Ch. 2

Chapter 2.

            Books spill out from the trunk of my car onto the pavement as if jumping to their deaths after the torment of being locked up in ninety degree weather. Covers flipped open, pages press into the depressions of dried up mud puddles, failing to find a drop of cool respite in the heat wave. I groan and stoop over the curb to pack them back into crumbling cardboard boxes.
Louann comes jogging out of the dusty, vintage general store we had invested in mere months ago, “Jesus christ, Lea, no one is going to want to purchase books in this condition.”

I examine a dog eared calculus textbook, glance at her, and throw it haphazardly into the pile. “No one was about to purchase underlined, creased college texts anyway. Used bookstore or no, we’ll need a lot more variety than this before we’re even able to draw in a single customer.”

Louann’s face was creased with years of judgment. At thirty years of age, no woman should look as worry worn as she did. It’s true that joy crimped her face with lines in all the areas unmarred by anxiety, but the wrinkles revealed the vast contrast in her day to day emotions, an observation that always affected me. Was it more of a hindrance or an advantage to experience such a wide range of intense emotions?

She grabs the half filled box from the curb and turns on her heel without another comment. I sit back on my haunches and roll my eyes, then smile with a shake of my head. How could we still act like such children? I lean back on my palms, eyes closed, face soaking up the sun. “I am the younger of the two of us,” I say aloud, as if to provoke Lou into an argument. But she is already deep inside the dark, musty store, groans of disappointment and strain wheezing out the screen door every few minutes. Perhaps I’m too young, I thought, too young to be opening a business in a tired, old town in tired, old New England. At twenty-five I was truthfully beginning to feel my life needed an anchor, a concept that made age and infirmity seep into my bones, seeking refuge in a youthful body. I came here thinking that starting a business was good balance of future plans and present fulfillment, yet already I was restless. It is a beautiful town and I am intensely fond of books and coffee, but is that any cause to tie oneself down to a dirty shack on a virtually abandoned main street?

I squat up on my feet again, palms dark with mud moistened from my perspiration. I turn my head to examine the sweaty imprint left in the road from my hands and bottom. Sighing dramatically, I call out, “Are you sure you want the rest of this shit? I’m not carting in a bunch of books just to have you discard them.”

“Just bring them in,” her voice hollers back from the dark depths, “I’ll sell them for pennies if I have to, I promise. I won’t make you touch these books ever again.”

I wrinkle my nose and look down the dingy, quiet street that cut through this New England ghost town. Eyes squinted against the blazing sun, I stack what was left of the fallen books and tote the pile into the shop. 

Upon entering, I close my eyes to adjust to the gloom, heavily contrasted against the late summer sun. When I open my eyes I see exactly what I had expected: piles of unsorted, torn books and bare shelves reaching from floor to ceiling. Lou is behind the counter where prematurely purchased office supplies frame a broken cash register. In her shadow I can make out the funnel of an espresso grinder, beanless, and the corresponding maker-machine, thick with dust. She lassos my wandering eye like a shy calf and I grin sheepishly, embarrassed at this being my first visit to the business I co-owned.

I swallow the lump in my throat with some difficulty and chirp up, “Well, it’s nice.” As if to call me out on my misplaced flattery, some plaster crumbles from the ceiling, falling in rubble atop the sea of books. Now prepared for the worst, I wait for the paint on the walls to begin audibly peeling back from the paneling. Lou rolls her head on her neck, surveying the newly exposed rafters above, “It’s almost as hopeless as the rest of this decrepit town. But with lots of elbow grease,” she accentuates, giving me a look, “we’ll work it into shape.” I tighten my lips into a line and nod casually but still she glares, “Which means you can’t keep avoiding the café like it’s a disease.”

“Don’t insult me,” I say, sounding hurt but fooling neither of us. I tie my hair higher up on my head, “I just want to enjoy the summer while it lasts. You know, before we’re holed up in here as our only source of winter socialization.” I pick up the carton of books I had carried in, eager to show my enthusiasm for the project at hand, “So where should I put these?”

