Picking Stones Chapter 11

"Greenpoint"

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)

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Greenpoint

Floating out of the office. My body drifted to the subway and drifted into a train and drifted off to a place where I’d never feel the same.

An urge. A different route. A different place. A different space. Something, someone made me end up somewhere. I exited the train and came out into chilly Greenpoint. I was dumbfounded. What had urged me to go this way, a place I’d rarely been? So far out of the way from home. So far away from my bed, from the sleep I had so desperately ached for all day.

Leaves softly scattered over the new boots on my feet. It was nicer here than I remembered. Bars and restaurants littered the street I walked down. Polish words were printed on a quarter of the signs.

I looked down again at my new boots. They had gotten delivered yesterday. You could still smell the richness of the stain on them. Sometimes when I buy stuff, I end up transfixing on them; giving worship to false idols perhaps. The boots were brandy in color, a fancy stitch separating the toe from its body. My eyes followed them as they bumbled forward, watching carefully as new creases formed in the still hard and fresh leather. It had been a frivolous purchase. I clicked buy Friday night in the wake of the breakup. Needed something to make me happy. Looking at them felt good. They had negated any money I saved in the last month.

Black puddle in view, glint of the streetlight and the setting sun shining off it. I maneuvered the new boots away from it. Had anyone at work noticed them? Dogs walked their owners past me. A sudden urge shot like lighting through my brain. The desperate need for drink coated my tongue. In front of me stood a bar. Gray awning, fish floating across the damp fabric hanging above its windows. Stepped inside. I felt the top of my left boot scrape against metal as it got caught on the entry step. The familiar warm feeling spread across my face. I was inside now, bartender looking straight at me. A young woman with a smile. Could have been a potential suitor, but I fumbled.

It was panic. Devastation. I was staring at the scratch embedded into the brown leather, a white streak with fuzzy brown edges. Brown skid marks that had ripped off the boot stained the silver fluted stair edge that ran across the length of the step. The boot was ruined. Why did I come in here? If I didn’t give in to the alcohol my boot would have been fine. The wasted money ripped at the left side of my head. My eyes blinded by the white gash across the leather illuminating the entire bar. I looked like a fool and felt like a leper.

“What can I get ya?” Asked the bartender with a smile. Did she see my face or a tomato in its place?

I stumbled outside without a word. Why me? Why me? It always happens to me. I sucked in air and continued. Had I gone home to bed as I begged all day I wouldn’t have ruined the shoes. It was karmic retribution. God hated me. Had I gone home I wouldn’t have—

“Hey, watch it!” I screamed at a car that almost hit me. The crossing sign shone red with a hand commanding me to stop. My fault, like everything else. It was so cold. Car screeched to a halt. Window rolled down.

“Do you want to die today?” Yelled the voice from inside as it careened past. Was that a rhetorical question?

Tires screeched far in the distance now. I kept walking, head further up rear as the street around me grew darker and commenced the usual spin cycle. Did I want to die? Did I want that to happen that day? At that moment, yes.

Right shoe slammed into black puddle. Shit water trickled into sock. Negative brings negative. There is no balance. I cursed myself and watched the cars screech down McGuiness in a stream of red and yellow blurs. What had I done? Why did I come here? I should have gone home.

“Just turn around and leave, Will,” I said. “Go home.”

“Please, make it stop. Help me.”

A girl around my age reeled her dog closer to her, away from me. I focused on breathing. Calming. It didn’t matter. I crossed the street, further and further from home. The smell of exhaust and garbage wafted into my nostrils, and I willingly let in even more. Another breath, and another. Things became clearer, I furthered away from myself, from my body. Floating, floating, floating. And returned.

A wooden sign gently patted onto a storefront. The sign was painted black and was hollowed into the shape of a book in its middle. Warm light shone across the stained sidewalk in front of me and under the sign. Book covers, new and old, stood in the store’s windows. Someone, something, told me to go in. So I did.

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The door jingled as it swung open. I was greeted by soft white light and stocked mahogany bookshelves. I hadn’t been inside a bookstore in years. It had been long since the Barnes and Noble on Austin Street and the Borders at Atlas Park closed, so much time gone since then. Standing at the door to Borders with my father in the car as I waited for them to unlock their doors and secure a copy of the final book in the Harry Potter series at the midnight release. I had finished the book in my grandmother’s basement in four days. Four days that had felt like a lifetime. Where did the time go?

