayhem really is part of the community, but the fact that there's even something to scribble on depresses him. He can't tell this early if they'll make their funding through Kickstarter, or if he and Chad will have to take out a loan they can't afford, just so he can keep it open.
He wants the money now. He wants to replace the window before winter. He wants to know where the leak's coming from, because the floor right under the plywood is sometimes wet. He needs to get Chad out here to look at it, and then they need to call someone.
He really wants Jensen to come over. He doesn't care if all they do is sleep. He just wants someone to be there with him, to reassure him that everything will be okay.
Usually Jared doesn't mind being the only one in the store late at night and early in the morning. Customers come and go and if he waits long enough, someone will appear. But he normally has two windows to look out and no threats of closure hanging over his head.
Jeff, his favorite late-night beat cop, strolls by after one, making a pass through the neighborhood to check that everyone is behaving themselves and the parade crowd isn't causing shenanigans.
"No problems here," Jared says. "What's it like outside?"
"Not bad," Jeff admits, "considering. Had to break up a bar fight and got a domestic violence call, but nothing unusual."
"Did Hilarie take the baby trick-or-treating?"
"She took the dogs! She put a bow tie on Bandit but he kept trying to chew it off. Gus was a pumpkin. Hilarie said babies are always pumpkins for Halloween." He shrugs. "Did you make Sadie wear a costume?"
"She was Princess Leia." Jared can't help the pride that creeps into his voice, mostly because his dog let him dress her up without any problem. He pulls out his phone and shows Jeff the pictures. Jeff looks impressed.
"Hilarie's got all the ones of Gus," he says. "I love being a dad but that kid won't let me sleep for anything. As if working the night shift wasn't bad enough." He leans on the counter. "How's the place?"
"You mean besides the plywood? Hey, did I tell you about the Kickstarter?"
"Did you? I don't remember. That's a crowd-funding thing, isn't it? Write it down." Jeff pulls a pad of paper out of his jacket pocket, flips to a blank page, and hands it across the counter to Jared. Jared scribbles as much information about the campaign as he can remember. "What do you need?"
"A new front window, for one thing, and maybe something internal, because there's a leak somewhere. Sometimes I'll come in and the floor's wet. We gotta get someone back here to take a better look at it. I hope it isn't structural."
"How's it going? The Kickstarter."
"Okay, I guess. I can't tell. It's only been two weeks. It goes for two months, so you have some time to give us some money. Is there some kind of protocol for that? It's not against NYPD regulations, is it?"
"I can always get Hilarie to donate in her name. Don't worry about it." Jeff waves a dismissive hand. "There's always a way around regs." He yawns. "I need to swing by that all-night diner and get a coffee." Jared pushes the almost-empty plastic pumpkin of Halloween candy closer to him, so at least he can have some sugar. "The neighbors are putting in a new kitchen and they start banging at nine in the morning. Gus hates it, I hate it, the dogs hate it, Hilarie tells us to just wait until we want to make renovations. I don't know where she thinks we'll get the money. Besides, the kitchen's just fine. What's this?" He peeks in the pumpkin.
"Candy. I was trying to get people to come in. I had Halloween music playing before."
"Sorry I missed it. All right, I should go. Crime waits for no man. I'll look at your Kickstarter thing. I'm sure Hilarie and I can give you something. This is a great place. You shouldn't have to close."
Jared considers adding that to the Kickstarter campaign page, or putting it on Facebook - "This is a great place. We shouldn't have to close."
The days pass and he tries not to think about it too much, but the plywood stares him in the face, forming a wall where window glass should be and reminding him that he really doesn't have the money to replace it. If he and Chad can't get a loan, he'll have to close.
He becomes more and more sure that he'll be able to keep the store. But he still feels helpless, and he doesn't know what to think or how else to feel, and he's discombobulated by the loss of a full wall of window. The store is always half dark, which is especially worse now that it's November.
"We're solar-powered," Genevieve explains, when Jared complains that he needs some sun. "People are, I mean. Have you considered a light box?"
"I just need to get out," he says. "I can't look at that any more." He gestures to the plywood. "Can I leave you here? I'll be back in a couple hours."
"You're going to see Jensen, aren't you." She tries and fails to hide a grin. Jared doesn't know why she's still so invested in his love life. He and Jensen are past the honeymoon phase. They've been together almost six months.
"Am I that transparent?"
"Call him first."
Jared rubs Sadie's ears and tells her to behave for Genevieve, and then he puts on his coat, sticks his phone in a pocket, and goes out to Brooklyn. He calls Jensen on the way, just to make sure the guy is home.
