Your Cheesy Bookstore Romance Pt. 1

Andie shelved Danielle Steele and Sandra Roberts books for the umpteenth time, her arms moving mechanically as her eyes located the proper spots on the shelves for the romantic interludes she held in her hands. The heated passions that throbbed between the covers were lost on this seven-year bookstore employee, however. There had in fact been a two-year period when she could not even go near the romance section without shaking. Then one day, it all went cold, and she noticed nothing of the half-clad lovers adorning these books, grasping each other, heads bent in desire and ecstasy. The repetitive task of shelving in fact had a hypnotic effect on her.

“Andie!” It had happened again. She had become oblivious to her surroundings, and the sudden voice made her drop the books in her hand.

“Jess, I didn’t hear you.” She bent to pick them up as the store manager moved to help.

“I know; sorry to startle you. Did you put aside a special copy of The Inferno for some guy this morning?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s here and I can’t find it.”

Andie left her stack of books and went to the front of the store. “Thanks, Number One,” Jess smiled. She got a real kick out of using Star Trek terminology with her employees. This store was her starship. Her employees made fun of her as a sci-fi geek, but many extremely ungeeky men were impressed by her knowledge of things Trek. Had those employees known of the after-closing rendezvous that took place behind life-size cardboard Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Word displays, they would never look at their manager in the same dorky light again.*

Andie knew, though. Jess had once talked incessantly of her intergalactic conquests, as she liked to call them. Maybe she told her because she knew her assistant manager would keep it to herself; maybe because Andie was such a matronly wallflower, even at 30, that Jess kept hoping to shock some color into her cheeks. She never knew if Andie took it all in, though, or if those words bounced right off her eardrums and back into the dusty air of the stockroom. Finally she stopped wondering and stopped the telling.

Jonah, Ernesto, and Gabrielle, who had been at the store about as long as Andie, had explained to Jess the behavior of the mousy second-in-command as best they could, for they had witnessed its cause—but had never seen an effect of this depth result from any other tragedy.

Andie had been one of the handful of adolescents in history to actually find true love in high school. She and her sweetheart married as soon as they finished college, she in journalism and he in molecular biology. They led an idyllic life until the day tragedy struck. Alex was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer that ate away at him almost as soon as they found out he was sick. In two short months Andie watched the man who was her heart wither away to a collection of twigs, heard him moan from the depths of his being with a pain whose echo she felt in her very soul, felt his spirit slipping away over days and weeks even as she held the warm hand that had protected her for so long from any harm. They were both 26. She had been working part time at the bookstore and part time reporting for a local newspaper, he at a local medical laboratory, putting as much money away as they could for the family they planned to start sometime in the next two years. Both employers gave her a leave of absence during Alex’s illness, and urged her to take more time after his death. They feared for her when they saw the collapse in her face, the utter vacancy in her eyes. Her spirit had left with Alex’s.

Her spirit had left with Alex’s last breath, but did not stay with him as his soared away. Instead it went into a dusty, unused corner of a drawer somewhere in the attic, curled itself into a ball, and cried itself quivering to sleep, hoping to either die or awaken when this part of the story was over.

She never again came close to being the person she had been. The only outward expression of any sort of grief or emotion occurred when she went near that romance section of the bookstore (to which Gabrielle had finally persuaded her to return), or near Faulkner or Marquez, Alex’s favorite authors. She left journalism behind, having no desire to participate in life, to reflect on it or pass it along to readers any longer. She moved into a ground floor room in an old woman’s house, where she had her own bathroom and kitchen area; one day let in a cat who looked cold and who subsequently never left again; and lived that way ever after, going to work daily but never really associating with anyone there, working weekends, talking to others only when she had to. Regular customers smiled and said hello but left her to herself. Jess was hired five years after Alex’s death.

By now she had stopped inflicting her lurid escapades on Andie, and in fact the escapades were becoming fewer and farther between.

“I’ve found my Klingon, my warrior of love,” she told Ernesto one day as they worked in the science fiction section.

“Good,” he replied. “Maybe now Captain Kirk here can sleep in peace.” Her eyes widened in astonishment as her brain tried to restart. “You mean you still don’t know that those air ducts in the back room carry every sound outside back there?” He reveled in the shock he had given her. Jess could barely face the other employees the rest of the day.

Even the UPS man, new as he was, noticed her unusual reticence and asked if she was OK. She took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She remembered the last UPS man and sighed in relief that he had relocated to Ohio. One fewer reminder of her exploits. “I don’t think I ever got your name, UPS man,” she said as she signed for today’s shipment.

“Yeah, they haven’t given me a name patch yet,” he answered, looking to the spot on his brown jacket where it would soon be. “It’s Gryphon. Gryphon MacFitzhugh.”**

Jess reached out her hand and smiled. “Jess. That’s a very Scottish name you have there, Gryphon.”

“Yeah, my ancestors went a little nuts with it. Thanks,” he hurriedly took the clipboard back and left abruptly. Jess’s forehead crossed as she watched the door shut behind him. What was that all about?

*note required entry of sexually experienced and knowledgeable female friend
**note author’s inability to cobble together an actual Scottish name