The Path of the Bookseller

The music that blasts from the children’s shop next door to and below ours often gets stuck in my head, bursting back into my consciousness when least welcome. Today, it was playing the original “Someday My Prince Will Come,” Adriana Caselotti’s implausible vibrato slicing through the grinding groan of frustrated traffic and the half-conversations of crowded, isolated people, only some of whom had telephones. On Saturday, it was the impossibly cheerful music of an imagined old world, a sort of Chipmunk Klezmer of the Damned.

I got to the store a little earlier than needed today, the BART gods having been unusually merciful in their timing for a Sunday. I had time to hunt down my coffee cup and stop through the café on the second floor on my way up to my post.

As often happens, the line at the café had forked, with some people queued up toward the business books and more standing alongside the pastry case. The lines merged pretty amicably, with a rough alternation of people taking their places. The person in the spot corresponding to mine in the other fork, however, continually made it clear that he was to be handled before me, stamping his feet and stretching out his arms, pretending that he didn’t see me. I think I annoyed him somewhat by not challenging his position, making his gestures seem even more pointless and lame.

When I finally got to the front of the line, I handed my coffee cup to the worker there. “Just coffee, Joe?”

“Yup,” I said. “Nectar of the geeks.”

“No, that’s Mountain Dew. We’re out of that. So, coffee. Do you want Seattle’s Best blend or the Saturday’s blend?”

“Saturday’s blend? On a Sunday?”

The worker shrugged. “It’s about as much sense as drinking Seattle’s Best in San Francisco.”

“I like the logic. I’ll go for the Saturday’s blend.”

The worker poured a cup, the last bit of it dripping reluctantly from the spout. “Looks like that’s the last of it. Maybe it was from yesterday.”

“Should be good and strong, then. I like coffee I can chew.”

The fourth floor was relatively quiet when I got up there. A few customers milled around, trying to decide on purchases or just enjoying their shopping meditations. With the “Buy 3, get a 4th free” sale on DVDs ending today, several were wandering with three that that really wanted, daunted by the prospect of finding a fourth.

One looked relieved when I asked if I could help her. “I hear that Bambi and Lady and the Tramp I & II are going to be disappearing soon. Where are they?”

I guided her to the Disney shelves. “Disney’s like that. They release DVDs for a few months, then pull them off the shelves for several years.” I spotted the three discs, pulled them, and handed them to her.

“But what do I get for a fourth disc?” she asked.

“Bambi’s Revenge?” I suggested.

“Bambi’s back!” she said in a mock-announcer’s voice. “And he’s got his therapist with him!”

(There actually was a Bambi II, but I understand that it wasn’t particularly traumatic. And then there was Bambi Meets Godzilla… which apparently was made at a studio owned by Adriana Casselotti… which shows that almost any random chain of references might converge somewhere…)

We had the usual array of Manga teens lounging about, leaving their trails of read magazines and graphic novels lying on the floor and on windowsills. Other teenagers sat on the floor in various aisles, acting as if they had marked off their own personal phone booths, and looking annoyed when people came near them or stepped over them, interrupting their conversations. Grownups with cell phones prowled the rest of the floor, darting away as others approached, looking as if rude people had barged into their offices.

One tiny girl, maybe two years old, with long brown hair and high boots more stylish that one might expect to see on someone so small, ran laps around the entire floor. She didn’t seem to be related to any grownups that I could see, and repeatedly barely missed crashing into people and other objects.

Most of the times that she ran past, I was engaged with other customers, so I couldn’t intervene. After several circuits, though, I was able to step out from behind the register and get in her way. I dropped into a crouch and held my palm out like a crossing guard. She stopped directly in front of me. “Miss,” I said, “please don’t run here. You could get hurt.” She nodded sagely and walked slowly away. But once she thought that she was out of my sight, she once again took off running.

