God Coffee, I Should Finish You
I thought I knew what I was picking up.
But, a while later, I could make out that the sun had started swimming out... setting, it had started setting outside, turning the sky and parking lot a wavering, burnt orange. I had a minor crick in my neck, which I tried to work out, but only managed to make worse, by rotating my neck and shrugging my shoulders, sometimes satisfied with little responding clicks and crackles, more often than not just more pain. I stopped when the rotating looked like it was heading down a debilitating route which might end me up in the hospital. At least I'd have plenty to read.
I went in, for all intents and purposes, looking for a book or two on managing your finances. She had asked me how my efforts were going at keeping the finances up, when she saw the little dollar sign, kick-in-the-pants icon of Quicken sitting on the desktop. And so here I was, down at the bookshop, MegaBookShop(tm), looking for a book on how to use Quicken, because the damn thing just didn't seem to manage all my finances automatically, and a book on how to invest money wisely (I avoided any book with any mention of the stock market, on her recommendation).
But, as so often happens, and I've seen it happen in our own bookshop, I grabbed a nice shiny copy of a book ostensibly about Quicken, and then another one (possibly the one time I've considered buying a copy of a For Complete and Utter Idiots... style book, taking into account how woeful my grasp of my financial situation was) about managing your finances and investing for the future. Well, the mention of the future got me thinking about Science Fiction, so I went over and looked to see if there were any Iain M Banks titles I hadn't bought. And then, because Banks reminded me phonetically of Rankin, I looked further down in the Science Fiction section for Robert Rankin. Not finding him there, I looked in the Fantasy, as much as I hate heading down there. I get a feeling like I'm walking behind the grimy curtain at some hole-in-the-wall video store, only the aisles are shiny and glistening with dragons and big bosomed chicks in armor. I don't know why I get that feeling, but it creeps me out. I also have the tiniest inkling in the back of my head that the vice squad is going to leap out from behind Romance, just one more aisle down, wrestling me to the ground and putting the cuffs on me for... I don't know, loitering creepily in the Fantasy section. It must be some primal, built-in thing, because I always get that feeling, and I can't shake it. I'm sure me eyeing everyone walking up and down or just standing in the Fantasy aisles doesn't help make me look any more innocent and normal, either. This is why I just can't stock a Fantasy section in the shop. I tell her it's because I don't want to attract the wrong crowd, and hope to play the subject off with a laugh, but I'm honestly frightened to death of what might happen, should we ever even accidentally grow a Fantasy section in our own store.
I wound up not finding Rankin, in part because I was walking far too fast down the aisle, and then I was out, over to the World History section, to check out any interesting historical periods or movements that might inspire me, and to catch my breath. I don't know why, but a Missing Civilizations (Mayans, Vikings, whom I didn't realize went missing, when it was all said and done, and the Atlanteans were all covered, claimed the jacket) book found its way into my hands. As did A Bridge to Terabithia, which was on an end of aisle display that looked like it was misplaced in the history section when it should have been in the Teen/Young Adult section. I loved the book when I was a kid, and figured I could give it to her this evening for a quick little trip down nostalgia lane.
As I was making the transition across the store to the registers, figuring I should get out while the getting was good, I hit the Cooking section, and I came away with a brightly colored Jamaican recipes book. I don't even know why. I has a picture of a bright blue bowl, some kind of brownish-orange spices to the side, and what looks like a dirty-ish gray mop to the side of the bowl, and I bought it. I don't even know what spices are involved in Jamaican cooking, but I suppose I'll learn, after I get the thing home and crack it open. I vaguely remember reading or seeing somewhere that Jamaican cooking involves lots of chickens, so that's all that's needed to justify buying a book. Plus it has a 30% sticker on it. Sold. Double sold. Plus it's wide enough that I can rest all the other books I've bought thus far on them, and now suddenly I've not got my hands free (and hadn't before I acquired the book, it was just that they were more awkward to hold), but I've got a lot of room between the top of the topmost book and my chin, which, as I've learned, is the practical limit to the number of books I can carry at any given time.
Like a fighter coming out of the corner, I straightened my back, blinked my eyes hard a couple of times, and headed across the main thoroughfare in the store to the registers, past the Bargain Tables and the New Arrivals.
"Tough year last year, wasn't it?"
"What?" I asked, dazed. The clerk was looking at me expectantly. I don't know how I got to the register.
"They had a tough year. Rough way to end it, wasn't it?" The clerk, either accustomed to dealing with dazed customers or sensing he was talking to someone with a spectacularly low IQ, gave a little double take nod at the baseball cap on my head. I don't know if it is the daze most people get into in these stores or what, but if a customer of my shop ever gave me the look I probably gave this guy I think I'd beat him to death with the handiest, and preferably heftiest, hardcover. I think it must be a thing in these big department store-like bookstores... you just get bludgeoned by the sheer amount of stuff to read, lost in thought, and with all these green-apronned robots running around I guess you forget they're people, too. Or something like that.
All I could do was stare at the pile of books in front of me. I was probably going to get killed when I got home, was all I could think to say, and thankfully didn't.
Summary
disclaimer:
This has been yet another thing from God Coffee, I Miss You, a perpetually forthcoming new novel from the author of Time, a novel.
It may not be reproduced without permission of the author, nor can it be downloaded from any of the major P2P networks. Remember, kids, piracy is evil, and probably puts an actor or two a day out of business! And you don't want that! Of course, we don't use actors for our snippets of an as yet unpublished novel, but if we did can you imagine what it might do to their families? By families, of course, we mean the family that still speak to the actors, probably behind their parents' backs, because they were supposed to pretend that member of the family suffered some unappetizing fate.
So don't pirate stuff, kids.
If you had feelings about this week's issue, be sure to let us know how you felt. If your feeling isn't covered here... well, I guess you're stuck, then, aren't you?
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