Part 1: Doorways - The Favorite Game - The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

When Cassie reached home, she took Mr. Webber’s copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and found a space for it among the paperbacks on the bookcase at the end of her bed.

The bookcase was a map of her life: the books she had devoured as a child; books she had bought or picked up on her travels through Europe; the books she had read and treasured since living in New York. Her own battered copy of The Count of Monte Cristo was there, an old paperback that had originally belonged to her grandfather. Cassie remembered reading it in her grandpa’s studio back in Myrtle Creek, wedged into a beanbag in the corner as he had worked, the smell of wood and oil in the air as heavy rain beat the ground outside. She pulled the book off the shelf and flicked the pages, catching the ghost of a scent that made her heart crumple at the memories and emotions it conjured, the contentment and comfort of those days in her childhood.

She slid the book back into its place and pulled off her old sweater to dump it in the laundry pile. She caught her reflection in the mirror on the back of the door and regarded herself dispassionately. She was always slightly disappointed whenever she saw herself in reflections or photographs. To her own eyes she was too tall and too thin. She thought her hips were too narrow and her chest too flat, and her eyes were big and wide like a startled deer’s. She never wore makeup, because she had never really learned how to do it, and her blond hair was always flying off in different directions no matter how much she brushed it.

“You home, then?” Izzy called from the living area.

“Yeah,” Cassie said. She opened the bedroom door, pushing her reflection out of sight, and wandered through to find Izzy cross-legged on the couch, dressed for bed in an oversized T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

“How was the work thing?” Cassie asked. “Must have been good since you’re at home and in your pajamas.”

Izzy rolled her eyes wearily. “We went to a few places. Couple of guys tried to pick us up in the last bar we were in. This big guy tried to use his charm on me. He was horrible. All muscles and monobrow. He suggested that we go down to Times Square together and watch the lights.”

“Wow,” Cassie said.

“Right?” Izzy agreed. “Who the hell wants to go to Times Square? The only people interested in Times Square are tourists and terrorists.”

Cassie smiled, enjoying the sound of her friend’s voice and the distraction from her lingering sadness. The journey home on an empty subway train and through snow-smothered streets had felt long and lonely.

“I said that to him,” Izzy continued, as Cassie joined her on the couch. “‘Nobody cares about Times Square except tourists and terrorists.’ He acted all offended, like I’d said something awful.” She pulled a face, affecting a lower voice. “‘That’s so distasteful, you know terrorists kill people.’”

“That’s pretty special,” Cassie said, grinning.

“It kinda spoiled the mood, so we called it a night. Lucky too.” She nodded at the window, the snow still falling.

Izzy worked in the jewelry department in Bloomingdale’s and every couple of weeks she would go out drinking with her colleagues after work. Her world was full of expensive products and rich people and wide-eyed tourists. It was a world Cassie neither understood nor cared about, but Izzy loved her job. At one time she had wanted to be an actress. She had moved to New York from Florida as a teenager with dreams of singing and acting on Broadway. When they had first met Izzy had been working at Kellner Books while auditioning and performing in tiny theaters. After a few years of getting steadily nowhere she had given up on her dream.

“Can you think of anything worse?” she had said to Cassie, one evening when they had gone for drinks at the rooftop bar of the Library Hotel. “Being thirty-something and watching all these beautiful young women come into the same auditions as you, looking at you exactly how I look at all the older women now? The world has an endless supply of beautiful women, Cassie. There’s always a newer, younger one coming along. I am not a good enough actress that my looks don’t matter.”

