Confessions of a Curious Bookseller(67)
Sincerely,
Fawn
April 20, 2019
Rainbow has politely declined the offer of being my number two in the store, so I’m currently busy fielding applications. She cited that, though flattered, she does not wish to embark on anything that could get in the way of her passions. In the end, I think it’s for the best that I did not hire her for the job. I can’t put my finger on why, but there’s something about her that doesn’t exactly exude responsibility.
So with no replacement at the moment and with Angela gone, the ticking of the clock in this vast, empty space has grown louder and reverberates through my skull. I am going to try hard not to let this happen, but I think I may have to raise the rent on Jane. I hope she won’t leave because of it. It seems as if Jane’s daughter will pay anything to avoid seeing her. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she’ll just pay the extra money so I can keep Jane on. Honestly, I don’t know what that woman has against her mother or why she’s exiled her to a small apartment in Philadelphia. If she was a terrible mother in her younger years, she has certainly calmed down by now. It’s funny how people have such trouble letting things go.
Angela was right. Being downstairs in that drafty store for the entire day, I can see how the customer volume has dropped. I get overwhelmed now when there are two customers inside. I am worried they are a team and one is set to distract me while the other makes off with a book—a racket I wouldn’t put past the rather resourceful UPenn student body. They are all so smart and appear to be quite innocent—a perfect guise for thievery.
Yesterday I organized the Mark Twain Room and found a dead pigeon under the pile of books. The room didn’t even seem to smell funny because of it, which gives me the impression that the whole place has a smell to which I have grown immune. I called Rainbow down to give me her thoughts, but she explained that she only smells auras, so she wasn’t much help in that regard. To mitigate the possible odor, I opened the windows and put on the industrial fans. The sound is awful but at least it drowns out the ticking clock. It is so loud lately! As if someone slipped a megaphone behind the mechanism just to drive me insane.
After the store closed today, I cleaned Jane’s bathroom because it desperately needed it. It’s really my bathroom if you want to get technical, so it wasn’t as though I was doing her an enormous favor, but she really seemed to appreciate it. It was a nice change after yesterday when I did practically nothing all day but come across a dead pigeon.
I have given the new cat an atrocious name and have decided that his sole purpose is to eradicate the mice from the building. If he remains utilitarian and practical, then when he eventually passes on I won’t be so distraught. That said, my plans to keep an emotional distance from this cat might prove difficult, evidenced by the events of Bert’s introduction to Jellybean. Rainbow, rightfully so, was cautious to put them together, but perhaps she saw something in Bert that I failed to notice right away. She released Jellybean onto the floor, and for a moment the little thing froze as if dropped from a helicopter into a lion’s den before dinnertime. And then Bert, who is three times the size of Jellybean, took two steps toward her, yawned, and flopped down as if to offer himself for belly pets. Jellybean then sniffed his front paw and hopped away. But I will not get attached to him. I will not.
From: Fawn Birchill
Sent: Sat, Apr 20, 2019 at 11:09 PM
To: Florence Eakins
Subject: A surprise visit
Florence,
Mother stopped by the other day. I could have done without that. I don’t know what she told you, but I was on my way out when she surprised me. I had just taken a shower and so was in my bathrobe. I had a date in Old City that I needed to cancel because of her impromptu visit. Have you ever had Cuban food? I know your usual fare is American or Italian, but Cuban is truly something for the worldly. Well, perhaps if you ever visit, I will take you.
Speaking of, once again Mother is imploring that I visit Father. I never had anything to say to him when I was younger, so why would I have anything to say to him now? If I were to visit him, I am sure we would exhaust the niceties and small talk in under a minute and find ourselves in an awkward silence that I simply wouldn’t be able to bear. I would choose to leave under such a circumstance.
I had this thought the other day after coming across some words in the newspaper. I thought of Father, and I wonder if you remember how he would allow us to go on mispronouncing words, never correcting us or bothering with one shred of opinion either way about it. I remember believing that the word fetish was pronounced “feteesh,” and I repeated it well into my teenage years until I heard someone utter it correctly in class. I grew angry with Father (and with Mother, though she probably didn’t know any better either). I wasn’t angry because he simply wouldn’t correct me. I was angry because he didn’t care to take the time to teach me not only how to say it but what the word meant—for a mispronunciation to that extent is enough to make one wonder if I even know what I’m talking about! Why would I spend time with such an undynamic human being who let his daughters run around mispronouncing words? And do you remember that for years the entire family would say “salad” after every sneeze because of my simple misunderstanding when someone said “salud”? You, Mother, and Father (who was the worst offender) shouted “Salad!” after every sneeze. And like everything else, I only questioned it when every child in elementary school, as well as the teacher, went into hysterics at my ignorance. He really preferred us to be mindless, didn’t he? He must have been quite intimidated when I went to college and actually graduated. I think it’s a challenge for a person like him to accept that his offspring has its own original thoughts and beliefs. If he had it his way, I’d be running his general store like a mindless drone to this day, stocking shelves and bending to his every whim as he shouted orders from his hospice bed. No, thank you.