The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

her. “Nice outfit!” The girl gives him the finger. “You gotta stop drinking. I gotta stop cheating on Ismay,” Daniel says. “But then I see a pair of shorts like that, and my resolve is seriously tested. This night’s been ridiculous. The nurse! Those shorts!”
    A.J. sips the beer. “How’s the book coming?”
    Daniel shrugs. “It is a book. It will have pages and a cover. It will have a plot, characters, complications. It will reflect years of studying, refining, and practicing my craft. For all that, it will surely be less popular than the first one I wrote at the age of twenty-five.”
    “Poor bastard,” A.J. says.
    “I’m pretty sure you win the Poor Bastard of the Year Award, old man.”
    “Lucky me.”
    “Poe’s a lousy writer, you know? And ‘Tamerlane’ is the worst. Boring Lord Byron rip-off. It’d be one thing if it were a first edition of something fucking decent. You should be glad to be rid of it. I loathe collectible books anyway. People getting all moony over particular paper carcasses. It’s the ideas that matter, man. The words,” Daniel Parish says.
    A.J. finishes his beer. “You, sir, are an idiot.”
    THE INVESTIGATION LASTS a month, which in Alice Island PD time is like a year. Lambiase and his team find no relevant physical evidence at the scene. In addition to throwing out the wine bottle and cleaning up the vindaloo, the criminal had apparently wiped down the apartment of fingerprints. The investigators question A.J.’s employees and also his few friends and relations in Alice. These interviews result in nothing particularly incriminating. No book dealers or auction houses report any copies of
Tamerlane
turning up either. (Of course, auction houses are notoriously quiet about these matters.) The investigation is considered unsolved. The book is gone, and A.J. knows he will never see it again.
    The glass case, now, has no use, and A.J. is unsure of what to do with it. He has no other rare books. Still, the case had been pricey, nearly five hundred dollars. Some vestigial, hopeful part of him wants to believe that something better could come along to put in the case. When he bought it, he was told he could also use it to store cigars.
    As retirement is no longer on the horizon, A.J. reads galleys, returns e-mails, answers the phone, and even writes a shelf talker or two. At night, after the store is closed, he starts running again. There are many challenges to long-distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put one’s house keys. In the end, A.J. decides to leave his front door unlocked. In his estimation, nothing here is worth stealing.

The Luck of Roaring Camp
    1868 / Bret Harte
    Overly sentimental tale of a mining camp that adopts an “Ingin baby” whom they dub Luck. I read it for the first time at Princeton in a seminar called the Literature of the American West and was not moved in the least. In my response paper (dated November
14
,
1992
), the only thing I found to recommend it were the colorful character names: Stumpy, Kentuck, French Pete, Cherokee Sal, etc. I chanced upon “The Luck of Roaring Camp” again a couple of years ago and I cried so much you’ll find that my Dover Thrift Edition is waterlogged. Methinks I have grown soft in my middle age. But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.
    —A.J.F.

In the weeks after the robbery, Island Books experiences a slight but statistically improbable uptick in business. A.J. attributes the increase to the lesser-known economic indicator known as “the Curious Townie.”
    A well-meaning townie (W-MT) will sidle up to the desk. “Any word on
Tamerlane
?” [Translation:
May I turn over your significant personal loss for my own