“I’m a fraud, okay?”
I turn around. He crosses his legs and hangs his head and runs his hand through his too-long blond hair. He is nimble and weak and he might disintegrate at any moment. I’m still holding the machete, which feels so unnecessary, given his condition. I nod at him, like: Go on, shithead. Go on.
It’s amazing how you can see money in people. His chick-smooth hands have been softening for centuries before he was born and his thick hair never thinned from nights in the wind, days bent over shoveling snow or sand or ash. Something about that hair, something about the slope of his nose proves that life is unfair.
“In my defense, I love the book in a postmodern kind of way where I’ve always sensed that it contains something that I relate to. I think it’s the kind of book that echoes my beliefs and my sentiments and I’ve always related well to people who have read the book and I’ve written about the book. You know, I majored in comp lit and it’s possible, it’s very possible to read a book without reading it in the traditional straightforward manner. You can read about a book, Joe. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand?”
“Yeah, Benji. I understand.”
“See, I thought you might, Joe.”
“Yeah, I don’t have a Yale degree but my bullshit detector is excellent. Top drawer, even.”
I start to walk up the stairs and he rants about what an asshole I am and what his father’s gonna do to me and then he’s begging, “Gimme a copy of the David Foster Wallace! I’ll read it! I’ll read it and then you can make a test I swear! Joe! Joe!” The basement is insulated. Mr. Mooney put his money into making this place a private place. Benji can scream all he wants and nobody’s gonna hear him, just like nobody heard me, and you text:
You’re funny, Joe.
The wink-wink didn’t put me on your dork list and the sun is shining and I lock the basement doors and I text you:
I got books to sell. Be on the south steps of Union Square. Center. 8:30 sharp.
And I shut off my phone. I told you where to be and when and if you think you’re gonna get any more from me today when you get me all night, you got another thing coming.
THE day is against me. I forgot that Stephen King has a new book out, Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited follow-up to The Shining. New King means crowds, even a week or two after the book’s release—people are lazy—and hordes of shoppers giddy to be reunited with Danny Torrance. But I want you, Beck. Doctor Sleep turns my shop into a fucking Church of Stephen and I have no room to think about you, prepare for you. We are inundated with Kingophiles, couples trying to save their marriage with a book club, older fans who have waited forever, young punks who want to check into an independent bookstore on Facebook, freaks who highlight the bad parts and yearn to reeanact, withdrawn dullards longing for the companionship promised by a page-turner, women who want more out of a book than a feisty fuck with a commitmentphobic banker. Everyone loves King and I love you and today I should be thinking about how I’m going to part my hair and whether or not you’re going to lick your fingers when we eat. Instead I talk about Danny Fucking Torrance, all growed up! I love Stephen King as much as any red rum drinking American, but I resent the fact that I, the bookseller, am his bitch.
You’re an MFA candidate and we might talk literature tonight. For all I know, you could be so nervous that you collapse into a fog of pretension and praise a crap-infested chapbook of experimental narrative. And what am I going to say in return? Can you believe Danny Torrance is all growed up? Books don’t get any more commercial and anti-chap than Stephen Fucking King (unless you want to talk about Dan Brown, but you can’t compare the two because Dan Brown’s not literary). And if Mr. King were here, he would be on my side; he knows that first dates require effort. He also likes books other than his own and he’d be proud of these folks if they read something they didn’t hear about on Good Morning America (but not a chapbook of experimental narrative). Plus, Mr. King owes me; I sell his fucking books! Of course, he’s not here and the sun loiters, still, and the register is tired and I’ve had the same conversation eighty-five thousand times today.
“Did you see that review in the New York Times?”
“I sure did.”
“Can you just wait to read it? Jack Nicholson was so scary in the first!”
Philistines and I smash the register when it gets stuck—again—and I hit it because time is moving too slowly. I miss you and I want you and finally here’s a woman who’s not buying Stephen King. She’s buying Rachael Ray cookbooks and she acts like I hit her, not the register. She does the passive-aggressive sigh and starts pounding at her Twitter app on her phone:
Bad customer service is the worst! #mooneyrare
She wants me to see and she lets the cursor blink and okay, lady, okay. I apologize for my ill manner and tell her that Rachael Ray is underrated and she deletes her tweet, which is good. There comes a point when the universe needs to get on your side or go fuck itself and the universe gets in line. I take a moment to send a tweet from Benji’s account:
Home Soda and absinthe? Yes. #fiveoclocksomewhere
The next asshole is rummaging through his wallet for his credit card to buy his Stephen King so he can (fingers crossed) read about a sicko doing sick things because he’s too much of a pussy to do all the sick things he wants to do, things he’s probably wanted to do since he was a kid.
That’s the problem with this never-ending centipede of lemmings, Beck. You know they’re all pussies, each and every one of ’em. They buy these books to get scared because their lives are too easy. How pathetic is that?
“They say the ending is amazing and you can’t see it coming.”
“Yes, they do. Is that cash or charge?”
You think Benji was a tough dude to date? Well, try having the same conversation over and over while Benji’s in the cage trying to dig his way to China. Yeah, you put up with his bullshit, Beck, but did you ever lock him in a cage and listen to him bellyache 24/7? The kid is allergic to gluten and peanuts and yeast and dust and sugar and Visine. I got him a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and he went batshit on me and said the mere smell of peanut butter could kill him.
Please.
You know what the fucker is really allergic to? Real life. I’m doing the kid a favor. When he gets outta here, he’s gonna be pissed about being locked up but he’s also gonna thank me for making him into a man.
“I own every book Stephen King has ever written.”
“That’s great. That’s something to be proud of.”
But did you read them, fuckface?
And, honestly, Beck, do you know how hard it is, sleeping at the shop just in case Mr. Mooney does a late-night drop-by to look at the seventies porn in the basement? Answering questions about Stephen Fucking King while knowing that I gotta buy apples and honey for the pansy in the cage—I gotta pray the whole time I’m out with you tonight that Curtis is too stoned to be curious and try and get downstairs, that Mooney’s too old and lazy to want his porn. Beck, I love you, I do, but you don’t know about problems. I gotta be aware of the distant possibility that I leave and Curtis takes over and one random old dude with bank decides that today is the day he coughs up six grand for a signed Hemingway and Curtis calls Mooney and Mooney limps over here and the three of them go downstairs and make the worst day of Benji’s life into the best day. I have problems. Real ones.
“Can you believe all these people? I thought I was the only one who buys paper books anymore!”