The Book Nook

1

WOULD YOU LIKE AN ADVENTURE NOW, OR SHALL WE HAVE OUR TEA FIRST?

This is what the piece of paper read. It was taped on the mirror above the sink in the washroom of my apartment and was even adorned with a smiley face carrying a Cheshire Cat grin. At this point I was already so far down the rabbit hole that the only way to go was deeper, to a hopefully eventual end.

This wasn't the first time I'd been confronted by a choice like this, nor would it be the last time I'd see it, but I want to go back a short ways in time before I reached the dilemma of staring down the rabbit hole. It starts not with a rabbit hole, but with a book. Yes, a book, as seemingly unrelated as that is, I assure that there is purpose to it. The book is important, moreso than the decision of, say, which pill, blue or red, to swallow.

Technically, as my day generally goes, they all start with a book. Many books, in fact. Into the hundreds we're talking. This phenomenon occurs because I work at a bookstore. Just a little one, a tiny, cramped mom and pop store on one of the side avenues not far off from downtown. The store is in a good location, generally lots of foot traffic and it helps us a lot. Squished in between Lee's Computers and an arts and crafts shop called The Frozen Cactus, our shop looks slightly out of place, sticking out like graffiti on a church with the scarlet red bordering around our glass door and front window, above in white block letters spell our name The Book Nook, where all types of books are stacked and propped up on display. The best type of mannequins to have in a store window - the ones with pages and covers.

BOOKS - NEW AND USED! is written in black paint along the top of the window. The letters are impressively neat and legible, like they were drawn by an artisan who practices letter stenciling as a career. That was Alexandria. Not only is she a goddess of words in the literary sense, but also in the physical form of drawing them as well. Boss didn't have to do it himself, so that's all that mattered.

The Book Nook has been my home for a little while now. It feels like another lifetime ago when I walked in, little bell chime ringing with the opening door (classic, I know) and spoke to the man working there whom I knew was the owner, not just from his dour one-day-fades-into-the-next expression, but since I frequented the place often enough since the start of college.

Boss, from the first time I ever stepped foot in The Book Nook, he was initially, to me, only ever a man who owned a bookstore and nothing more. As far as I knew, he liked books well enough, enjoyed being an entrepreneur enough, and so decided that a bookstore was a suitable venture he would make. So each day then circles around his business. He goes to work, he goes home, he sleeps, he comes back to work, maybe takes the odd day off to stay at home and watch television with the cat. I didn't really know, I could only speculate here, but that's always been what I've envisioned of him from my first initial bookstore visits up to being his employee and having not learned short of a single thing about the man. Some people are just so devastatingly average.

I also met Alexandria there. Funny how things work out.

She's worked there over a year longer than I did. I still remember the first thing she said to me; after I had greeted her and asked her how she was.

"Well, I'm 'trying' to 'write' a 'novel' and by that I mean that I hate myself." Finger air-quotes even included. Her head was half-cocked as if expecting a sincere form of sympathy.

Her hair was much longer then. Silky black strands going down well past her shoulders, outlining the high cheekbones of her face as she looked at me with large doe-eyes. Her hands, as was her habit I eventually noticed, went back to her slender waist and when she stood still like that behind a small table of books where I couldn't see her feet, I was always sure those legs went on for miles.