Picking Stones Chapter 19

"Check-in"

Making way through the city, I thankfully realized it wasn’t too early for a drink. Something to chug would be a welcome reprieve to pass the time. Plus, I needed desperately to numb the mind, keep me thinking of her.

Signs for breweries were plastered all over the brick buildings. I needed only to pick one and go. Only a few more hours before check-in at the hotel. My head buzzed, fried from the blue light of the phone screen playing videos inches away from my eyes all morning. What a way to start vacation. Legs felt shaky. Pick a direction, Will. “Let’s go this way,” I said.

Turning right, a smudged storefront window came into view. Painted green wood ran up and across the perimeter of the window. I looked up and saw a green hand pointing inside the store. Through the dirty glass was a man in a green jacket. I was beginning to notice a theme. Without thinking I was inside.

Door open and jingled whatever jangled above it. Cough escaped lungs. The sweet smell of the familiar swam into my nose. Dusty old books I’d never seen before, but somehow felt like I’d known forever. It took a second for my eyes to adjust. A few dim light fixtures hung low, barely illuminating the shop. Green jacket flipped through a magazine resting on the ancient wooden counter to my left. I guessed he was probably the owner.

“Hello,” I breathed. No answer. Good. I kept moving through the cluttered bookstore. The shop didn’t have as much charm as the one in Brooklyn. No pretty girl working, either.

My hand caked with dust after grabbing a particularly old sci-fi novel I can’t remember the title of. From sci-fi went fantasy and history and fiction. I couldn’t find or think of a single thing I wanted to read. Thoughts went to the book with the Spartan on it, from the coffee shop. I couldn’t for the life of me remember the author’s name or the book’s title. Pulling, yanking, and prying at the inside of my brain to the point of exhaustion offered no aid. Remembering the book, or anything for that matter, was a lost cause. 

An image of me running to my grandfather’s car outside the library. Lost for hours looking through the cases. He’s gone and you’re lost, I told myself. I sent an apology up to him, embarrassed for him that I was there right now. What would he say if he caught wind of my unwarranted vacation?

“Please. Pick something, anything. Give me something.”

Deep into the store now, my mind kept going back to the man in the front, waiting for me to pick something, to buy something. He was here for purchases, for the money. Empty hands? Beat it, kid.

Further and further into the store I found nothing. The aisles seemed to narrow. Shelves were caving in on me. Piles of books leaning toward me. One false move and my claustrophobia would smother me from the inside out. Death by book was a new one. I pictured an enormous mountain of them sandwiched between these tiny aisles, all collapsed in on themselves. Suddenly an arm, my arm, pokes through the summit of the book mountain. One last desperate grab for air, for life. The arm falls. Dead.

“Find anything you like?”

Unconscious scanning of the Maine History section ceased. The book mountain of death vanished from sight. Green jacket was standing behind me. Short gray hair and smudged glasses matching the store’s window finished his look. Was he hounding me to make sure I bought something?

“Not particularly,” I said.

“Well, got a lot of good stuff in here,” he said as he slid a book onto a shelf a few cases down from me. Confirmation that he wasn’t following me. Good. I turned around and my eyes focused back onto the spine of a book about Maine lobster fishing. If I was going to be here for a week, I’d need something other than my phone to entertain me. The store had tens of thousands of books, and I couldn’t find a thing. Just like TV. Maybe it was me.

When I had given into giving up, something came out of my mouth.

“Can you offer up any suggestions?” I could see the sound waves exiting my mouth and vibrating through the air before crashing onto the man’s green jacket.

“Hm?” Caught by surprise, he was on all fours, reaching for a book on the bottom shelf of a bookcase that mustn’t have been dusted since the store’s grand opening. His head thudded against a shelf pulling himself out of the bookcase. “A suggestion?”

“Yep.”

“Hm,” he paused. “A suggestion.” The man took his glasses off and rubbed his right eye. “Well, what are ya in the mood for?”

“Good question. I don’t know.”

“What do you usually like to read?”

“I don’t know.”

The man laughed, thankfully. “I’m usually pretty good at suggestions, but how can I give you a suggestion when you don’t even know what you like? That’s setting me up for failure.”

“I just,” I started.

“Don’t know.” We both finished. He laughed again.

“Okay okay. Let me think,” he said. “How are you feeling right now?”

“How am I feeling right now. Honestly or unhonestly?” I said.

“Let’s hear the honest answer first.”

“Lost,” I said.

“Lost,” he repeated. Green jacket stepped back. Then his finger tapped his sealed lips, the thinking process had enraptured him. Eventually every finger scratched his chin, repeating lost to himself a few times while scanning the store. “I got something in mind, but I’m not sure I have a copy. Come with me.”

Next we were in the Personal Growth section, my first time encountering one. Green jacket shot eyes and hands to the far left corner of the section and swiped his finger across a few books before settling down on one. “Ah ha. Here it is.” He yanked out a little white book with a potted red flower on the cover and handed it to me. “If you’re not really a big reader, this thing is super easy to get through. And if you’re really lost, you won’t be by the time you’re done with it.”

At the top of the book was a blurb. It mentioned how it can help artists break out of creative slumps. “I’m not a writer or artist. I don’t think this is really a book for me.” I stretched that book back toward him.

“You don’t need to be a writer or artist or anything. It’s for everyone. Trust me, if you’re really lost, read the damned thing. It can change your life.”

“Think so?”

“I know so,” he said.

The book stared up at me as I stared down at it. I read over the author’s name and nearly pooped right then and there. It hit me. The name of the book at the coffee shop. That little book in my hand was written by the same guy.

“How much for it?”

“Five bucks.”

“Deal.”

