Bang! Bang! The front door was rattling on its hinges under a heavy fist. Bang! Bang! Bang! I hustled out of the kitchen, drying my hands on a towel as I headed to the front of the store. As I passed the register, I glanced at the clock display.
Nine-forty.
A tall man was peering through the front glass window, long fingers cupped around his eyes to shield the glare.
“Book emergency,” I said aloud, approaching the door. I was trying to imagine what sort of reading was required on a Monday morning that brought about door-pounding and through-the-window-searching.
Rare as they are, B-Es do happen. (B-E: what we call a Book Emergency in the trade. They are rare enough, like exorcisms in the Catholic Church.) Had one several months ago on a Sunday, when a mother had just gotten the last-minute news that her daughter’s weekend assignment required a particular book. Closed Sunday, but I was working, as usual. Cleaning the floors, as I recall.
I had answered the phone and explained about the hours, but I could immediately sense her desperation. It came buzzing right through the phone line.
“Suppose I could check the shelf,” I admitted. She exhaled, with a sort of relief sound. Turns out, there was a copy ready to go. When I told her I had it in stock, she made noises like you would expect from someone whose IRS audit had just been cancelled. Cancelled for good.
She’d be right down, she said.
And she was.
This morning, I was trying to spot that same facial expression, that look of relief that the current Book Emergency would soon be handled. He didn’t look that way, at all. More a look of frustration.
The folklore says most B-Es will be met with “Thank Goodness!” as the first uttered words on contact with a bookseller. It’s like black box recordings of cockpit conversations, last words before the plane goes down – those – most uttered words. The man didn’t say Thank Goodness. (To his credit, he also didn’t say those infamous black box words either.)
“Are you open?” he called, moving toward the door.
“No,” I said, before I could reel in my mouth. “That’s why the door is locked. I open at ten, when everything is ready.”
“Ten o’clock,” he repeated. “Seems like all the shops wait ‘til then.”
“It’s customary,” said I.
“Kind of sleepy area, I guess,” he shot back, and turned to walk away.
I let the door swing shut as I watched them. There is no hard fast rule here. If I had everything ready in the kitchen, if the gravy wasn’t just coming to a boil, if the potatoes had already been mashed – I would not have minded opening the door early. But there were only twenty minutes left to finish up all those things in the kitchen before unlocking the door.
It was barely enough time.
Sleepy, he had said.
Truth to tell, I had been at it since seven-thirty.
Sleepy? Hardly.
I re-opened the door and poked my head out.
“You know,” I called after them. “I don’t feel good about that Sleepy thing.”
Don’t say anything else, I tried to tell my mouth. But it sometimes has a mind of its own.
He probably didn’t care one whit, but I mentioned the fact that – although the wee shop was nae open, it did not mean I wasn’t hard at work. I pointed out that – working by myself – I have to get a lot of things done before I can open the front door, and after I lock up at the end of the day, the work isn’t necessarily over.
I wrestled my mouth to the ground at that point. No one hurt. Phew. I used it instead to work up a smile and offer up an apology. My gravy was no doubt boiling over in the pan and (I noted to myself) my steam was all boiled off.
Another week raring to go: Happy Monday! Come visit!