Apollo Kagwa and Patrice Green’s friendship and business partnership

Apollo Kagwa and Patrice Green’s friendship and business partnership take shape in the overlapping spaces of rare-book dealing, new parenthood, and unspoken personal history. Both are Black booksellers who often find themselves alone among their peers at estate sales; their work gives them a shared livelihood, while their banter and practical support make the relationship more than a professional alliance. Their closeness appears most clearly in small acts: an invitation to an estate sale when Apollo has mouths to feed, a basement left for him to explore, and jokes that make room for the awkwardness of friendship changing as a baby enters it.

A Friendship Among Booksellers

Patrice is an army veteran who entered the rare- and used-book trade after returning to the United States. Apollo thinks of their professional resemblance as almost improbable: at local estate sales, they are usually the only two Black book men, like “two unicorns that happened into the same field.” That shared experience helps explain why the men have become close, though the novel presents their friendship as a source of gratitude rather than merely a response to isolation. At dinner with Emma Valentine and Nichelle Murray, Apollo reflects on the two pairs of friends—Nichelle and Emma, himself and Patrice—and orders bourbon before he can talk himself out of the gesture. The moment places his friendship with Patrice within a broader picture of chosen closeness.

Patrice’s path to bookselling has included several distinct turns. He served in the army from 2003 to 2004 during Operation Iraqi Freedom, with the 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment. Much of his work involved counter-IED operations along a supply route in Iskandariyah, Iraq, south of Baghdad and near the Euphrates River. Back in the United States, he managed an AMC movie theater on 34th Street and spent five months as a graduate student in library studies at Queens College before becoming a bookseller. These details establish the range of experience behind the friend Apollo knows through estate sales, without suggesting that military service is the only thing that defines Patrice.

Work as Mutual Aid

When Apollo is adjusting to life with his infant son, Patrice sends him a direct invitation: “Estate Sale Today. Come with me. You got mouths to feed!” Apollo replies that it is too soon, but Patrice presses the point by reminding him that his family cannot live with them if he is evicted. The joke carries a practical offer: work can help Apollo meet the costs of supporting his family. Their friendship does not remove the financial strain, but it gives Apollo access to a fellow dealer who recognizes it and calls him back into the trade.

At the sale, Patrice has already filled the garage behind the house with fifty open boxes of books. The collection belonged to a woman whose family had boxed it after her death; the seller’s son-in-law let Patrice into the garage and otherwise stayed out of his way. When Patrice points out a partly open basement door, Apollo realizes his friend has not gone down to investigate. Patrice admits that he has left something for Apollo. Their division of labor is explicit: they will split what Apollo finds, with Patrice proposing a sixty-forty deal. The arrangement is both commercial and considerate, giving Apollo a role in the search while accommodating a limit Patrice has not explained aloud.

Silence, Attention, and Banter

Patrice’s reluctance is not confined to this house. Though he returned from Iskandariyah physically uninjured, the narrator says he was not unharmed; he has never explained his fear of basements. Apollo intuits the connection and, importantly, does not ask him directly about it. Basements are a recurring feature of New York estate sales, yet Patrice never enters them. Apollo’s restraint lets the partnership work around this boundary without turning an unspoken injury into a demand for disclosure.

The same estate-sale scene reveals a different sensitivity. Patrice has not commented on the baby Apollo carries in a BabyBjörn, and Apollo is surprised by how much the silence bothers him: this is the first time his best friend has met his child. Apollo tries to make the introduction playful, asking Patrice to look into the baby’s eyes and speak to him. In a child’s register, he prompts Patrice to tell the baby what happened in Iskandariyah. Patrice leans close and tells him to tell his father, “Fuck you.” The rough joke does not resolve Apollo’s disappointment, but it turns the strain into a form of contact the two men can share. Apollo answers that he has not mastered language yet, keeping the exchange affectionate without pretending it is solemn.

Friendship in a New Routine

The relationship continues through ordinary work. On a later morning, Apollo and his son meet Patrice downtown on Avenue B, where Patrice is waiting outside a small computer shop. He tells Apollo, “I’M GLAD YOU brought the kid,” then shows him a phone image of a desktop setup with two monitors and four speakers, explaining that he plans to build an even better one. The baby is not treated as a barrier to their meeting; Patrice explicitly welcomes him, and the two men return to the practical subjects of their shared day.

Walking together, Apollo suggests that Patrice and Dana should consider having a child, then immediately recognizes the unsolicited advice as unfair: Apollo resents strangers offering opinions about how he should care for his own son. Patrice accepts the remark without turning it into a serious dispute, answering that without children he would never know the joy of carrying a handful of shit. The exchange shows the friendship accommodating Apollo’s new preoccupations through teasing, even as Apollo becomes aware that parenthood can make him repeat the intrusions he dislikes.

Their book-trade routine persists as well. At the Strand, they paw through the wheeled carrels of worn paperbacks, textbooks, and cookbooks, not because they expect to find anything valuable but because the browsing has become ritual. Patrice then notes that he had to leave before Apollo came out of the basement in Riverdale. Apollo teases him that he should have come down to say goodbye; Patrice clears his throat and redirects the conversation to whether Apollo has found anything good. The basement remains a boundary, but it does not end their companionship. Their partnership holds together through work, repeated habits, practical help, and jokes that acknowledge what neither friend chooses to say outright.