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Chapter 4. The neighbor's cat

The door bell rang loudly behind her, and two pairs of eyes immediately fixed their gaze on Leah: Yuna was sitting in the center of the room at the table, bending deeply over sheets of tables; and a stocky girl with short-cropped hair froze near the shelves on the first floor.

The visitor's interest quickly waned, and she again switched to the book she was holding in her hands, while the good-naturedly smiling shop worker hurried to clear the table of papers.

“Hello,” Leah pulled out the chair next to Yuna and tiredly plopped down on it.

“I already thought that you wouldn’t come today either.”

- Yes, it somehow got twisted. Mom took me shopping - I needed to replenish my wardrobe with warm clothes. Yesterday I simply didn’t have the strength to crawl here.

— Did you have fun shopping?

— Do I look like a happy person? Leah grinned in obvious amazement, barely able to stop herself from gushing about the hardships she'd had to go through over the past two days.

Kayla was from that category of women who had an assortment of fifty pairs of shoes and a wardrobe that would rival small boutiques in inventory. And whenever she had the chance to go shopping with her daughter, she did not miss it. So this time she made me try on mountains of clothes, including those that Leah would never have reached out to. Of course, she could refuse her mother, but then she risked becoming the culprit of a grandiose hysteria. Therefore, there was nothing left to do but clench my teeth harder and follow Kayla like a weak-willed calf through the endless circles of hell.

Leaning on the back of the chair, Leah glanced over her shoulder at another visitor who continued to look at the ancient tome. And the girl, as if sensing a gaze on her back, turned around abruptly and glared at her with green eyes peeking out from behind her round glasses.

For a moment, Leah was confused, thinking that the stranger was outraged and was coming to investigate, but, stopping near their table, she handed Yuna a book and said in a hoarse, low voice:

- I take.

Such a rich bass was rare even among men: the air around seemed to vibrate with a guttural roar.

“What?...” Leah stared at her incomprehensibly, trying to discern male or female characteristics in the figure. However, in the town, unisex robe clothing was especially popular among young people. The painted eyes and the absence of an Adam's apple indicated that a girl was standing in front of her, but the too low voice and short haircut introduced a certain amount of dissonance. A neutral face suited both a boy of about sixteen and a girl of twenty.

“Delivery on Tuesday,” Yuna announced casually, handing out change and a receipt. And when the strange visitor moved towards the exit, she called after him: “Thank you for your purchase, all the best.”

The doorbell rang again and the shop fell silent.

“A simpler face,” Yuna burst out laughing. — This is my regular client.

- Is it he... or she?

- Is there a difference? The main thing is that he buys expensive books. And almost my monthly salary is paid.

“No, not at all,” she admitted. “It’s just... the voice was confusing.” Not in the sense that there is anything wrong with him - I have no preconceptions about what a person should look like. It was rather unexpected...

- Maybe coffee? Just yesterday I was replenishing my supplies for your arrival, I was going to surprise you with the aroma and taste of Kenyan Arabica. Although, you probably have coffee shops on every corner there, and you won’t be impressed by this - in our country it’s quite difficult to get beans of this variety.

“I definitely wouldn’t give up coffee right now,” Leah said gratefully. She walked up to the bar and, throwing her elbows on the high tabletop, clasped her fingers and rested her chin on it. “I’m far from a gourmet who hangs out in coffee shops.” Of course, I love freshly brewed coffee, but at home I calmly drink instant coffee. But the fact that you are spending... I feel somehow embarrassed.

- Do not bother. I have connections in the coffee and tea industry. Therefore, if you need to get something rare, contact us. And I treat many people to coffee and tea for free - no need to worry about this.

The coffee machine rattled noisily, grinding beans.

—Where is your section with horror literature? Thrillers?

“Everywhere,” Yuna looked around at all the shelves in her field of vision. — We have a shop with a narrow specialization, there is practically no popular literature, especially sentimental prose, women’s fantasy and ironic detective stories. But there is a variety of alternatives, horror, mysticism, thrillers, dystopias. In general, we buy everything that other stores take for testing sales. With second-hand books, things are similar.

— Are there any problems with business? I doubt that such genres are very popular among the locals.

— Now we are in the age of digital technology. Online bookstores are much more popular than retail ones. Only rare regulars come into our shop, which makes it quite quiet here. And the income comes mainly from sales in the online store. But other employees do this; I’m not too educated in the intricacies.

- It's clear. In that case, where can I find Lovecraft or Poe? And are Dan Simmons books in your rich assortment of mysticism?

— Our classics are on the second floor, on the outermost shelf, right next to the stairs. And Simmons... we need to look in the database.

