The door to Porter’s Bookstore thumped shut behind Angela, the jingle bells hanging from the top of the doorframe tinkling softly. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the smell of paper, ink, and glue. The store was quiet like usual, the gentle beeps and chirps of the register tallying up purchases, the cashier sending the customer out the door with a warm good-bye the only extraneous noises. She took another breath. She loved the place, with its the twelve foot high, floor to ceiling, dark-stained, wooden bookcases and wrought iron spiral staircase that stood like a single helix of literary DNA, winding upward to the second floor. She glanced at the clock behind the counter. Forty five minutes to find something to take home and bury herself in while the rest of the city plodded around in the cold.
She headed for the Autobiographical section and walked the length of the aisle with her head tilted reading the title and author on the spine of each book, dragging her fingertips along the shelves, leaving soft anti-dust trails behind. She caressed the bindings of books that interested her, drew each one carefully from its place to peer at the cover, eased open the first few crisp pages to scan the table of contents or read the introductory paragraphs at the beginning of Chapter One. If it failed to grab her she would replace it and continue on, repeating the process, waiting with barely controlled tension for the book to catch her eye and demanded she read it from cover to cover.
Her search took her around the corner and down the next aisle, through Biographies. She shivered as the cold December wind blew in through the door as another customer entered and disappeared into the back of the store. The bells above the door continued to tinkle, jostled gently by the wind whistling through a crack along the top edge of the doorframe.
Angela dragged her fingers along the shelves and jumped when a large electrostatic spark bit her fingers. Instinctively she snatched her hand from the shelf and shook it, the sting of the shock still tingling on her skin. She looked at the spine of the book from which the spark had originated. Hitler: God or Demon? the title read and she snorted. She leaned against the bookcase behind her and heard the crackling of static electricity on the wool of her peacoat. The bookstore is too dry, she thought to herself.
A sales associate wandered up the aisle towards her, pushing his strange little corner shaped cart filled with new book. She reached out and touched him lightly on his shoulder. A spark bit her fingers.
“You need to turn up the humidity,” she said quietly and rubbed her hand, “or the books...”
The man smiled at her. “Yeah, I know. Several people’ve mentioned it. I told Jack. He’s going to see if he can do something about it.”
Angela frowned at him. “Who’s Jack?”
“The new assistant manager. Porter hired him a week ago. He’s pretty good, but he’s been having trouble getting the humidifier to work right.”
“Is Mr. Porter all right?” Angela asked, her forehead still knotted together with irritation.
“Yeah, just took a couple weeks off. I guess his doctor said he needed to take a break or he would whither away into nothing from working so hard.” The associate placed his hand on a nearby shelf and quickly yanked it back following the loud snap of a spark. “Jeez! I better go remind Jack,” he muttered and trundled his corner cart away, shacking his fingers. Angela watched him turn out of sight at the end of the bookcase and found herself alone, once again, with the biographies. Book after book, shelf after shelf filled with the lives of other people, living in other places, doing other things. She sighed and continued her search.
From Biographies to Women’s Studies to Art and Photography and on into Fiction and Literature she searched. Aisle after aisle she wandered, breathing the paper and ink smell, running her hands over the bindings and jumping at the shocks and snaps that nipped her fingers. None of these stacks held the book that she felt driven to take home with her. Finally she entered the Science Fiction and Fantasy section and stood, transfixed in front of a newly released hardcover, a picture of a dragon in flight carrying a rider holding a massive rifle in his arms. Flight of Fire the title proclaimed, by J.P. MacDowel. She reached for it, hesitating a moment, stealing herself for the crack of a spark. None came and she pulled the book from the shelf and listened for the familiar creak of new glue snapping along the spine. Slowly, carefully, she read the inside flap of the dust jacket, imagining herself into the storyline.
