The Path of the Bookseller

As closing time approached, I went around the music floor to make sure all of the customers had left. One that I had seen earlier didn’t seem to be around, though I hadn’t seen him leave. “Is Tracksuit Man still here?” I asked another worker.

A voice came from the far side of a bookshelf. “Yes, I am.”

Oops.

We haven’t learned the names of a lot of the regular customers and denizens at the store.Some have acquired names as we talk about them, though few of them know what they’re called. (I make an effort to learn those of some of them, but not all are that approachable.)

Tracksuit Man comes in almost every night in the last half hour that we’re open, always dressed in a sharp-looking blue tracksuit and carrying a satchel about the size of a rolled up yoga mat. He quickly and silently strides to the back of the floor, where he sits in one of our comfortable black chairs with an art book. A few minutes before we close, he gets up, reshelves the book where he got it, and strides out as he came in. His eyes always seem fixed on a specific item (though not quite staring), either down at his book or straight ahead, with a stern impassiveness.

There was a lot of chatter over the headsets today about people in the store. One regular, who has been dubbed Rico Suavé, tends to hang out in the café and try to pick up women. He arrived with a woman today, and left without her, though the talk was that he had tried to pick up someone else while she was there, which displeased her.

Other people were reported sleeping in the store, making major messes in the café and elsewhere, and being particularly tenacious in buttonholing several workers in a row with desperate quests for nonexistent items. In the latter cases, the headsets came in quite handy, as workers were able to warn the customer’s next target to disengage quickly or to duck before he saw them.

Of the characters who frequent the store, I deal with Thumper (who listens to the same 30-second excerpts from the same soundtrack CDs every night, often stamping his foot in rhythm), Greatest Song Ever Guy (who will regale everyone with declarations that Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” is the greatest song ever written, and who dances unabashedly around the floor whenever we play Arabic music overhead), Chess Guy (who used to come in with a large chess board, set it up on a table, then lounge in a comfortable chair quite far away, though he would pounce upon and harass anyone else who tried to sit near his chess board), and Miss Giggles (who comes in and talks and laughs to herself, often leaving a trail of Bibles where she’s been) quite frequently. I hear talk on the headsets about The Senator, Moto, The Captain and Tennille, and others, but I often haven’t seen them, since they haven’t discovered the way up to the music floor.

I often realize, after a while, that a former denizen has gone away, and I find myself wondering what became of him. One man, who seemed intellectually challenged, and would build and carry around plaster models of mythical monsters and creatures from old movies.

Another man would come in looking for some music with which he connect with his son, who was living on the streets and was a fan of the band Fenix TX. The man seemed determined to do whatever he could for his son–but I’ve recently seen them both, after a long time out of sight, at the all-night Jack In The Box a few blocks from work, neither looking as if he had slept or bathed in days.

Yet another (one of two people who were dubbed Guitar Guy, which got confusing) would come in with an acoustic guitar without a case and write down bits of music from our score books, longhand on manuscript paper. He had been seen on the streets playing his guitar while asking for change, though he hadn’t quite gotten to some of the fine point of playing the guitar, such as tuning it. (Come to think of it, the other Guitar Guy might have been the same as Chess Guy, but I’ve lost track.)

We seemed to have far fewer of these people around during the Christmas craziness, though their presence may just have been drowned out by the crowds. But with the mobs having abated, they are slowly making their way back in.

Tracksuit Man did seem amused, in a sort of deadpan way, that he had been noticed and named. When I said “Good night” to him as he left tonight, he nodded slightly toward me. I think he almost smiled.