Leah headed in that direction, determined to leave today with at least a couple of collectible collections of works, including the short stories: The Dunwich Horror, The Call of Cthulhu, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and A Premature Funeral. She read them more than once, learning them practically by heart. However, after the move, the number of her books decreased sharply and almost all the works of Alan Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Lovecraft were cut. On the one hand, those books had become disheveled, and the quality of the printing left much to be desired; she was still going to look for a more respectable edition to replace them, and on the other hand, in the margins of those books there were memorable notes dear to her sentimental heart.

The home library had to be given away to good hands and sold to used bookstores for a nominal fee. Of course, if it weren’t for a strict ultimatum from her parents, indicating that only the most beloved and rare publications can be preserved, which fit exactly in one small box - an outrageously ridiculous amount - Leah would certainly have tried to move all her numerous bookshelves, under which she had to I would like to order a separate container. But, however, not everything is so tragic, because she did not even have time to familiarize herself with a quarter of the books from her home library, and it is unlikely that she would have gotten around to it. Many of the works were about the theme of war times, which she hated, inherited from her grandfather, and sentimental love stories of the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries, adored by her late grandmother.

Lost headlong in memories, Leah managed to grab the railing with an iron grip at the last moment when she slipped on a plastic bag thrown by someone. She hit her rib painfully, pressing herself against the handrail as hard as she could in an attempt to maintain her balance. Tears flowed from the eyes; it was as if a bullet had shot through the side.

- Hey, are you okay? - Yuna called out to her worriedly.

“Yes, everything is fine,” after a pause, Leah said in an even tone.

Having climbed to the second floor with difficulty and injuries, she, still wincing from the aching pain, carefully squatted down next to the books from the long-desired series. Gradually a stack of six plump editions formed. And choosing one thing between them turned out to be an impossible task for her, so she went downstairs, holding all six volumes in a tight embrace.

Leah cupped the hot, steaming mug of coffee in her palms and narrowed her eyes in pleasure. She didn’t even notice when she got so cold.

“I see you prefer to shop in large quantities,” Yuna looked at the stack of books with a malicious glance. “We don’t have Simmons in the store, but we have a couple of books in stock: “Prayers to the Broken Stone” and “The Fall of Hyperion.”

— “Hyperion” is not particularly interesting to me, but I would buy a collection of his stories.

- Okay, I’ll call tomorrow and order delivery - it’s too late today. They probably dumped everything. And I'm closing in about twenty minutes. If you don't have plans, then let's go home together.

- What plans could a morally murdered person have, who barely crawled to the desired bookstore? - Leah said ironically. She smiled at the corners of her mouth when Yuna giggled, and casually asked, “Do you know Neil Lokxen?”

There was a pause.

Gradually, the joyful expression on his face changed to a wary one, as if waiting for some kind of trick.

- Well, he lives in the next house. To the left of mine,” Leah clarified, carefully observing her reaction.

“I know him,” she finally said. However, the laconic answer was not followed by any explanation: how well she knew or what kind of relationship they had.

Lifting her mug, Yuna began to lightly swirl her brush, causing the remaining coffee to swirl at the bottom.

- And... Do you communicate?

— They stopped after I left school in the tenth grade.

- Why? — Leah stared at her in shock.

At times she also wanted to give up everything. But still, not finishing school is almost tantamount to putting an end to your entire subsequent life - there was no talk of any more or less stable and well-paid job. How much disappointment in life do you have to be in order to give up on the future?

No. Yuna didn't look like someone who had lost hope for a bright future. Some dropped out of school to switch to homeschooling, others did not have enough time to develop the potential inherent in them by nature. Perhaps she belonged to one of these groups of people for whom the general education system was simply not suitable.

“I mean, why did you drop out of school?” Why didn't you stop communicating...

“I’m tired,” Yuna muttered with a hint of irritation and fell silent, which made Leah feel uneasy, as if the answer and subsequent pause were addressed specifically to her. “I didn’t like it there, and the eternal restrictions infuriated me: don’t do it, don’t wear it, don’t go there.” And Neil helped me with my homework from time to time, and when I left school, the need for communication simply disappeared.

They sat in silence for some time.

Leah still couldn’t get over the bad feeling, so she asked the next clarifying question more quietly than she should have, revealing her feelings too obviously:

— So all your communication was limited to doing your homework?

— In recent years, yes. In childhood, one might say, we were forced to be friends.

- How is that?

— We lived next door and didn’t get along very well with other children.

— It’s strange, usually childhood friends, especially if they grew up apart from their peer group, have the strongest relationships... But in general, this is none of my business, sorry if I asked too personal a question.

“It’s okay,” Yuna waved it off with a fake smile. - But how do you know him?

Leah was in no hurry to answer, choosing the most harmless words.

— When I was walking along the beach, he spoke to me. That's how we met. “She decided not to specify about the subsequent trip to the cultural center and gatherings in the attic. I didn’t want to inadvertently hurt other people’s feelings, if any.

“I see,” Yuna’s smile became wider. She rose from her chair and collected the empty dishes. “Now I’ll wash it and I think we can move out.”

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