The Moment of Everything by Shelly King Page A

one.”
    I lifted Wild Orchids and Trotsky from the stack near the counter. On the back of the softcover was a note starting just above the bar code and written diagonally across, the lines getting shorter the closer the writer worked toward the corner of the book.
    Dad, please wake me up if I am not up by 9:30. I do not have an alarm on my clock. Actually, come to think of it, 10 o’clock is okay, too. —Thom
    “See what I mean?” Jason said as he yawned and stretched.
    “It’s not the same thing,” I said, picking up Lady Chatterley’s Lover . I wanted to say, “Henry and Catherine fell in love.” But I didn’t. The phrase felt uncomfortably trite. It was something my parents said all the time, telling tales of their college sweetheart years to dinner guests on a current of laughter. As a child I was awed by their fairy-tale story and believed them when they promised it would happen to me as well. I expected it and feared the moment when I’d meet my love and my life would click into place and all would be decided. I felt a heaviness around my heart just thinking about it now.
    I was about to walk away from Jason when I noticed the small wooden recipe box that Hugo kept by the leather sales ledger. Inside the box, I knew I’d find tattered index cards with the names of all the Dragonfly’s customers with book trade credit. Some of those cards had been in there probably as long as there had been a Dragonfly. Maybe someone in that box knew something about the book. Maybe it was worth a few phone calls.
    “Hey, give that back,” Jason said, grabbing the box out of my hands and holding it tightly against his T-shirt, right in front of the print of a bicycle proclaiming, TWO WHEELS. ONE DARK LORD .
    “That’s confidential information!”
    “What confidential information?” I reached for the box, but he turned his torso away from me and all I got was a fistful of black T-shirt. “We’re not talking state secrets.”
    Jason pushed by me, tucking the card box in the crook of his arm like he was sprinting for the goal line.
    “Let her take a look. It won’t hurt anything,” Hugo said. “Right, Robert?”
    “Do I look like a man who wants to get involved in whatever it is you people are talking about?” Robert asked without looking up, his fingers dancing over his calculator.
    “Jeez,” Jason said. “If we had another 9/11 and the FBI came in here wanting to look through our files to see who’d bought Martha Stewart’s Guide to Home Bomb-Making , you’d tell them to go to hell. But she’s got a free pass?”
    “It’s hardly the same thing,” I said. “You don’t keep records of what books people buy.”
    “Bollocks,” Jason said. “It is the same thing.”
    “He has a point, Maggie,” Hugo said.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    “It would be different if you worked here,” Hugo said. “Actually—” he walked over the cash register, pulled out a twenty, and handed it to me.
    “What’s this?”
    “It’s your wages for the last two hours,” Hugo said.
    Robert stood and reached across the counter to snag the twenty from my hand and put it back in the cash register. “She’ll get a proper check just like Jason does.” He riffled through his papers and handed me a blank timecard.
    I stared at it. A timecard? I hadn’t filled out one of these since my work-study job in college. “But I haven’t done anything but nag you about this book. You’re going to pay me for that?”
    “Jason nags me all day, and I pay him.”
    “You’re seriously going to do this?” Jason asked.
    “Seems I already have.” Hugo leaned back against the counter, stirring his tea. “Solves all kinds of problems. You’re always complaining about Maggie doing things in the store without actually working here. And now she’s an employee. She can look through the customer files without any ethical quandaries.”
    I’m not sure who was more disturbed by this proposal, me or Jason. I looked over at