Cassie and Izzy had worked together at Kellner Books for over a year, and they had fallen into being friends almost immediately. They were very different people, with different interests, but somehow they had always gotten on well. It was a natural, easy friendship, the type that comes out of nowhere and changes your life. When Cassie had started looking for an apartment to rent, Izzy had suggested that they try to find a place together to save on costs. They had shared a third-floor two-bedroom walk-up in Lower Manhattan ever since. Their building was on the edge of Little Italy, above a cheesecake shop and a dry cleaner’s. It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and because of the landlord’s subdivides none of the rooms were the right shape or size, and none of the furniture really fit where it should. But it worked for them, and they had continued living together even after Izzy had left the bookstore to work at Bloomingdale’s. Izzy tended to work during the day while Cassie preferred to work the late shift and weekends. As a result they often didn’t see each other for days at a time, but that stopped them from getting in each other’s way and prevented the living arrangement from spoiling the friendship. Every three or four days their paths would cross, and Izzy would give a rapid rundown on all the events in her life while Cassie listened. And then, when Izzy’s stream of consciousness ran dry, she would look at Cassie with a maternal expression and ask, “And how are you, Cassie? What’s going on in your world?”

Izzy looked at her now with that expression on her face, her hair tied up in a mess of curls behind her head. She was a beautiful woman, with high cheekbones and large brown eyes. She was the sort of woman department stores loved to have behind their counters, the sort of woman who might have been a film star if she had been able to act. Cassie felt plain in comparison, but Izzy had never done anything to make her feel that way. That fact said everything about the sort of person Izzy was.

“What’s going on in my world?” Cassie preempted.

“What’s going on in your world?”

“Nothing,” Cassie said. “Not much.”

“Come on,” Izzy said, unfolding her legs and jumping up to wander over to the kitchen counter. “Let me get you a classy mug of wine and you can tell me your nothing and not much.”

Izzy switched on the lamp by the door, splashing soft light across the walls.

“Mr. Webber died today,” Cassie said. She looked down, realizing she was still holding the book he had given her. She had meant to leave it on the bookshelf in her bedroom.

“Oh my god, that’s horrible,” Izzy said. “Who’s Mr. Webber?”

“Just this old guy,” Cassie said. “He comes into the store every now and then. Gets a coffee and reads.”

“God, it is so cold, what is with this weather?” Izzy muttered, closing the door to the hall as she padded back to the sofa and passed Cassie a mug. They didn’t drink wine from glasses, not in the apartment.

“I think he was just lonely. And he liked the bookstore.”

“So what happened?” Izzy asked, pouring the wine. “Did he trip and fall or something? My uncle Michael died like that. He fell, broke his hip, and couldn’t get up. Died on his living room floor.” She shuddered.

“No, nothing like that,” Cassie said. She took the mug of wine even though she wasn’t interested in drinking it. “He just died. Just sitting there. Like it was his time.”

Izzy nodded but seemed disappointed.

“That’s what the cops said anyway,” Cassie reflected. “‘Sometimes people just die.’”

Izzy settled more comfortably into the sofa, crossing her legs beneath her. Cassie took a sip of wine, and they were companionably quiet together for a few moments.

“Look at the snow,” Izzy murmured, gazing out the window. The buildings on the opposite side of the street were almost hidden by the storm. The wind seemed to have died but the flakes were bigger and softer now, tumbling slowly but steadily from the sky.

“It’s so pretty,” Cassie said.

“What’s that?” Izzy pointed at the notebook in Cassie’s lap, and Cassie passed it to her, explaining about the gift.

“Leather,” Izzy observed. She opened the book and flicked through the pages idly. “Wow. This looks like a crazy person vomited some word soup. Wonder if it’s worth anything?”

“Probably not,” Cassie said. It annoyed her that Izzy’s first thought was about monetary value. That wasn’t the point. “Anyway, it was a gift.”

“I think Mr. Webber was sweet on you, Cassie,” Izzy said, smiling mischievously, as she handed the book back.

“Stop it,” Cassie protested. “It wasn’t like that. He was a nice man. And he did a nice thing.”

Izzy sipped her wine, her eyes slightly glazed. “Okay. Let’s not wallow. Come on. Let’s think of happier things.”

“Like what?” Cassie asked, placing her mug on the table. “I can’t drink this. I’ll fall asleep.”

“Lightweight,” Izzy murmured. “Tell me about . . . tell me about your favorite day.”

“What?” Cassie smiled, although she remembered the Favorite Game. They had played it often in the store when things were quiet and there was nothing to do. One of them would ask the other to talk about their favorite something . . . favorite meal, favorite holiday, favorite bad date. It passed the time.