He lucks out.
"I'm processing photos from months ago, because I never had time," Jensen explains over the phone, "but I've only got about an hour and a half before I should go back to the bar."
"Can I still come over?"
"Sure. But you can't stay long."
It's not what Jared wanted, but he'll take it.
Onward!
NC-17
Part 5 of 6
Master post
Art
A week later he and Chad are once again sitting in the office with papers spread across the desk, Chad's tablet and Jared's laptop both displaying different bids from construction and window companies, looking at all of the numbers and time frames and trying to figure out how they'll pay for it.
"Kickstarter," Chad says.
"What?"
"Crowd-funding. We'll crowd-fund the difference."
Jared must be having an especially stupid day, because he rubs his eyes, squints at Chad, and repeats "What?"
"We'll get this much from the insurance company, right, and if we go with these guys," he taps Jared's laptop screen, "we'll have to close a couple days. So there's some money we lose there, plus the difference between what we'll get from the insurance and what the repairs will cost. If we take out a loan at... shit, where'd it go?" He shuffles papers and finally retrieves the information he got from the bank. "That's the loan, that's the rate, that's...." He grabs his tablet, closes the page showing the construction bid, brings up the calculator, and starts tapping out numbers. Jared tries to follow. "This is what we'll owe the bank," Chad says. "That’s the loan, plus interest. If we crowd-fund, we get that for free."
"No we don't. Besides, I don't think that's what Kickstarter's for." He sighs. "We have to go to the bank. I'm still paying off the loan I took out to buy this place. I'm going to be in debt the rest of my life, but I can't close the store."
"We won't have to close the store. People crowd-fund their bookstores all the time - moving costs, construction, expansion. St Mark's Bookshop did it when they moved. Some woman crowd-funded the money to open a store in Queens. We'll think of some good incentives. Ask your boyfriend if he knows anyone who can offer something." Chad looks triumphant. "We'll ask for more than we need, because I think these guys are underbidding" - he points to the laptop screen again - "and if we end up with extra, we'll donate it."
"I don't know. I feel weird asking other people to pay our costs. We should be able to take care of it. It's our store."
"How long has it been here? Including when it was still Hermann's House of Books. Since the 80s, right? Didn’t you tell me you sometimes get people coming in whose parents used to come here? Do you have any idea how big our customer base is?"
Jared does know, in fact. He just needs someone to remind him.
"Big enough," Chad clarifies unnecessarily. "And if it gets around social media, we can get pledges from people who’ve never even been here, just because they think the place should continue to exist."
"What if we don’t raise enough?"
"We’ll use Indiegogo or GoFundMe. They let you keep whatever you raise."
"I still don't know."
"I do. Give me half an hour and I'll knock up a financial comparison. Go get a coffee. Walk Sadie around the block. Make sure AJ isn't antagonizing any customers." He makes shooing motions with his hands. "I know what I'm talking about, Moose. You look after the store, I look after the money. Right? So let me look after the money."
"But - "
"I know, you hate the idea of asking strangers for money. Think of it as a donation."
"We're not a non-profit."
"Go!"
So Jared goes. He walks Sadie to Union Square and back, thinking about crowd-funding and how he can possibly ask people to give him money so he doesn't have to take out a loan like a normal business owner. There are some definite advantages to crowd-funding - no loans repaid with interest, for one thing - but they won't see the money right away, and they really need to get someone to come fix the front of the store as soon as possible. Osric and his girlfriend have started painting designs on the plywood and Kim had the brilliant idea to ask customers and students from NYU and kids from the Catholic school down the street to help decorate. But at the same time, it's darker in the store, and the plywood and the inexplicable leak on the floor just remind him that there's a possibility he might actually lose the place.
Maybe they can take out a loan and use Kickstarter to repay it. Or whoever they go with to fix the store, they'll just ask them to start in two months.
Except Jared doesn't want to wait two months.
"There's nothing about this that doesn't suck," he tells Sadie as they walk back. She whacks his leg with her tail while they wait for the light to change. He figures that's her way of comforting him until she can jump on him and lick his face off.
He calls Jensen.
"Chad wants to Kickstart our construction costs," he explains.
"I thought Kickstarter was for creative pursuits," Jensen says. "I donated to a campaign to restore a bunch of rolls of film that a guy's grandfather shot during World War I, and one of Chris' friends used it to fund studio time so she could finish her album. That kind of thing."
"Chad says bookstores use it all the time. I feel weird asking other people to pay for a new window, though."
