The Book Nook

6

 Before I was to leave the store and go home, there was something I had wanted to do. I hadn't thought about the story until late into my shift when I recalled it.

I went over to Fiction and found the K's. Skimming my forefinger over the spines of varying widths, I miss the place where Kim should be. I check again and no, I hadn't merely missed it. However, it came to me that Mister Kim was from here in the city so then he should be with the Locals, the tiny one shelf section dedicated to the authors from our forlornly desolate literary community of this city.

I check there and yes, there it is. There's only one copy and I pull it out. Wash Me Away in the Arms of the Ocean by Cedric Kim.

It's him, the man in Alexandria's story.

It's many years old, probably barely still in print, and imaginably was never anywhere close to a bestseller, or a mild one at best, yet we somehow had a copy of it in the limited space that is the Book Nook where variety of titles is thin as it is. I chalked it up to Alexandria probably having something to do with it, perhaps hassling Boss to always keep it in stock. Or perhaps Mister Kim has his very own tiny following of fans like Alexandria and word of mouth, as one knows, surely spreads. I decide to buy it and read it right after I finish with Alexandria's work.

I spent the entirety of my Sunday evening with Alexandria's volume in my hands and stayed up past midnight though the time did not factor into any decision of mine. I would not go to sleep until the book was done.

The space of time that elicited the actual reading of the book, still does not register to me. I have no real memory of that time, just the recollection of the movie that played in my head as I absorbed the prose of Alexandria's story. The only real aspect that I could accurately describe is the moment of total sadness I experienced when the book ended (though it did not actually end, so much as Alexandria had just not finished it) and I felt like I had just left a world I was completely consumed by.

What I had done - as is what I generally always do - is leave sticky page-markers sticking out from where I noticed a line, a paragraph, or an excerpt that I found particularly affecting, that moved me. The manuscript had become completely littered with orange and yellow stickies poking out the sides so as you could no longer discern just how many I had added.

I fell asleep afterwards, eventually, with images running through my mind of all the scenes, the characters, the events. Some books you put down afterwards and you don't think about them again, but some stay with you, lingering on for spans of time, remaining so vivid you could have sworn you had seen it all in a film.

The next morning I did something I would usually regret; I skipped my morning class, promising myself I'd make the 12:30 one however. I stayed at home to re-read my favorite passages in Alexandria's book.

I could not shake even the opening lines to her novel. I had contained them to memory and could recite them at will. They haunted me.

My name is Alexandria and I am lost. My life is somewhere in the midst of the seen and the unseen, constantly rippling and making waves, visible from one stretch of reality and not from the other, and then slowly shifting and reversing.

After the later class, I got off the bus at the Book Nook. I knew Alexandria would be working and the previous night we had arranged on a Monday night meet-up though she had not specified the time. Since I still had no way of contacting her, I thought I'd stop in and casually ask if there were a time she had in mind.

When I went in, Sheila was at the front desk and I had no sight of Alexandria. I waved to Sheila and said, "Hey, I needed to ask Alex something."

She gave me a smirk and bit back a comment she was about to say because she had a customer in front of her and pointed in the general direction of the back of the store. I looked around the bookcases blocking my view and saw in the furthest corner of the bookstore where we have the smallest of semi-circles free of protruding shelving, a small group of children huddled around the edge.