“Tell me about your favorite day,” Izzy repeated. “What was your best day ever?”

Cassie thought about the question, gazing out the window to the snowy world, cradling Mr. Webber’s book in her lap.

“I tell you what wasn’t my favorite day,” Izzy said, interrupting Cassie’s thoughts. “That day on the Greyhound.”

“Oh god.” Cassie groaned and smiled, remembering the trip she and Izzy had taken to Florida several years earlier to visit Izzy’s cousin. The two of them had spent almost twenty-four hours together on a Greyhound bus to Miami, alternating between terror and hilarity at the events they endured. “Remember that man who smelled like he went to the toilet on the bus without leaving his seat?”

“Oh, don’t remind me,” Izzy said, covering her mouth as if she wanted to be sick.

Cassie turned her mind to better days. She remembered when she was much younger, days in the house she grew up in, just her and her grandfather, or just her and a book, but she wouldn’t talk about those. Those memories were too precious. She thought instead about the traveling she had done before she had moved to New York, after her grandfather had died. She had taken a trip to Europe by herself, partly to grieve and partly to work out what she wanted to do with her life. She had backpacked from city to city, mostly by herself but occasionally making friends: a handsome German boy in Paris, a young Japanese couple in London. There had been a couple of middle-aged Dutch lesbians she had met in Rome whom she traveled with for a few weeks because they seemed to think she was innocent and in need of protection. Cassie had promised to keep in touch with these people but never had. They were walk-on parts in her life. Although they were lost to her now, those people and those warm, sunny days across Europe were among her happiest memories.

“I remember when I was in Venice,” Cassie said.

“Ooh, Venice,” Izzy said. “Nice.” Izzy had never been out of the country, but she had often spoken about going back to Italy, to where her family originally had come from, talking about it in the way people speak of dreams that they know will never really happen.

“I was staying in this hostel,” Cassie said. “And I had the room to myself. Just nobody else there, not at first. It was run by this middle-aged couple with young kids. They were so nice. I can’t remember their names now . . .” She thought for a moment, searching her memories but coming up empty. “But they treated me like a daughter.”

Izzy rolled her head to the side, resting it on the back of the sofa as she listened.

“The street I was on,” Cassie continued. “It was a narrow, cobbled street with all these yellow and orange buildings with big wooden doors and small windows with shutters. I’d probably never find it again if I ever went back there. Well, there was a bakery across the street, and I’d sleep with the windows open because it was so warm.”

“Mmm, warm is nice,” Izzy said, sounding sleepy.

“And in the morning, I’d wake up to the smell of baking bread and pastries.” Cassie sighed at the memory. “Just the best smell in the world. And you’d hear the locals talking and laughing as they met each other. The coffee shop at the end of the street would put out tables and chairs, the waitstaff clattering and banging even though it was early, and all the locals would stop by for a cappuccino on their way to work or whatever.”

“I want to go to Italy,” Izzy said.

“Every day I’d jump out of bed and run down the stairs,” Cassie continued. “The property had this big old wooden door. You’d open it and the bakery was right across from you, usually with a queue of people waiting to buy whatever they needed.”

“I love bread,” Izzy murmured. “Can’t eat it. Goes straight to my hips. But I love it.”

Cassie ignored her, caught in the net of her own memory for a few moments.

“I’m going to put this away,” she said, nodding at the book in her hand. “And I’m going to make a coffee or something, otherwise I’ll be asleep before you.”

“I’m not sleepy,” Izzy said, with her obviously sleepy voice. “It’s a lie.”

Cassie smiled and pushed herself off the couch.

She was remembering Venice again, thinking about the coffees she’d had at the café on the corner, the crusty bread she’d eaten for breakfast, and as she reached for the door to the hallway she felt a shudder, a moment of oddness where the world seemed to tense and release within her.

And then she opened the door and found herself gazing out onto that small, cobbled street in Venice she remembered from her holiday, quiet and dark and glistening with rain.