Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

“Maybe they’re recreational puzzles,” Mat says. “Like, super-advanced sudoku.”

Penumbra’s customers are, in fact, exactly the kind of people you’d see in coffee shops, working through one-sided chess problems or solving Saturday crosswords with blue ballpoints pressed perilously hard into the newsprint.

Down below, the bell tinkles. A jangle of cold fear makes a quick round-trip from my brain to my fingertips and back. From the front of the store, a low voice calls out, “Is anyone der?”

I hiss at Mat: “Put it back.” Then I hustle down the ladder.

When I step wheezing from the stacks, it is Fedorov at the door. Of all the customers I’ve met, he’s the oldest—his beard is snowy white and the skin on his hands is papery-thin—but also probably the most clear-eyed. He seems a lot like Penumbra, actually. Now he slides a book across the desk—he’s returning CLOVTIER—then taps two fingers sharply and says, “I vill need Murao next.”

Here we go. I find MVRAO in the database and send Mat back up the ladder. Fedorov eyes him curiously. “Anudder clerk?”

“A friend,” I say. “Just helping out.”

Fedorov nods. It occurs to me that Mat could pass muster as a very young member of this club. He and Fedorov are both wearing brown corduroys tonight.

“You hev been here, vat, tirty-seven days?”

I couldn’t have told you that, but yes, I’m sure it’s thirty-seven days exactly. These guys tend to be very precise. “That’s right, Mr. Fedorov,” I say cheerily.

“End vat do you tink?”

“I like it,” I say. “It’s better than working in an office.”

Fedorov nods at that and passes over his card. He’s 6KZVCY, naturally. “I vorked at HP”—he says it Heych-Pee—“for tirty years. Now, det vas an office.” Then he ventures: “You hev used a HP celculator?”

Mat returns with MVRAO. It’s a big one, thick and wide, bound in mottled leather.

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” I say, wrapping the book in brown paper. “I had one of the graphing calculators all through high school. It was an HP-38.”

Fedorov beams like a proud grandparent. “I vorked on de tventy-eight, vhich vas de precursor!”

That makes me smile. “I probably still have it somewhere,” I tell him, and pass MVRAO across the front desk.

Fedorov scoops it up in both hands. “Tenk you,” he says. “You know, de tirty-eight did not hev Reverse Polish Notation”—he gives his book (of dark rituals?) a meaningful tap—“end I should tell you, RPN is hendy for dis kind of work.”

I think Mat’s right: sudoku. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say.

“Okay, tenk you again.” The bell tinkles and we watch Fedorov go slowly up the sidewalk toward the bus stop.

“I looked at his book,” Mat says. “Same as the others.”

What seemed strange before now seems even stranger.

“Jannon,” Mat says, turning to face me squarely. “There’s something I have to ask you.”

“Let me guess,” I say. “Why haven’t I ever looked at the—”

“Do you have a thing for Ashley?”

Well, that’s not what I expected. “What? No.”

“Okay, good. Because I do.”

I blink and stare blankly at Mat Mittelbrand standing there in his tiny, perfectly tailored suit jacket. It’s like Jimmy Olsen confessing that he has a thing for Wonder Woman. The contrast is just too much. And yet—

“I’m going to put the moves on her,” he says gravely. “Things might get weird.” He says it like a commando setting up a midnight raid. Like: Sure, this is going to be extraordinarily dangerous, but don’t worry. I’ve done it before.

My vision shifts. Maybe Mat isn’t Jimmy Olsen but Clark Kent, and underneath there’s a Superman. He would have to be a five-foot-four Superman, but still.

“I mean, technically, we already made out once.”

Wait, what—

“Two weeks ago. You weren’t home. You were here. We drank a bunch of wine.”

My head spins a little, not with the dissonance of Mat and Ashley together, but with the realization that this thread of attraction has been twisting under my nose and I had no idea. I hate it when that happens.

Mat nods, as if that’s all settled now. “Okay, Jannon. This place is awesome. But I gotta go.”

“Back to the apartment?”

“No, the office. Pulling an all-nighter. Jungle monster.”

“Jungle monster.”

“Made from living plants. We have to keep the studio really hot. I might come back for another break. This place is cool and dry.”

Mat leaves. Later, in the logbook, I write:

A cool night with no clouds. The bookstore is visited by the youngest customer it has seen in (this clerk believes) many years. He wears corduroys, a tailored suit jacket, and, under it, a sweater-vest stitched with tiny tigers. The customer purchases one postcard (under duress), then makes his exit to resume work on a jungle monster.

It’s very quiet. I set my chin in my palm and count my friends and wonder what else is hiding in plain sight.

THE DRAGON-SONG CHRONICLES, VOLUME I

THE NEXT NIGHT, another friend visits the store, and not just any friend: my oldest.