Chapter 3: Evening at The Rusty Page
The following Tuesday had a sluggish, golden quality, the kind of afternoon where dust motes danced in sunbeams like suspended champagne bubbles. Kenny was on his knees, meticulously rearranging the front window display into a “Small Town Secrets” theme—a mix of cozy mysteries, a dog-eared copy of Peyton Place, and a vintage local history guide that mentioned the now-defunct pickle factory three times.
He was debating the ethics of placing a romance novel with a scandalously shirtless cover beside a book on regional birdwatching when the bell chimed.
He knew it was Buck even before he looked up. The energy in the room changed, the air compressing and then expanding, charged with a new current.
Buck stood just inside the door, letting it swing shut softly behind him. He wasn’t in his firefighter gear or a simple t-shirt today, but a worn, soft-looking grey henley pushed up to his forearms. In his hand, held not by the spine but cradled almost gently, was the copy of Ariel. Its cover looked more worn than it had a week ago, the edges softened, as if it had been handled, carried, perhaps even dropped once.
He didn’t approach the counter. He just stood there, looking at Kenny with an expression that was uncharacteristically still. The easy smile was absent, replaced by a faint, uncertain line between his brows.
“Hey,” Kenny said, getting to his feet and brushing lint from his jeans. His heart was doing a peculiar, rhythmic thump against his ribs.
“Hey.” Buck’s voice was quieter than usual. He lifted the book a few inches. “I read it.”
“Oh.” Kenny wiped his palms on his thighs. “And?”
“And I didn’t get most of it.” Buck took a few steps forward, into a slash of sunlight that turned his hair white-gold. “The beekeeping stuff? The red blooms, the daddy stuff… it went right over my head. Felt like reading a manual in a foreign language.”
“Oh,” Kenny said again, feeling a small, stupid deflation. He’d hoped, secretly, for a different reaction.
“But,” Buck continued, his blue eyes locking onto Kenny’s. “The words. The way she put them together. ‘Love set you going like a fat gold watch.’ ‘I eat men like air.’” He recited the lines haltingly, as if pulling them from a deep, unfamiliar place. “I didn’t always understand them, but I felt them. In here.” He tapped his sternum with the edge of the book. “It was like listening to a radio station full of static, but every now and then a clear, perfect note would come through and it would… hurt. In a way that didn’t suck.”
The deflation vanished, replaced by a warmth that spread from Kenny’s chest outward. He nodded, unable to speak for a second. That was it. That was exactly it.
“So I read it again,” Buck said. He moved closer, leaning his hip against the edge of the ‘New Arrivals’ table. “The second time was worse. Better. I don’t know. It got under my skin. That poem about the tulips? ‘The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.’” He shook his head, a frustrated, amazed gesture. “Who thinks like that? Who sees flowers and feels consumed by them?”
“Someone drowning in the quiet of a hospital room,” Kenny said softly, the analysis automatic, spilling out. “They’re not just flowers. They’re life, screaming at her when she wants to fade away. They’re obligation. They’re a demand she can’t meet.”
Buck stared at him. The silence stretched, thick and full. Outside, a car puttered slowly down the street.
“Yeah,” Buck breathed finally. “That. That’s what I felt but couldn’t name.” He looked down at the book, running his thumb over its cover. “I came back because I need you to explain it to me. The poems. In person. Not all at once, just… one at a time. Maybe over a beer. Or coffee.”
The request was so straightforward, so disarmingly vulnerable, that Kenny’s usual shyness evaporated. Here was this man, all solid strength and public bravery, holding a slim volume of poetry like it was a fragile, live thing, and asking for a translator for his own feelings.
“Okay,” Kenny said, his voice firm. “Yeah. I can do that.”
The tension in Buck’s shoulders, which Kenny hadn’t even fully registered was there, eased. A hint of his normal smile returned. “Good. Because otherwise I’m just going to keep walking around feeling like my insides have been scrambled by a ghost. It’s professionally inconvenient. Hard to haul a hose when you’re wondering if you’re eating men like air.”
Kenny laughed, the sound bright in the quiet shop. “We can’t have that. Public safety hazard.”
“Exactly.” Buck pushed off the table, finally approaching the counter. He set the book down between them. It was a bridge. “When’s your next break?”
“In about an hour. Maggie’s at the post office.”
“Perfect. The Beanery? They have a dark roast that tastes like burnt dirt and nostalgia. It’s fantastic.”
“I’ve had it. It’s alarmingly accurate.” Kenny glanced at the clock, then back at Buck. “An hour.”
“I’ll be there.” Buck turned to go, then paused. “Kenny?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. For not laughing.”
“Why would I laugh? You just described poetry better than most of my professors ever did.”
Buck’s smile then was full, real, and it reached his eyes, smoothing the weary lines around them. He gave a short nod and left, the bell marking his exit.
This time, Kenny didn’t freeze. He picked up the copy of Ariel. It was warm from Buck’s hand. He opened it to a random page and saw a faint, dark smudge near the margin of “Lady Lazarus.” Not a highlight, not a note. Just the imprint of a fingerprint, a tangible mark of attention paid. He closed the book gently.
