Only, he wasn’t a priest. He was some kind of radio disc jockey who had written an autobiography and was dressing as a priest as a kind of gimmick. I must’ve stepped all the way out of the science-fiction section without realizing it, because the disc jockey looked straight at me and we locked eyes. For a minute I didn’t know which way this was going to go.
“I’d hate to see the other guy,” he said. Then his gang—and to me, they’d gone from being an entourage to a gang—turned and looked at me. Their audible gasps were drowned out by their laughter at their boss’s incredible wit. I turned on my heel and went back to the books, none of which seemed to want to judge me. I’d been through enough episodes like that in my life to let it wash over me. I picked up the Heinlein book—I think it was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress—and started reading again.
A few minutes later, as more and more fans arrived for the signing and the noise from the other side of the bookcases grew, a woman, one of the DJ’s gang, poked her head around the corner and found me.
“Hey, kid,” she said. I looked up, waiting for the punch line. “He didn’t mean anything by it. That kind of humor is just part of his act.”
That kind of humor? I wanted to ask her why people thought it was funny to cut someone else down. Why they thought it was okay to put someone in a situation where they had to defend themselves when there was no possible way of actually doing so. Why cruelty was so fucking hilarious.
But I didn’t. I wasn’t wired to ask those questions. Besides, I knew the answers. People act like that to make themselves feel superior. People suck.
“So,” the woman continued, “he wants you to have this.” It was a signed copy of the disc jockey’s book. She smiled as she handed it to me. I took it, and she walked away without another word. Part of me wanted to forgive the guy and to embrace and cherish that book. That’s what I always did. I made excuses for people, found reasons for their behavior. But this was different; it was a kind of turning point for me. It’s the moment where I think I finally got smart enough to be jaded.
I’ll bet any amount of money that the priest-disc-jockey douche bag had no idea that woman had given me the signed book. She was doing damage control. I moved a few books on the shelf in front of me and shoved the signed copy all the way to the back. It’s probably still sitting there today.
CHEYENNE BELLE
I wasn’t the biggest reader in the world, but I did like books. I went through a phase when I was fourteen when I read everything I could by V. C. Andrews. It was horror-romance stuff. You can eat it like candy.
Since then the only things I’d read were the books assigned in my high school English classes and maybe one or two more books during the summer.
Anyway, the bookstore had been at the mall for a long time, and I’d been there before, but I never really paid attention.
Once I started working there, I fell in love with the place—well, parts of it anyway. The corporation that ran the store treated books and employees like hammers and nails. Just like everything else in the grown-up world, businesspeople had found a way to suck the life out of something fun. I mean, how the hell do you suck the life out of books?
But maybe some of that was on me, too. I was in a really crappy place after the miscarriage, and everything in the world seemed a bit off. The hardest part was how completely alone I felt. I used to pride myself on that, on my ability to be alone. For years, I’d been projecting this whole tough-chick image onto the world, and now it was breaking down.
If I had just talked to Johnny or Harry, or even talked more to Richie, maybe I would’ve felt better. Instead, I kept my secrets locked up inside, and they were eating me alive. But what was I supposed to do? It’s not like my bandmates were rallying around me. Even something as stupid and small as me getting the job at the bookstore caused all this tension—Johnny looked hurt, Harry looked like he didn’t care, and Richie just took it in stride. Where were the high-fives? Where were the whoops and hollers and “Way to go, Chey”?
I needed someone or something to hold on to, only there was no one and nothing there.
The pain meds helped when I took them, but they would wear off and the bad feelings would start again. So I started taking them more often.
Dr. McCartney at Planned Parenthood had filled a second prescription of Vicodin a week after the miscarriage. When I asked for a third, she told me I had to come in and see her in person.
This time I made the trip alone. It was a weekday, so the protestors were mostly gone. Only one woman with an oak tag sign that said, Pray for the souls of the unborn, stood across the street. She was nice looking, with a plain white blouse and a gray skirt. But she looked angry and confused.
Unlike the phonies and lunatics who had been there on the weekend, I could tell that this lady had lost a baby or had an abortion, and it had messed with her mind. It’s like she needed to do something but couldn’t figure out what. I guess holding a sign on the side of the road was the best she could think of. I felt sorry for her.