"Insurance won't cover it?"
"Not all of it. We'll probably have to take out a loan, but it will take us so long to pay it back. We have a really small profit margin. Most independent bookstores do. Our insurance already went up."
"Do you want my advice?"
All Jared has wanted from him over the past week was reassurance that everything will be okay, an ear to rant into, and a little comfort. But now he doesn't know what to do, and he could use some advice.
"Do it," Jensen says, without waiting for an answer. "Chris and I will help. I can get the whole bar involved. We'll donate stuff. Danny will tell everyone she knows."
Jared remembers Danneel's friends, whose real names he never learned, who came to the store to do Genevieve's hair and makeup so she could be beautiful when Danneel proposed. They have services they might offer if asked, and from what he knows of Danneel, she might conceivably ask.
He could mention it to Mark and David, his dog run friends. He's sure at least one of Mark's musician colleagues would appreciate the continued existence of an all-hours bookstore in the city. Mark's wife is a professor at Hunter College, and he'd be surprised if her students had never taken advantage of the store at two in the morning. And David is an all-hours nerd with an all-hours nerd following, and even if he has nothing concrete to donate, he can use his time to spread the word.
Jared might not even have to ask anyone outright to help him. He can just mention his problem and someone will say "Sure, I'll tell my friends" or "I can donate an incentive". He's met enough people in his life and shared enough problems - his and theirs - to understand that people generally want to help.
He knows his bookstore is important to other folks besides himself and his employees. He keeps up with industry news and trends. He's aware of what's going on in his neighborhood and in New York as a whole. He likes to think he's pretty well-informed, and what that information has told him is that in cultural and abstract ways, The Moose and Mayhem is valuable.
"Thank you," he tells Jensen. "You're working tonight, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Jensen says. "It's line-dance night. Someday you should come."
"I can't dance. Call me after you close?"
"Will do. I'm sorry I can't come over, but I gotta be here early in the morning."
Jared squashes his disappointment.
"I can come by tomorrow afternoon," Jensen continues. "I'll bring you food."
"I love you," Jared says matter-of-factly. "I really do."
"I... didn't think that was an issue." Jensen sounds almost confused, as if Jared is answering a question he hasn't asked, or reassuring him of something he didn't need reassurance for.
"I know. I just thought I'd tell you."
"I love you too. You sound like you finally know what to do."
"I do. We'll use Kickstarter and raise the money. Chad's right. You're right. I'll talk to you later. Have fun line-dancing. Bye." He hangs up.
By the time Jared gets back to the store and leaves Sadie up front with AJ, Chad has drawn up a list of pros and cons, itemized their costs as best he can (admittedly with the vaguest numbers possible), and come up with a rough total of what their crowd-funding campaign should aim for.
"This is what I'm thinking," he tells Jared. "We run the campaign first and hire a construction company based on what we get. We'll probably use these guys. That's their estimate, plus some extra for overruns, plus Kickstarter's percentage. If we're lucky enough to have any left after the window's in, we'll donate it to a literacy campaign, or to one of those programs that buys books for inner-city libraries and schools. We shouldn't keep it."
"I talked to Jensen and he said he'd help," Jared says. "He can probably get his bar into it."
"Good. I told you it would work out."
"What if we don't make our goal?"
"We will. Okay. Let's figure out what incentives we have to offer."
"We're doing what?" Chris says, raising an eyebrow at Jensen.
"Helping Jared with a Kickstarter campaign."
"Why?"
"Because he's my boyfriend and I want to help," Jensen says. "Obviously."
"Okay." Chris shrugs. "Does he know what he's doing?"
"With Kickstarter? I think so. If he doesn't, Chad does."
"How much are they asking for?"
"I don't know."
"What do they need from us?"
"I don't know that either."
Chris sighs. "You're not a lot of help here, Jen."
"I don't have any more information. I just thought I should let you know that I volunteered us to help out. I thought we could donate some bottles. Good stuff. I could offer prints of some of my photos or a portrait session. Tom knows a thousand people through Mike who he could ask to - "
"If it's a bookstore Kickstarter," Chris interrupts, "shouldn't all the incentives be bookstore-related? You know. Books. Literary perks." Jensen is reordering his thoughts, because that never occurred to him and it probably should have, when Chris adds "You took some nice pictures of the public library."
"You think the Strand would get pissed if I snuck in there and photographed their shelves?"
"For someone else's Kickstarter?" Chris raises the eyebrow again.