For the next hour, as he finished the display and helped a customer find a book on nautical knots, the shop’s familiar quiet felt different. It wasn’t just an absence of city noise anymore. It was a basin, filling slowly with something new, something murmured in the space between a question and an answer, between a printed line and the heartbeat of the man who’d read it. The momentum was no longer potential. It was here, in the agreed-upon time, in the promise of burnt coffee and a conversation that had already begun.
The clock’s hand moved with a syrupy reluctance, each tick a miniature torture. Kenny found himself straightening books that were already orderly, wiping a nonexistent smudge from the glass counter, his mind a riot of Plath and blue eyes and the forthcoming bitterness of The Beanery’s roast.
When Maggie returned, she took one look at his restlessness and shooed him out with a wave of her hand. “Go. You’re agitating the shelving units. And tell Evan the next round is on him.”
The autumn air outside was crisp, carrying the scent of damp leaves and distant woodsmoke. The Beanery sat two blocks down, its windows fogged from within, a warm, yellow-lit rectangle in the gathering dusk. Kenny’s stomach fluttered, a sensation both unsettling and exhilarating.
Pushing through the door, he was met by a wall of noise—the grinding shriek of an espresso machine, the low din of conversations, and the folk music piping from tinny speakers. The place was a cluttered, cozy haven, mismatched armchairs huddled around small tables, the air rich with the promised scent of dark roast and steamed milk.
Buck was already there, wedged into a corner booth beneath a large map of the world. He had two mugs in front of him, steam curling lazily from their surfaces. He saw Kenny and raised a hand, that uncertain look from the bookstore replaced by a more familiar, welcoming ease.
“You made it,” Buck said as Kenny slid into the opposite seat. He pushed one of the mugs toward him. “I took a liberty. Black, right? That’s what you were drinking at the shop.”
“Yeah. Black. Thanks.” Kenny wrapped his hands around the heavy ceramic, the heat seeping into his palms. “Maggie says the next one’s on you.”
Buck chuckled. “I figured. She’s got a ledger in her head for every favor in this town.” He took a sip from his own mug, wincing slightly. “Yep. Burnt dirt and nostalgia. Perfect.”
They sat for a moment in the bubble of their booth, the cafe’s chaos swirling around them but not touching them. Kenny blew on his coffee, watching the surface ripple. “So. ‘Lady Lazarus.’”
“‘Lady Lazarus,’” Buck echoed, nodding. He pulled the book from where it was tucked beside him in the booth. It was already open to the page. His fingerprint was still there. “That one… I dreamt about it. The peeling off the napkin part. The big, strip tease.”
“Her psychic trauma as a public spectacle,” Kenny said, leaning forward. The subject anchored him. “Everyone wanting a piece of the resurrection, but not caring about the death that came before it. The voyeurism of it.”
“Is that what it is?” Buck’s gaze was intense, fixed on Kenny. “To me it just felt furious. A ‘fuck you’ so loud it’s almost silent. ‘Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.’” He said the last line quietly, almost to the tabletop, then looked up. “You think she’s talking about revenge?”
“I think she’s talking about survival,” Kenny said. His voice was low but firm. “They keep trying to kill her, in every way a person can be killed. And she keeps coming back, changed, fiercer. Consuming the very air they breathe to exist.”
Buck was silent, absorbing this. He ran a thumb over the edge of the page. “Survival.” He said the word like he was tasting it. “Yeah. I get that.”
The admission hung between them, weighted. Kenny didn’t press. He knew the shape of an unspoken story. He just took a drink of his coffee, letting the bitter warmth coat his throat.
“This is better than reading manuals,” Buck said after a while, the corner of his mouth quirking.
“Infinitely.” Kenny smiled. “Less helpful for fighting fires, though.”
“You’d be surprised. Understanding how things burn from the inside out?” Buck tapped the book. “Pretty useful, actually.”
Their conversation drifted then, away from the volcanic intensity of the poems to easier things. Buck asked about the city, and Kenny described his old apartment’s relentless sirens. Kenny asked about firefighting, and Buck described the bizarre camaraderie of a 3 a.m. kitchen fire, the way everything smelled of smoke and wet charcoal for days.
They shared the coffee, the pot between them dwindling as their words filled the space. Their knees brushed under the small table once, and neither moved away. The contact was a live wire, a silent, undeniable fact in the midst of their talking.
When the last of the coffee was gone, a comfortable quiet settled. The cafe was emptying out. Buck looked at the empty mugs, then at Kenny. “So. ‘The Tulips,’ next time?”
“Next time,” Kenny agreed, the words a promise that buzzed in his chest.
“Good.” Buck slid out of the booth, shouldering into his jacket. He left cash on the table, enough for both cups and a generous tip. “Walk you back? The pageant of local life is in full swing on Main Street this time of evening.”
They stepped out together into the cool night, the streetlamps casting soft pools of light on the pavement. Their shoulders were close, not touching, but the space between them hummed with the echo of shared words, with the residual warmth of shared cups, with the thrilling, unmapped certainty of a next time.