Read American Dirt : A Novel (2020) for Free Online

he appeared, approaching quickly to help with the door. The bell above them jangled like a pronouncement.
    ‘Thank you,’ Lydia said.
    He nodded. ‘But far more dangerous.’
    She frowned and propped open the easel. ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘The sign.’ He gestured, and she stood back to assess her lettering. ‘Books are cheaper than traveling, but they’re also more dangerous.’
    Lydia smiled. ‘Well, I suppose that depends on where you travel.’
    They went inside, and she left him to his own counsel while he browsed the stacks, but when at last he approached the counter and set his books beside the register, she was startled by his selections.
    Lydia had owned this store for almost ten years, and she’d stocked it with both books she loved and books she wasn’t crazy about but knew would sell. She also kept a healthy inventory of notecards, pens, calendars, toys, games, reading glasses, magnets, and key chains, and it was that kind of merchandise, along with the splashy best sellers, that made her shop profitable. So it had long been a secret pleasure of Lydia’s that, hidden among all the more popular goods, she was able to make a home for some of her best-loved secret treasures, gems that had blown open her mind and changed her life, books that in some cases had never even been translated into Spanish but that she stocked anyway, not because she expected she’d ever sell them, but simply because it made her happy to know they were there. There were perhaps a dozen of these books, stashed away on their ever-changing shelves, enduring among a cast of evolving neighbors. Now and again when a book moved her, when a book opened a previously undiscovered window in her mind and forever altered her perception of the world, she would add it to those secret ranks. Once in a great while, she’d even try to recommend one of those books to a customer. She did this only when the customer was someone she knew and liked, someone she trusted to appreciate the value of the treasure being offered; she was almost always disappointed. In the ten years she’d been doing this, only twice had Lydia experienced the pleasure of a customer approaching her counter with one of those books in hand, unsolicited. Twice in ten years there’d been a wild spark of wonder in the shop, when the bell above the door was like mistletoe – a possibility of something magical.
    So when Javier approached Lydia as she stood behind the register perusing catalogs, when she lifted his selections from the counter to ring them up, she was astonished to find not one, but two of her secret treasures among them: Heart, You Bully, You Punk by Leah Hager Cohen and The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry.
    ‘Oh my God,’ Lydia whispered.
    ‘Is something wrong?’
    She looked up at him, realizing she hadn’t actually looked at him yet, despite their cheerful banter earlier. He was fancily dressed for a Tuesday morning, in dark blue trousers and a white guayabera , an outfit more suitable for Sunday Mass than a regular workday, and his thick, black hair was parted sharply and combed to one side in an old-fashioned style. The heavy, black plastic frames of his glasses were similarly outdated, so retro they were almost chic again. His eyes swam hugely behind the thick lenses and his mustache quivered as she considered him.
    ‘These books,’ she said. ‘They’re two of my favorites.’ It was an in sufficient explanation, but all she could muster.
    ‘Mine, too,’ the man across from her said. The mustache hitched ever so slightly with his hesitant smile.
    ‘You’ve read them before?’ She was holding Heart, You Bully, You Punk with both hands.
    ‘Well, only this one.’ He gestured to the one she was clutching.
    She looked down at its cover. ‘You read in English?’ she asked, in English.
    ‘I try, yes,’ he said. ‘My English isn’t fluent, but it’s close. And this story is so delicate. I’m sure there were things I missed the first