"Yeah, maybe not. I should take pictures of The Moose and Mayhem. But I was thinking that one of the things we could offer is a party after the campaign's over, so people who live local can get their perks and celebrate the bookstore getting its funding. We'll close the bar, serve finger food, offer drinks at a discount. The first shot is free, or your first beer. If you pledge so much to the campaign, you'll get two drink tickets. Like that. Obviously we'd have to make that twenty-one and older."
"How many people are we talking?"
"I have no idea. We won't go over capacity."
Jensen calls Jared later to ask if he and Chad know how much they're going to ask for and to float the idea of a post-campaign celebration party at the bar. Jared thinks that's brilliant. He sends Jensen information on what the campaign looks like, what he and Chad are asking for, what their timetable is, what perks they've come up with so far.
"What the hell's cosplay?" Chris asks, when Jensen shares all that information with him.
"It's when fans dress up as their favorite characters from TV or the movies. Comic book fans do it a lot. One of Jared's employees is really into it. I guess it's a valuable perk."
Unsurprisingly, a number of the perks are, as Chris pointed out, bookstore-related. People can donate for a random selection book. There are signed editions, first editions, an opportunity to host your own book signing party or poetry slam. There is also, oddly enough, a pair of tickets to a matinee performance at the Metropolitan Opera.
"They really think they can raise this much?" Chris asks.
"I guess so," Jensen says. "This is going to be the weirdest collection of crowd-funding perks ever assembled."
Tom is no help and isn't sure Mike will be either. Alona says she can offer dog-walking, even though she knows it isn't much. Danneel immediately volunteers one of her friends for hairstyling services, and another friend for elaborate stage makeup.
"They made Genevieve beautiful when I proposed," she explains. "You saw the pictures."
Jensen learns that Kickstarter doesn't allow alcohol as a perk. Chris isn’t upset that this means they can't offer any bottles of good bourbon as pledge rewards. But the post-campaign party is still a go. Traci gets completely into the spirit by suggesting that she could give someone cooking lessons as a perk, if Jared thought it was a good idea, and in the meantime she has some great ideas for party appetizers that she's dying to try out. If Chris and Jensen like them, maybe Chris could add them to the menu permanently.
The Kickstarter goes live in the middle of October, and Jensen realizes he's much more invested than he thought he would be when Chris points out that he's been checking the campaign's progress almost every hour for three days.
"You really do love this guy, don't you," Chris observes.
"You're just figuring that out now?" is Jensen's response. And then, because he knows it's going to come up, because it's Chris' new obsession, "We're not ready to start serving lunch."
"I wasn't going to mention it."
"You were. I could hear it on your tongue. We can barely staff brunch in addition to regular Sundays. And don't tell me we have the money to hire servers - we don't. I look at the books too, you know."
"Line-dance nights are bringing in more than they used to. I can't believe the hipsters aren't sick of us yet." He leans over and raps on Jensen's forehead with his knuckles. "Knock on wood." Jensen shoves his arm away.
"But we still have to finish paying off the kitchen," Jensen points out, "and we're paying Traci now too. You said we should try offering bands more money. I think we should wait six months and see how the kitchen's doing before we start expanding our food hours."
"Six months is next month. I've already mocked up a lunch menu." He looks insufferably pleased with himself. Jensen sighs.
"Fine. Next month we'll try lunch. Maybe Alona will want some extra hours during the day. We'll still have to hire actual servers. If we can get a couple people before we start serving lunch, we can train them at night and give Alona and Tom and Danny - and us - some breathing room."
Because the one thing that they still haven't adjusted to is the fact that most nights, weekends and line-dance nights especially, Chris and Jensen both have to be at the bar to make sure things are running smoothly, and to pick up any slack.
What this mostly means for Jensen is that on the nights he goes across the river to see Jared, he's wiped out by the time he gets to the bookstore, with just enough energy to kiss Jared hello and chat for a few minutes before he needs to take his ass up to Jared's apartment and put himself in Jared's bed. At least Sadie is used to him by now and doesn't fight him for space. The plywood covering and protecting the front of the bookstore is painful to see, but Jensen imagines that as hard as it is for him, it must be exponentially harder for Jared.
On the other hand, the plywood has been decorated inside and outside the store, so if nothing else, it looks more personalized. Jensen has even drawn a bottle and a pair of highball glasses with "Drink at Two Brothers, Red Hook" written underneath. And one night he brings his camera to Jared's place, with the hope that Jared will let him take some pictures in the morning.
Jared does. When Jensen gets a chance to process them a couple of days later, he has to call.