“Textbooks, right? Right there, beneath the back window,” Lou points to a boarded up rectangle on the far wall, “And you can go ahead and take those boards down, it’d be nice to get some light in here.”
I nod sharply and weave around the organized chaos of the shop to the back wall. A tool kit conveniently awaits me, having been previously used to screw the bookshelves together. I replace the battery in the power drill and go at the concealed window with a vengeance. The particle board reaches high, too high to unscrew on my own. I take out all the screws on the bottom half, peeling back the wood as far as I can to get a look at the outside world. From what I can see, a brown, murky haze seemed to veil the land beyond the glass. I itch to get the flimsy barrier down. “Hey Lou, where do we have a ladder in this outfit?”

She is taking the cash register apart piece by piece and simply hitches a thumb over her shoulder briefly toward a closet. I jump over my obstacles this time and jiggle the knob on the door. As I predicted, it's stuck. “How do you usually jimmy this shit open?”

Lou grumbles, “Bookstores are supposed to be quiet spaces.”

“And café’s are social hotspots.” I retort.

She turns to look at me, half smiling, “And this is why we combined the two; to create something that highlighted both our strengths. Okay, you’re going to have to do it yourself, but just push the door inward first, then away from the strikeplates while turning the knob. It’ll come right out.”

I give the door a one-over and murmur, “Right… the strikeplates…” before continuing to pull outwardly at the knob like the neanderthal I most certainly am at heart. (A memory stirs... "Leandrathal Leandrathal you need brute strength? Give her a call!") . Lou joins me immediately, exasperated, “The strikeplates are these metal plates in the jamb that lock the door’s knob in place,” she explains, pointing. With a practiced maneuver, she has the door open and the ladder out in seconds. She pushes it at me and kicks the door closed.

I grip the splintered wood in my hands, thinking of the swampy shroud I saw through the window, “Hey, so, what does the window look out on anyway?”

Lou is already picking up her tools again, “I don’t know. Since there are just more buildings around the back I’m going to hazard a guess that we’ll just be looking at more brick.”

Sensing she felt I had wasted too much of her time already, I timidly drag my ladder to the back of the room, glancing back at the closet with thoughts of returning a seasoned veteran, prepared to conquer the door at last. I smile at my dramatics and prop the old fashioned ladder against the wall, mounting it with my drill in hand. The last six or seven screws come out easily, seeming to have been put in with the same kind of shaky eagerness I feel in removing them. I let the boards fall haphazardly away, watching expectantly over my shoulder for a rash rebuttal from my friend. She does not look up. I notice that very little light seeps in to brighten the gloomy cast on her face and turn to inspect the damage, whether from time or the collapsing of the boards.

What I do not see is more brick, as Lou had predicted. I do not see clear through our neighbor’s window into their personal spaces, though I can plainly see that we have many neighbors with many windows. What I had thought was a haze hanging over the land is in fact merely years of sludge-like grime coating the window, casting a brown light on all it overlooked. As it turns out, our shop is not on ground level but street level, and the earth sinks in another two stories centered upon an unkempt, perfectly square courtyard. The apartments on level with the courtyard appear to be abandoned; the patios boarded over with particle board in the same rushed manner as our window had been. Despite the apparent lack of access to the yard, there is little overgrowth. But it's not as if someone cares for the life that grows there; it is as if few plants deem the spot worthy of population and have moved out with the human inhabitants. Ugly, grey hued stragglers remain, choosing to take root in corners and against the four brick walls rather than sprout in the open. The only other trait worth mentioning is a meandering pathway of flat stones, almost in mimicry of a labyrinth that touches the four patios and spirals toward the middle to meet one large stone, lumpy and tall as the others were flat and thin. It's a perfectly sad sight. I cannot imagine leaving this view open for our customers.

 In the mean time, I decide the best I can do is clean the glass and remove the sorry glaze that dulled our meager sunlight. I return silently to Lou’s side and find paper towels and bleach spray among the office supplies. One can always count on Lou to prepare for every eventuality.