Customers engaged me again, and I wasn’t able to confront her as she came around on her next lap. But when she appeared yet again, I once again stepped into her path. This time, she ducked around me and out of my view behind a tall display. I stepped around it. When she saw that I saw her, she darted off to behind another display and again stopped. After several iterations of this, I realized that she thought that we were playing Hide and Seek.

I dropped again to a crouch, stepping around and putting my arms out so that she was boxed in. “You can’t run here. This isn’t a playground.” She nodded again, and I stood up.

“Elena!” I heard two voices call in unison, coming toward us. The girl turned and ran to the couple approaching us. The woman scooped the girl up and scolded her (I think) in a language that I couldn’t identify. The man nodded toward me. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you we sorry thank you bye.” They headed down the escalator to the lower floors.

I was able to get some good work done in my section today, sorting the discs from Copland through Dvorak. The more I work on organizing the CDs, the easier it gets (except for the problems caused by the shelving that was installed a couple of years ago and which makes it much harder for customers and workers to locate, handle, and file discs). Organizing the Bach CDs, for example, occupied much of the first six weeks or so that I worked in the store. Last week, it took me about two hours. I spent too much time talking to a couple of tenacious and loquacious customers, but still had things pretty much under control.

By late evening, most of the customers had gone — which meant that the store seemed mostly to be occupied by the denizens of the area who use it as some sort of refuge. Tracksuit Man showed up, as usual, about twenty minutes before we closed and left with about three minutes to spare.

Crutch Lady was, as usual, the last one to leave the café. Also, as usual, she headed up to the restrooms, which she knew had closed. She appeared to have given up about arguing her way in, since she saw that the entrance was guarded by the indomitable Miss Broadway. So she headed on out, remembering, this time, to take with her the crutches that she appears not to really need. (We wonder if she’s connected somehow to the guy who wandered off without his wheelchair before Christmas. Does our coffee have miraculous healing powers?)

Another woman spent well over an hour in the restroom. (I almost said “ladies’ room,” but I know how that word annoys msmas.) When she emerged, she immediately asked Miss Broadway if there were any public restrooms around and tried to engage her and, later, DJ LP, in a monologue about blood and hygiene products that neither was in a mood to hear.

Mr. Duffle was also on the fourth floor. He didn’t fall asleep this time, but spent a couple of hours among the movie books in an energetic monologue. He has a beautiful speaking voice, and could easily get a spot on talk radio if he were a little less coherent. When he launched into an apparent demonstration, with descriptions, of what looked like a litany of movements from the martial arts, I let people know over the headset intercom. DJ LP said that that was probably OK, as long as he didn’t hit anyone or knock anything over, and didn’t head into the kids section.

Fortunately, he left on time. I had had trouble with him on Thursday. Each time that I let him know that we were about to close, he nodded and kept on reading. When the closing announcement came, he gradually closed his book and put it on the table… then carefully rolled up his bag of Cheetos… then opened his Walgreens bag and put the Cheetos in it… then put down the bag, stood up slowly, and picked it up again… then picked up his duffle bag… then walked a few yards over to another table… then put the Walgreens bag on the table… then put the duffle bag on the table… then picked up the Walgreens bag… then took out the Cheetos bag… then put down the Cheetos bag…then put down the Walgreens bag… then zipped open the duffle bag… then picked up the Cheetos bag… then rolled it tightly and tried to stuff it in the duffle bag… then put the Cheetos bag down… then took a sweater out of the duffle bag… then picked up the Cheetos bag, unrolled it, and laid it flat inside the duffle bag… then put the sweater in the duffle bag… then zipped up the duffle bag… then picked up the Walgreens bag… then put down the Walgreens bag… then unzipped the duffle bag… then pulled another small bag out of the Walgreens bag…

…and so on. If I hadn’t been so tired, it would have seemed like some fascinating piece of minimalist theatre, needing only a score by Philip Glass.

But today, he left on time, as did all the others. Many of those who shuffled out at the end of the night will be back tomorrow. And I’ll be there, too, out of the breakroom, endlessly shelving. There’s always more shelving to be done.