"It's super busy here," Jared says, sounding harried. "Can I call you later?"
"Yeah, sure," Jensen tells him. He leans back in his chair, looking at the thumbnails of digital photos on his computer screen, remembering that Jared grabbed the camera and turned it on him. He should process those few photos too, and send them along.
He does those first.
To: moose@mooseandmayhem.com
From: jackles@twobrothersnyc.com
Subj: Looks like me
Thought you might like these. We should do that again.
He lets himself think about Jared's face hanging over his, Jared's weight on top of him, Jared's cock buried inside him. He thinks about the hardness of Jared's muscles and the softness of his hair and the sharpness of his elbows. He thinks about Jared's voice waking him up in the morning. He thinks about the comfort of Jared lying next to him, fast asleep.
To: jackles@twobrothersnyc.com
From: moose@mooseandmayhem.com
Subj: Re: Looks like me
Shit, Jensen, warn me when you send me naked pictures. I'm all alone in the store and I can't stick my hand down my pants when someone might come in and need something.
Jensen laughs. That was exactly the response he was looking for.
He wants to go see Jared on Halloween, because he's never been to the Greenwich Village Halloween parade, but there's too much to do and he can't leave. His sacrifice is rewarded by a good-sized dinner crowd at the bar and Chris insisting that he wear a costume. Jensen knows that Jared has dressed Sadie up as Princess Leia, complete with hair buns and a white dress, and that Jared himself has gotten his hands on a Boba Fett costume, and that he wants Jensen to match for when Jensen comes over later.
"Han Solo?" Chris asks, as Jensen comes out of the bar office after having changed into the most last-minute Halloween costume ever. The only thing that didn't come out of his own closet is the plastic reproduction blaster hanging at his hip, which he lucked into finding at a costume shop. Chris is wearing chaps and a cowboy hat and way too much fringe. Jensen elects to not comment.
By nine o'clock Two Brothers is crowded with Halloween revelers and drinkers in costume. Tom showed up for his shift in a Green Lantern t-shirt, explaining that Mike wanted him to be Superman but he refused to wear the cape. Alona is wearing a powder-blue short-sleeve dress with a white apron over it and a black headband in her hair. Jensen doesn't recognize her outfit at all.
"I'm Alice!" she explains. "You know, from Alice in Wonderland?" She pulls a little bottle with a handwritten label out of the pocket of her apron and shows it to Jensen. The bottle is filled with something purple and the label says "Drink me" in spidery script. Alona grins.
"What's in it?" Jensen asks.
"Water and food coloring. I melted some wax around the cork so it wouldn't leak." She puts the bottle on the bar's back counter next to the register. "Don't drink it."
"Don't worry."
Danneel got the night off. Chris is in the kitchen, hygienically wearing an apron over his fringe. Jensen knows from past years that Halloween is busy. The bar tries to encourage a crowd by having a locally popular band, but tonight seems especially nuts.
He's carrying a double handful of drinks to a table when someone slams into him, causing him to spill everything, mostly on himself.
"God damn - " is as far as he gets before the person apologizes over her shoulder and vanishes into the crowd. "Shit."
He hustles back behind the bar, drops off the mostly-empty glasses, fills new ones, tries to deliver them a second time.
"What happened to you?" Alona asks, when he gets back from his second attempt to serve drinks.
"Fucking crowds," Jensen huffs. "I know I shouldn't complain. I gotta go change." He looks up and down the bar. "Where's Tom?"
"I don't know. I'm coming!" she calls to the crowd pushed against the counter. "Hold your caterpillars!"
"Be right back." Jensen pats her on the shoulder and heads towards the office, where they keep a couple of clean shirts, just in case.
Tom is standing just outside the office, practically yelling into his phone.
"You don't have to buy everyone a drink if you hog the stone in the last end," he's saying. "That's not an official rule. Someone's yanking your chain."
"Tom," Jensen says, pointing back towards the bar. "The place is really busy."
"I gotta go," Tom tells whoever is on the other end of the phone. "It's really - what? I can't. I'm here until late." He shrugs apologetically at Jensen. "Tell her to take a cab. Or you go get her. She's not - Mike. Stop. Jensen's giving me the stink-eye. I have to get back to work." He swipes at his phone and puts it in his pocket. "Sorry about that," he tells Jensen. "Carpooling problems."
"Bar problems," Jensen answers. "Alona's swamped."