A cloud passes over the sun, darkening the back corner of the shop considerably, and I reach to turn the switch on a wall mounted lamp, casting a dim, yellow light on my grimy window. As I tear off a wad of paper towel from the roll, I catch movement in my periphery and my head shoots up. I lean on the sill of the window to peer into the courtyard below. Nothing has changed… but there's a shadow along the eastern side of the centered rock. I gloss over the yard again and credit the overcast sky for the ominous silhouette I believe I've seen. No, not a silhouette… it's just a shadow. I give the bottle of bleach a lusty squeeze, drenching the thick film on the glass, and dig in.


I step out into the dark, moist air. Although diminished, the heat of the day lingers thanks to heavy cloud cover, insulating the town like a baked potato. I hear Lou curse as the heavy door swings shut against her retreating back. I turn to see her fitting a key into one of three locks installed on the door frame. "Seems a little excessive, doesn't it?"
"Yes. But if we're lucky, we'll have something worth protecting in due time." I could have speculated on what precious things she was planning on stashing in a dingy store in a dingier town, but I let the thought recede into the equally dark and cloudy corners of my mind.
"I'm leaving. Copy me a set of keys, hey?" She looks up at me as if I had requested a pink elephant for my birthday. "Lee, I live right the fuck above the store. You already have keys to my flat, just come up if you need to get in downstairs." Again, I don't pursue the thought in mind or conversation, I just wave a careless hand goodnight and climb into my junker of a car. It heaves toward the drivers side as I fall into the seat, as always making me feel like something of an elephant myself. The engine starts with a mechanical shiver and I'm down main street two blocks before I remember to click on my headlights.
I turn the car onto the unpaved road off of which my quaint cottage lay and rattle slowly over the dust and potholes for a half mile or so until I see my yellowing porch light come into view. A few feet further down, I see lights are on in the neighboring house. I gingerly attempt to pull the car into my driveway so as not to draw attention to myself, but already I can see a form rising from a chair on the front deck next door. I let an antisocial aura envelop my entire being, a feat that reminds me of my early years of wiccan study, in hopes of warding off lasting encounters. As I step out of my car, I hear the woman's voice across her yard and through the thin hedge dividing our worlds. "Hello, yes," I wearily call back, walking around the vegetation to politely allow her a better look at me. I briefly wonder at her being awake so late, given her age. I flip open my tracfone to confirm the time: 11:16. A quarter after eleven and a woman like her is still rocking away on her deck and hailing passersby? My desire to be alone in bed overcomes my interest in her sleeping patterns. I keep my thoughts to myself for the third time that evening.
"Miss Grangely if I'm not mistaken!" she hollers from the bottom step of her deck.
"Yes, ma'am. Leandra if you'd prefer." I call back from the safety of my hedge.
"Leandra! Yes! Come here, child, come! Come and see my evening star!"
My head hangs. Of course she wouldn't read auras, she's beyond caring about the personal space of others. She probably has none of her own anymore. I walk closer and observe her at arms length for the second time since our acquaintance. She couldn't have been younger than seventy, and I would have believed her if she insisted she had reached her one hundredth birthday this past year. The only thing that held her together was some unconquerable source of vitality. She was positively indefatigable. I looked to the sky, "Ma'am," this is what I call her, not out of respect, but because I can not unearth her name from my mental files, and I am not interested in the conversation that would likely ensue if I ask, "It's far too late to be evening, and far too cloudy for stars."
The old woman shakes her head slowly, a saggy smile hanging from her cheeks, "No, dear. Not that kind of star." She waltzes back to her porch with a grace only seen in women from her generation, a time of balls and skirts, and returns smoothly with a flower pot in hand. It had obviously only been planted this last spring, but already a bud had burst into a lovely, yellow bloom.
"It looks as if the suns rays dripped down to earth," I murmur, unaware my thoughts had inadvertently found their way to my tongue. In the pause that ensues, I realize my error, and perceive the old woman's saggy smile broaden to a denture-toothed grin in my periphery. I cover up my slip with exaggerated yawns and stretches, unmistakable signs to anyone in the known human world that I must now retire. Alone. To sleep. But of course my silent, symbolic pleas fall upon blind eyes.