"Flying had been Justyn’s dream from boyhood, but when the destiny of Blazenden teeters on the edge of disaster, flying becomes a dream he will have to wait to see realized. Joining his cousin in the ranks of the Army of One, following the lead of the Crystal King himself, Justyn finds more than adventure among the warrior soldiers he comes to call his brothers. In a battle in which everything seems lost he will find his true calling as a flyer, lose his greatest ally, gain the love of a she-devil, and find the key to saving his beloved Blazenden."
Angela took a breath and closed the cover, staring at the dragon and its rider. She could almost make out the face of the rider as he raised the rifle to his eye to sight and fire on an enemy soldier. He pulled at her. The dragon called. She could feel her place in the story and tucked the book into the crook of her arm.
Normally she would have left the shop, having found her book for the night, and return only when she needed another fix. But this evening something else seemed to be calling and she continued through the stacks searching for the source of her tension. Again she stroked the shelves and spines, snaps and bright sparks leaping in her wake.
She walked the Mysteries section without success, through the Poetry section where she received the largest of the shocks so far that evening, and then on to the end of the Music Appreciation section where she found herself facing the black, wrought iron steps of the spiral staircase. It had been ages since she had needed to climb them to find the necessary book to satisfy her need. She peered up through the intricate weave of iron to the second floor. The book was up there, somewhere. She could feel it, could almost hear it calling in her head. With a tentative hand she reached for the twisted, curving railing, sure of a shock that never came. Fourteen steps later she reached the second floor and the high freestanding cases there, sisters to the ones on street level.
It was quiet. Off in the depths of the stacks Angela could hear the few other customers sliding books off and on shelves as they fulfilled their own quests. She resettled the hardcover in her embrace and began to walk the cases starting in the History section. The crackling of static electricity was greater along these shelves, popping and flashing as she passed over the spines with her index finger, the sparks large enough to leave a subtle after burn.
She drew her brows together in a resurgence of irritation. That Jack had better fix the humidifier quick, she grumbled mentally, or the whole place will go up in flames it's so dry.
Nothing in the History section gave her pause except to snap and bite at her finger. She turned to the Reference section and perused her way through, pulling the occasional dictionary, ACT Test-prep guide, or book of lists from its place. Fewer shocks found her fingers here, somehow deterred by the onslaught of information filling the pages.
She turned a corner and started down the aisle of how-to and self- help books. Smiling, intelligent-looking faces stared back at her from the shelves. One copy faced out with six of its brothers stacked neatly against it, waiting to give solutions to those with unsolveable problems, hints on cleaning faster, ways to prevent pipe blockage or relationship failure. So many were new, crisp, and brightly colored to catch the eye. Without thinking she had pulled her hand into her chest and held it against the cover of the fantasy resting in the crook of her arm. Her fingers lightly caressed the raised letters of the title and the author’s name. She had never found anything worth her time in the Self- help section, had never felt that the words within the pages were truthful. There was something unnatural about the multitude of plastic smiles and staged pictures that dripped with misleading hope. The book she was looking for could not possibly be one of these. She decided that the fantasy would have to be enough and took a right at the end of the aisle and started back to the staircase.
Halfway down the aisle lay a book, carelessly dropped or having fallen from its place on the shelf after clumsy hands left it unbalanced near the edge, a victim to the quiet puffs of wind as people passed it by. She wasn’t interested in what it was, but the fact that someone had just left it there, lying on the floor, irked her. She walked over to it and leaned down. The hairs on the back of her neck rose and she prepared herself for the snap of a shock as her fingers touched the back cover and cream-colored pages.
The sound of the spark was amazing, the flash brighter than any of the others, and, for an instant, Angela felt real anger at the new manager for putting the books in such jeopardy. The next instant brought nothing but terror as her vision cleared and she found herself surrounded by paper towering above her head, the black letters of gigantic words leaning against her, the sharp edges and points of the text like razors and teeth. She screamed and the sound disappeared into the paper, muffled and muted and lost.
~ Peace and good reading
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