The Hiccups

Frumious Bandersnatch

I was not a particularly handsome woman. Nor particularly young. But I was happy. I owned a bookshop. A narrow warren wedged between a homely but well patronized Greek restaurant on whose soup I sometimes subsisted for days. And a clothes shop that aspired valiantly to the au current while struggling with the rent. Our apartment, just above the bookstore on the second floor, meant that I was never very far away. But I didn't mind. I had to mind the shop.

Inside the shop the groaning shelves wound backward along the walls and round the corner down the steep stairs and into the cellar, curling into labyrinthian passages and cul-de-sac, each with its worn old chair whose cushions were liberally frosted with cat hair. This was courtesy of Munchkin and Agatha who had moved in without ceremony shortly after I opened the shop. Sent by whatever minor deity it is whose charge it is to see it that every respectable used bookshop is adequately populated by cats.

I never really planned to open a bookshop. I had not, in fact, ever planned to open a shop of any kind. When I found myself in a rush to do so I had not had time to plan ahead for cats. Though I knew that the shop would be incomplete without them. I had been pleased when they arrived. They were affectionate cats in their way. Once in a while deigning to spend a bit of time in my lap while I sat behind the high counter of a slow afternoon, paging through one of the innumerable tomes of my stock.

Perhaps, more importantly, the cats got along with the bookshop. And it got along with them. I was glad of that. I hadn't been sure they would. I know now that I needn't have worried but in the beginning I hadn't been at all sure. I had never kept a bookshop before after all. Nor cats. Nor had I ever intended to. In fact, one could without the slightest inaccuracy, say that I had come into my occupation entirely by accident.

My husband believed the books were useless. He called them romantic claptrap and stupid stories about people who weren't even real. Bertie said all this, gesturing at the shelves while he worked on his fifth bottle of beer. He never understood the joy of reading. I picked up a knick-knack, gave it a swipe with my dust cloth, and bit the tip of my tongue as I nervously cleaned the already-spotless bookcases. I hoped my emotions might distract Bertie from realizing just how many layers of books were really there: smaller ones stuffed behind taller volumes whose spines stood like fence pickets, perfectly even with the outermost rim of the shelves. But no matter how I tried to draw his eye, Bertie eventually noticed a new acquisition among the hundreds of volumes that filled the shelves that lined every available wall in our second story apartment.

Bertie slammed down his beer bottle and picked up the book, opening at random with a disgusted look. He thumbed through the slender volume for a moment, his features slipping hideously from rant toward rage. He told me I was pathetic. He told me he didn't know why he married me. And that he should've married my sister. He said she was five times the woman that I ever would be and that he was ten times the man I deserved. I tried again to grab the book from his hand, to yank down his arm, but Bertie was too tall, too drunk, too angry. Cackling, red-faced, he opened the book above his head and held it in two hands, twisting the binding and threatening to rip it in two. I told him, I said, Don't you dare, Bertie Charles, don't you dare destroy that book. I bought it with my own money and you know it. Give it to me this instant. I did my best to be stern but my throat soured and I felt like I might start choking. With a cruel laugh, and a crueller sneer, Bertie flung the book across the room as hard as he could, hitting the end table and knocking something off that shattered when it hit the floor. I flinched, but I wasn't really surprised. I stood with clenched fists while he growled something about finding a real woman instead of a dried up librarian. He kicked the door shut behind him as he stomped out the door and down the stairs. When his steps ceased to echo I forced my fingers to uncurl.

Although I had never used it to hold anything but a few wrapped peppermints and some limp, faded memories of my honeymoon at Niagara Falls, I gazed sad and sorry at the broken ashtray. I brushed the cover of the book Bertie had abused, picking slivers of cheap porcelain from its cover. I'm terribly sorry, I said slightly self-consciously to the scarred copy of Little Women. I really do try to keep him from doing that but he always does that sort of thing when he's in his cups. Begging him not to just seems to make it worse. It's a shame you can't defend yourselves than I seem to be able to.