Tom heads back to the front of the bar and Jensen goes into the office. The desk is covered with paperwork and bourbon tasting notes and receipts and invoices and an empty paper coffeecup and winter menus and for some reason an old copy of The Village Voice. Jensen takes off the vest and pulls his wet shirt over his head, drops it on the couch, and puts on a spare. He shoots a glance at the stack of receipts and invoices that need to be organized and clipped together, but he just gave Tom a hard time for being back here rather than behind the bar. So he leaves the mess, locks the door behind him, and returns to the crush of drinkers and dancers and Halloween revelers in costume.
Across the river, in the Village, Jared is playing spooky music in his store. He propped open the door to broadcast outside, to entice any Halloween revelers who happen to be wandering by. He even has a plastic pumpkin full of candy on the counter as extra incentive. He took Sadie to the dog parade over the weekend, so he's already had a chance to test out the Leia hair buns. People seem to be enjoying them, if the number of folks asking to take her picture is any indication. He makes a mental note to poke around online tomorrow to see if she made it into any blogs or neighborhood Instagram accounts.
Genevieve has the night off but Osric is here, having volunteered to work some lateish hours before he and his girlfriend march in the parade. He's wearing a shiny blue dress that looks like it was made out of snake scales - if snakes came in that color - brown boots, and a long blonde wig. There's a little plush dragon pinned to his shoulder. When he came to work and Jared didn't recognize him, he looked offended.
"Daenerys Targaryen!" he huffed, affronted. "Daenerys Stormborn! The Khaleesi! The Mother of Dragons! The Breaker of Chains!" He sighed. "You said we should come as literary figures."
"I'm not a literary figure," Jared admitted, although if you count the Star Wars tie-in novels, he probably was. He hadn't actually read any of them and didn't know if Boba Fett showed up or not.
"You should see Sita. She's Khal Drogo." Osric looked pleased and Jared felt stupid. "You never read A Game of Thrones, did you. You don't watch it either."
"No."
Osric rolled his eyes, unpinned the dragon from his shoulder, and put it on top of the register. Jared is relieved every time someone recognizes Osric's costume, and still a little ashamed that he didn't.
Kim worked the afternoon until she had to leave to take her daughter trick-or-treating, but at least he knew who she was. Black pleated skirt, white blouse with short puffy sleeves, white knee socks, Mary Janes, bow in her hair, little plush pug, cocktail napkin from the Plaza Hotel.
A little girl came in with a teenage boy who looked like her brother, and she took one look at Kim, pointed, and shrieked "Eloise!" Kim had Jared take their picture, because the little girl was likewise dressed as the Plaza's most famous six-year-old resident.
When it was time to relieve Anton earlier that morning, AJ arrived in a surprisingly nice three-piece suit, and when Jared asked who he was supposed to be - because there are a lot of besuited literary characters - AJ crooned "Hello, Clarice" in the creepiest voice Jared had ever heard come out of his mouth.
Now, Jared leans on the counter, helps himself to a mini Snickers from the plastic pumpkin, and tries to look out the one remaining window at the sidewalk traffic, listening with half an ear to Osric and a couple of teenage girls speculating on who's going to die in the next Song of Ice and Fire novel. Osric's right - he should probably read at least the first book in the series. But even the paperbacks are doorstoppers, spider-whomping volumes, and he has too many other books to read.
He comes out from behind the counter and attempts to straighten up the displays in front - the recommendations for the month are unsurprisingly all fall- and Halloween-themed books, but in a couple of days he should switch out the spooky books for more Thanksgiving-y books. He notes with satisfaction that the Lovecraft collection finally sold. It makes an empty spot on the table, though, so he starts shifting things around to cover the gap until he can fill it with something else.
"We don't know any more than you do, I promise," Osric is saying to the girls. "We can't make him write any faster."
"Yeah, but we want it now," one of the girls says. She looks Latina and is wearing a Mexican peasant skirt and fringed shawl over a green turtleneck, and from the way she's drawn a unibrow on her face, Jared's pretty sure she's supposed to be Frida Kahlo. "The show's moving faster than he is."
"Remember what Neil said," the other girl tells her friend. She has fair skin, freckles, and short hair dyed day-glo pink, and is dressed in yellow and black like a bee.
"I know, I know," Frida grumps. "George R R Martin is not my bitch. I don't care."
Jared smiles to himself, not wanting to get involved but remembering all the variations of that exchange that he's heard - and had - over the years. The perils of being a voracious reader, and then a bookstore employee, and then a bookstore owner. You want the next book now. You always want the next book now. And you can't always have the next book now.
