The Book Reader

The New-2-U Thrift Store was drab and gloomy and permeated with the dank, musky aroma of mildew and dirty clothes.  At the front of the store, gray light from an overcast sky gained entrance through large panes of smudged window glass.  More cold and inadequate light drizzled begrudgingly from flickering fluorescent bulbs in the store's water-stained ceiling.

At the rear of the store were hundreds of used books jostling one another on rough-hewn bookcases.  There in the book department stood a man about seventy years old, clutching a book to his chest.  Lewis Singleton was short, slightly built, and gradually shrinking with age.  His old tweed jacket drooped from his dwindling frame.  Baggy trouser legs draped inelegantly over worn oxfords.  One of his shoelaces was untied.

When Lewis had first entered the store, he had blinked and grimaced at the squalor and the pungent aroma, but he always grew accustomed to it quickly.  He had made a small stack of three books he wanted to buy, placing them one on top of the other on a wobbly rack of eight-track tapes adjoining the book shelves.  A fourth book was clasped over his heart.  His eyes were closed.

A woman with a sour expression and frazzled hair ambled up to the bookcases and swept her eyes briefly over their contents.  With a pinched look on her face, she huffed and gestured with disdain at the disorderly stacks.  "This is a waste of time," she said.

"Pardon?" said Lewis, startled by her unexpected utterance.

"You can't find anything here.  Everything's all mixed together.  Look — here's a bunch of mystery novels all jammed in with old National Geographics.  What a mess!"

"Mmm hmm," replied Lewis, nudging his glasses up a bit.  He put his book on the little stack and resumed looking for more.  He caressed his bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger as he read the title of each book one by one.  His dim awareness of the woman's presence began to dissipate.

"Last week I bought three romance novels," continued the serious looking woman, "but when I got home, they had pages ripped out and one of them had a dead bug in it.  I think it was a cockroach."

Lewis continued to scan titles attentively, but managed an absent-minded response.  "It's so rewarding to find a good one, isn't it?"

The woman squinted scornfully and dismissed him with a flip of her frazzled hair. Lewis cocked his head a bit to read more easily the titles from the book spines.  "No... no...  no," he said to himself as he read each title.  Eventually, his eyebrows leapt and his glasses slipped down his nose a bit. He reached down to pull a tattered paperback from a warped and splintered shelf.  "See.  Here's one!" he said, turning to display his find to the sour woman, but she had disappeared into the housewares department some ten minutes earlier.

Lewis shrugged and began his ritual examination with the care of an archaeologist unearthing a brittle shard of ancient pottery.  The once glossy cover had become crazed and worn, but the binding was sound.  He flipped through the pages and sniffed slightly for the aroma of mold or mildew that might disqualify the book.  As the pages paraded past his practiced eyes, he looked for any obvious signs of irreparable damage, such as torn out pages or excessive ink marks.  It passed muster.

Turning to the front cover again, he read the title aloud, "Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald." Carefully opening it, he noticed smooth cursive handwriting on the inside front cover.  It was similar to the writing found on the inside front cover of so many books.  "Alison Smithers, English 204, Mrs. Savala."  Alison had been a college student, clearly, and Mrs. Savala must have been her English teacher, although he couldn't tell precisely when.  The college bookstore stamp listed the price of the book at $1.45.  "Must be pretty old," thought Lewis.