There’s nothing quite like a used bookstore. Books old and new proudly sit on the shelves like little treasures waiting to be discovered. The aroma wafting through the air not unlike a bakery or candy shop. Rich scents of paper that smell strangely sweet. You never know where the books come from. If someone read them in a hospital as their mother lay dying, or at work on their lunch hour, or if it sat on the tank of someone’s toilet and read whenever their poops were long enough to allow it. It didn’t matter. Each book there had value and becomes new to you. Something you can hold near and dear, even if the place you read it happens to be on the toilet, which is probably where you’re reading this right now.

Three rows of shelves in the middle of the store, stretching four or five cases long, and resting on a large and ornate red area rug. It was the general fiction section. The fifteen or so bookcases lining the outer walls of the room stocked anything from fantasy to ancient philosophy and everything in between. The store was extremely well kept. I felt at home. My ruined boots sunk into the soft rug and out of my mind as I moved closer to the fiction section.

At the back of the store was the register surrounded by expensive rarities and first-editions. A young woman, maybe my age, sat behind the counter reading a book. I couldn’t get a look at what it was. She had curly brown hair and rectangular glasses with a brown trim that matched nicely with her fair features. She smiled at me when I walked in and quickly dug her nose back into whatever book she was reading.

Hands wrapped around the gray shoulder straps of my backpack and pulled it tighter against my back. I scanned the bookshelves, but I was lost. The warmth I had felt walking inside had quickly dissipated and was promptly replaced with embarrassment. What had I thought I was going to achieve by coming in here? I had no clue what I was looking for.

I couldn’t just leave? Could I? The girl at the counter was probably expecting me to buy something. I needed to get something. Had I already made myself look bad by not picking up a book? I needed to act quick. Timeline, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Modern Prometheus. Nothing was clicking. Nothing I wanted.

I caught sight of two books standing on top of the bookshelf, eye-level with me. They were propped up on two stands with matching orange and blue covers, a two-part novel. The author’s name on the bottom jumped out at me. It was a name I hadn’t heard of in a long time. I grabbed the first book.

“Oh, that’s a great one.” A voice called out, I jerked in surprise. The words had come from the girl behind the counter.

“Is it new?” I asked.

“Yep. It came out last month.”

“Last month?” I said. “Isn’t he like ninety?”

“Eighty-nine, I think. Pretty crazy right?” she said. There was a big smile across her face. It seemed genuine. Two of her bottom teeth were crooked, but the smile wasn’t.

“That’s nuts. I wonder what was going through his head while he was writing these.” I skimmed through the pages of the first book and saw the old man’s face at the back. “What kind of crazy feeling must he have had knowing they very well could be the last books he ever writes.”

“Interesting,” she said. “It couldn’t have been easy. But I’m sure it was rewarding. The books were really good. I liked part two better than part one.”

“Maybe next time,” I said. I put the book back on its placeholder and she put her head back in her book.

Wait a second. A normal dialogue. Culminating in the perfect opportunity to get something and run out of there. What was I doing? A few more minutes of mindless searching. I could have been long gone. Idiot. The-girl-behind-the-counter must have probably petrified that I was still there. I looked up at her and saw she appeared to be peacefully reading her book. I felt bad for her, having me in there, bothering her.

Eastern Philosophy was etched onto a single shelf in the far corner of the store. Hm. It was peculiar. Had I magically ended up there, at that store, at that corner, in that neighborhood, for that book? It was staring right at me, clear as day. Sandwiched towards the right of the shelf, two books laying on top of it. I don’t know how I noticed it. Maybe it noticed me. It was squat, with a gray dust jacket. Tiny white letters and a yellow symbol printed on it. The I Ching or Book of Changes.

It was the book Peter had mentioned. I didn’t open it, didn’t look any further. Quietly my fingers slid to the top of its spine, feeling the scratchy texture of the hardcover beneath the dust jacket, and gently pulled it off the shelf.

At the counter I handed the book over. The-girl-behind-the-counter placed a green bookmark into her own book and set it down. I noticed a Spartan helmet on the cover, but didn’t bother trying to make out the name. 

“Ooo this is cool,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to check it out.” She thumbed through the book quickly, then found the spot where the price was written into the first page. Her fingernails weren’t painted.

“It seems pretty interesting,” I said. “Someone recommended it to me.”

“Well, if you like it come back and recommend it to me. And get yourself the copy of that McCarthy book.” She laughed.

“Sounds good,” I said and returned the friendly laugh.

“Do you want a bag?” She had brown eyes that glinted behind her glasses.

“Na, I can put it in here.” Backpack off back, unzip, drop book inside.

“Here’s your receipt.”

“Have a good night.” The receipt had a name printed on it. Whitney.

“Happy reading,” I heard behind me as the door opened and the cold air sucked me outside.

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You can also buy me a coffee. Or a charming used book from a bookstore in Greenpoint.

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