The girls chat with Osric for another fifteen minutes before leaving. They pat Sadie on the way out. They don't buy anything, but Jared wasn't really expecting them to. He got the impression from the bits of conversation that he overheard that they just wanted to talk to someone face-to-face about books.
"It's too bad you can't march in the Village parade," Osric says to Jared.
"I know. At least I took Sadie to the dog parade on Saturday. I put the pictures of her on Facebook and Instagram. Oh, someone took your Kickstarter perk." He grins. It wasn't a small pledge.
"Yeah? That's good news. That must've been today, because I checked it last night. Sita wants the opera tickets but they're out of our reach."
It's on the tip of Jared's tongue to tell Osric that he doesn't have to donate to his own place of employment's Kickstarter, and neither does his girlfriend, but who's more invested in helping the store pay for a new window - and help keep it open and out of debt - than its own employees? Jared knows Osric's girlfriend hasn't made a pledge yet. No one's taken the opera tickets, but it's only been two weeks and he and Chad only put them up a few days ago.
A couple wanders in, a guy and a girl, probably in their twenties and dressed in regular clothes. The girl heads for the back of the store but the guy looks Jared up and down, gestures to Sadie in her white dress, and asks "Why aren't you Han?"
"Frozen in carbonite," Jared says, grinning, thinking Han's in Brooklyn.
The guy grins back and gives him a thumbs-up, then gives Osric the same once-over before wrinkling his forehead, apparently in thought, and saying "I know who you are. I know I know who you are. Who are you?"
Osric gets as far as "Dae - " before the guy points emphatically and exclaims "Dany Targaryen! I knew that. Good costume, man. But where are your dragons?"
"Drogon's sitting on the register," Osric says, pointing.
"Harry!" the girl calls from over by the history section. "What am I looking for? What's it called?"
"Oh, right," the guy says, trying to include both Osric and Jared in the conversation. "It's a collection of essays, like personal essays? From Holocaust survivors. They were interviewed for the Shoah Foundation? Or by the Shoah Foundation? It's called, uh, shit, my mom texted me." He gets out his phone and starts tapping and scrolling. The girl comes up to the front of the store. "I Alone Have Escaped to Tell Thee, that's it. A guy my grandparents knew has an essay in it. He belonged to their synagogue in Milwaukee. He was my mom's gynecologist when she was in college, and can I tell you? I never want to have a conversation like that with my mom ever again. Do you have it?"
"Doesn't sound familiar," Jared says, and he should know. The history section is his purview, just as Kim is the YA expert and Anton is the person to ask about art and architecture and AJ knows all about horror and suspense. He goes back behind the counter to check the system, and sure enough, they don't have it. "I can order it if you want. We deliver locally, ship non-locally, or hold it for you here."
"Yeah, that'd be cool, thanks. I'll come get it."
He gives Jared his name and phone number, and he and the girl look around for a few more minutes before taking some candy and taking off.
Osric's girlfriend comes to get him at nine and Osric asks Jared to take their picture. Jared admits that he wouldn't know who Sita was dressed as if he hadn't already been told, and she tells him not to worry about it, no one expects girls to be Khal Drogo for Halloween.
"No one really expects boys to be Dany either," she adds, patting Osric on the shoulder. He preens and fluffs his wig.
"Go have fun," Jared tells them.
"We always do."
And then he's alone, although with Sadie and the sporadic stream of evening shoppers, he doesn't feel alone.
At ten he closes the store long enough to walk Sadie around the block, accept compliments on her costume, and take her up to the apartment. People are still coming in and out of the store, most of them dressed up. A bald guy in a long black coat and an eyepatch buys Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts as an apology gift for showing up so late to his friend's Halloween party. Jared wonders how crazy Two Brothers is, and how exhausted Jensen is going to be when he finally shows up.
He checks the Kickstarter, checks the store's Facebook page, orders the collection of Holocaust survivor essays as well as a couple of things he didn't get a chance to order during the day, and texts Jensen.
Thinking about you, wanted to say hi. :)
He doesn't expect a response. He doesn't even expect Jensen to see it until after the bar closes. He just wants Jensen to know.
He looks at the plywood covering the front of his store and wishes he was a better doodler. The growing collection of doodles and random scribbling is kind of cute and reassures him that The Moose and Mayhem really is part of the community, but the fact that there's even something to scribble on depresses him. He can't tell this early if they'll make their funding through Kickstarter, or if he and Chad will have to take out a loan they can't afford, just so he can keep it open.
He wants the money now. He wants to replace the window before winter. He wants to know where the leak's coming from, because the floor right under the plywood is sometimes wet. He needs to get Chad out here to look at it, and then they need to call someone.