---

The book was stuffed in my backpack. I needed to get somewhere to commence reading. Back out in the cold, the sweat on my forehead felt like it was freezing over. Had the book been a plant from Nim? Did I just take my next pick? How many matches were left in our game? I’d have sit down and do the math at the brewery. I still needed that drink, after all.

Awkward eye contact was made with every passerby as I shot up the street, taking in whatever little bit of the city I could. My consciousness was a bit detached from my body at that point, lagging a bit further behind the rest of the mechanism. It noticed the surprised glances and scowls sent at my body’s back as my New York tendencies couldn’t help but reveal themselves. A jaywalk here, waiting just off the curb to cross the street there. “That’s so rude!” was called out at me from car windows and from the mouths of rude little ladies shuffling away in the distance. My face appeared stoic but my heart fluttered with embarrassment.

Was it me?

Tuning out the judgment with my phone, an Instagram video played when I started the app. “It is not death that a man should be afraid of, but he should fear never beginning to live.” A quote from a stoic philosopher, Marcus Auerelius, former emperor of Rome. Sound advice. The algorithm processing my internet searches could tell I needed to hear it. Thanks, AI.

Advertisements pasted on the windows and doors of a shop caught my eye. Actually it was the pumpkins and ghouls painted onto the store’s windows by an artist below them. I wonder if they had read the book I had bought. Reading the signs, I found out the city had an art museum in its center and a cryptozoology museum on its outskirts. Maybe my entity would have an exhibit there. I made a mental note to go there at some point on the trip, for better or worse.

Hops stunk up the warm brewery, stinging the nostrils upon first entry. Stainless steel cylinders stood in the far corner against blue painted walls reaching up to twenty foot high ceilings. Warm tan wood stretched down the bar and adorned the hightops sprinkled throughout the vast space. My shoes scraped over finished concrete floors before plunking down at a barstool.

I ordered a pumpkin ale with an awkward smile and scratched at my greasy hair, unwashed in almost two days. Essentially no sleep in just as long. This visit was sure to put me out.

The blond bartender set down my glass and went off to do his required duties. Did I make a good first impression? I panicked then let go. He was the last thing I needed to worry about. Even if it was easier said than done.

Cold traveled down my throat. I licked the brown sugar off the rim of the foggy glass. A couple sat three stools down from me. I adjusted my body to appear less awkward, unsure to the effect of the maneuver.

The book was in my hands now, open to the dedication page, to me. And you, I guess. To anyone who needed to read it at that moment, at that second. The pages were short, and the paragraphs printed on the white paper even shorter. I got through fifteen pages in five minutes, the most reading my brain had absorbed outside of work in years. The words, his words, were alien to me. They spoke of changing one’s life by doing, by acting. Sitting there would get you nowhere. Everything could change at a moment’s notice if you make it change. Push through the block, whatever it may be for you, and do what you must do to get what you want out during our short stay in this realm.

It was all true, nothing I hadn’t heard before. They were all simple, really. But the words stung and cut deeper than I thought possible. There was something to seeing your hurdles pointed out, exposed. Was the cause of my own depression my own laziness? The thought made me shudder. I quickly polished off my beer and ordered a second.

Unable to separate the art from the artist, I wondered how strictly the writer adhered to his own prodigious advice. Surely the message was massive, and I was want to hear it. But I couldn’t help but think of him. Was it that jealousy inside me resolving to be heard once again?

Book shut, stuffed in backpack again. Second beer was almost empty and I was beginning to lose focus, again. I stared at myself in the mirror behind the bar, analyzing every detail, every imperfection. Was that glint from the light a reflection off my hair, or from deeper into the scalp? Mirror showed mess until my vision was obscured. Blackness had entered my field of vision. Head tilted back, ready to gasp.

Bartender smiled down at me. “Another?” Nod. Received. That one went down quicker than the first two. It an instant it was gone. Almost check-in, after all. Signal for a refill, well received. No judgment in the confines of these walls. Surround yourself by the things you want and the people that can help you grow. How would this place aid in that aspect?

I grabbed my wallet and pulled out a credit card. Two things fell out of it and onto the dry wooden bar. The NIM card, and the matchbook Peter gave me. Swiping the NIM card, I stuffed it in my pocket and set the credit card in its place, signaling for the bill.

“Nice, matchbook,” the bartender said as he set down another amber filled glass. “What an awesome coincidence. Check this out, someone left the exact same one on the bar earlier today.”

He waved a little black matchbook with a yin yang symbol printed on it. A smile plastered on his unwitting face, not understanding how much he had disturbed me. Then there was a flash of light. Behind the bartender in the mirror, I saw it clearly. The backside of a black cloak, loosely draped over him, Nim. An arm raised, ready to strike down on the unsuspecting bartender, a boney hand revealed as the sleeve slid down. My eyes shot up, to see him, Nim, to finally put a face to the name. Instead I saw nothing, save for the innocent grin of the bartender, seconds before his life was to be taken.

Blink. Nothing stood behind him. I swiped at the beer as the bartender swiped my credit card. In an instant I was out the door, on the way to the hotel.

Was it four, or five that I had had? Two taps on my shoulder. I jumped. Behind me wasn’t Nim, not death, but the bartender. He handed me my credit card. Forgotten. I should have peed before I left. The pumpkins and ghouls howled in laughter as I past their glass enclosures. Was that a shape behind them?

Splash. The boots, the same I had ruined that night in Greenpoint, were drenched as I came an inch from being pulverized by a bus. Should have listened to the lady about standing in the crosswalks. I needed a snack. Found something in a store. Hard to say what.

Check-in went seamless, especially with the extra fees tacked onto the bill. “Is there a toilet in the room?” I asked the front desk. She laughed and said yes. I must have reeked.

Elevator came. Then door came. Slide, click, open. Lights were on. Before I could shut them I was already on the bed and everything went black.

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