Miss McElroy

TRAVIS DIDN’T IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZE THE WOMAN pretending to browse the shelves at the Paperback Swap. When he’d thought of Miss McElroy over the last decade—and thinking of her wasn’t so uncommon—she was preserved in amber: the young mother in a bikini and Ray-Bans, beads of lake water jeweling her delicate neck. She wore Ray-Bans this day too, maybe the same pair from before, but otherwise he had to work to see her as the woman she’d been. She reminded him of a bird losing its feathers, diminished and skittish. When the mailman opened the door and the bells clanged, she snapped around like she’d been pinched. She never glanced at Travis—not when she moved from the romance novels to mysteries to Westerns, not when she spun the squeaky postcard rack, not when she slipped through the black curtain and into the Back Room, the section of the shop with the nudie magazines.

The Swap was next to Payday Loans in a strip mall on the west side of Corpus Christi, between the community college and Bayview Behavioral Hospital. The air conditioner always needed freon, so Travis had positioned small oscillating fans around the store. Customers brought in grocery bags of books to trade, mostly bodice rippers and Louis L’Amours, but occasionally a student had a copy of El Cid or Sir Gawain. Travis had a shelf beside the counter with a label that read classics for classes; he was piecing together an associate’s degree himself, taking evening courses when he could afford them. He was twenty-six and had worked at the Swap for three years, though when anyone asked he said the job was temporary. Before he clocked out each night, he loaded his backpack with the most interesting books from that day and sampled them before bed. He lived in the house where he’d grown up, drove his father’s old Jeep, had never once left Texas.

The Back Room kept the store in the black. Each day brought a procession of men in tasseled loafers, men in coveralls, men in scrubs. They wanted Barely Legal and Cherry, Easyriders and Jugs and Heavy Metal. Collectors bought vintage Playboys for the cost of three credit hours at the college. The magazines were stored in plastic sleeves, and the bulk of Travis’s time was spent watching the video monitor to make sure no one broke the seals. Not that it happened often. Most customers who went behind the curtain took care to avoid attention.

He watched Miss McElroy on the monitor as closely as he watched shoplifters and the homeless men he regularly had to stop from masturbating back there. She flipped through the stock deliberately, as if looking for particular issues, consulting some mental checklist. More than once, she raised a magazine, inspected it, then deemed it unworthy and moved on. Travis pegged her for a dealer coming to restock a flea-market booth. Her hair was tamed into a thick ponytail, and sweat had matted loose strands to the nape of her neck, her concave cheeks. She’d lost weight since Travis had last seen her. He wondered if she was sick. She had the room to herself, but kept peeking toward the curtain. Every so often, she shook her head like she was trying to keep a thought from gaining purchase in her mind. He hoped no other customers showed. He considered flipping the closed sign in the window, but couldn’t risk an impromptu visit from the owner.

When Miss McElroy found a magazine she wanted, she trapped it with her elbow against her body. It was easy to imagine her holding record albums that way as a teenager, before she had Holt. The last Travis had heard of him was that he’d returned from Afghanistan after a third tour of duty. Holt had gotten his GED, joined the marines. His homecoming had made the paper, and it had tinged Travis with relief and jealousy, both unexpected.

Miss McElroy checked her...