He really wants Jensen to come over. He doesn't care if all they do is sleep. He just wants someone to be there with him, to reassure him that everything will be okay.
Usually Jared doesn't mind being the only one in the store late at night and early in the morning. Customers come and go and if he waits long enough, someone will appear. But he normally has two windows to look out and no threats of closure hanging over his head.
Jeff, his favorite late-night beat cop, strolls by after one, making a pass through the neighborhood to check that everyone is behaving themselves and the parade crowd isn't causing shenanigans.
"No problems here," Jared says. "What's it like outside?"
"Not bad," Jeff admits, "considering. Had to break up a bar fight and got a domestic violence call, but nothing unusual."
"Did Hilarie take the baby trick-or-treating?"
"She took the dogs! She put a bow tie on Bandit but he kept trying to chew it off. Gus was a pumpkin. Hilarie said babies are always pumpkins for Halloween." He shrugs. "Did you make Sadie wear a costume?"
"She was Princess Leia." Jared can't help the pride that creeps into his voice, mostly because his dog let him dress her up without any problem. He pulls out his phone and shows Jeff the pictures. Jeff looks impressed.
"Hilarie's got all the ones of Gus," he says. "I love being a dad but that kid won't let me sleep for anything. As if working the night shift wasn't bad enough." He leans on the counter. "How's the place?"
"You mean besides the plywood? Hey, did I tell you about the Kickstarter?"
"Did you? I don't remember. That's a crowd-funding thing, isn't it? Write it down." Jeff pulls a pad of paper out of his jacket pocket, flips to a blank page, and hands it across the counter to Jared. Jared scribbles as much information about the campaign as he can remember. "What do you need?"
"A new front window, for one thing, and maybe something internal, because there's a leak somewhere. Sometimes I'll come in and the floor's wet. We gotta get someone back here to take a better look at it. I hope it isn't structural."
"How's it going? The Kickstarter."
"Okay, I guess. I can't tell. It's only been two weeks. It goes for two months, so you have some time to give us some money. Is there some kind of protocol for that? It's not against NYPD regulations, is it?"
"I can always get Hilarie to donate in her name. Don't worry about it." Jeff waves a dismissive hand. "There's always a way around regs." He yawns. "I need to swing by that all-night diner and get a coffee." Jared pushes the almost-empty plastic pumpkin of Halloween candy closer to him, so at least he can have some sugar. "The neighbors are putting in a new kitchen and they start banging at nine in the morning. Gus hates it, I hate it, the dogs hate it, Hilarie tells us to just wait until we want to make renovations. I don't know where she thinks we'll get the money. Besides, the kitchen's just fine. What's this?" He peeks in the pumpkin.
"Candy. I was trying to get people to come in. I had Halloween music playing before."
"Sorry I missed it. All right, I should go. Crime waits for no man. I'll look at your Kickstarter thing. I'm sure Hilarie and I can give you something. This is a great place. You shouldn't have to close."
Jared considers adding that to the Kickstarter campaign page, or putting it on Facebook - "This is a great place. We shouldn't have to close."
The days pass and he tries not to think about it too much, but the plywood stares him in the face, forming a wall where window glass should be and reminding him that he really doesn't have the money to replace it. If he and Chad can't get a loan, he'll have to close.
He becomes more and more sure that he'll be able to keep the store. But he still feels helpless, and he doesn't know what to think or how else to feel, and he's discombobulated by the loss of a full wall of window. The store is always half dark, which is especially worse now that it's November.
"We're solar-powered," Genevieve explains, when Jared complains that he needs some sun. "People are, I mean. Have you considered a light box?"
"I just need to get out," he says. "I can't look at that any more." He gestures to the plywood. "Can I leave you here? I'll be back in a couple hours."
"You're going to see Jensen, aren't you." She tries and fails to hide a grin. Jared doesn't know why she's still so invested in his love life. He and Jensen are past the honeymoon phase. They've been together almost six months.
"Am I that transparent?"
"Call him first."
Jared rubs Sadie's ears and tells her to behave for Genevieve, and then he puts on his coat, sticks his phone in a pocket, and goes out to Brooklyn. He calls Jensen on the way, just to make sure the guy is home.
He lucks out.
"I'm processing photos from months ago, because I never had time," Jensen explains over the phone, "but I've only got about an hour and a half before I should go back to the bar."
"Can I still come over?"
"Sure. But you can't stay long."
It's not what Jared wanted, but he'll take it.
Onward!