you are free to go, and we promise never to bother you again. In fact, we will give you a pass-card, a voucher of sorts, in case you are, uhm . . . detained in a similar fashion in the future. Of course, chances of it happening again to you are infinitely slim. Nothing to be concerned about.”
“What the—” said the victim. “What kind of freaks are you? What if I don’t want to buy any book, okay? I have no money, okay? I got my own books, okay? Look, I have class tomorrow and I just came in here to study. Don’t believe me? My backpack is still out there in the store—”
“Okay, okay, and okay. That’s fine and dandy,” I said, beginning to untie the kid’s hands from behind. Those famous shoelaces made some tricky Gordian knots, it must be noted. “Glad to hear that you own books and are familiar with the general principle of it, really I am. But you will buy this one more book. Just one. ‘Poe’ on the cover.”
I stopped and then stared at him with my coldest, most unblinking out-of-the-crypt glare normally reserved for special occasions and imbued with a writer’s unique blend of solitude.
“Don’t make me upset,” I said, while a bitter world of intensity and yearning was churning inside, all the pent-up agonized nights of pondering and writing in the dark silence, with only an astringent drink in a glass on the table and the weak candlelight illuminating the despair in my face, the decaying wistfulness of memories, of the many a long ago in a kingdom by the sea. . . . “You don’t want to do that. Be a good kid and buy the book, and all will be well.”
“Uh—” said the kid, seeing only the smallest extent of my intensity, just that tip of the iceberg—but it was enough. “Okay.”
“Good,” I said with a triumphant symphonic up-swell of a smile, adjusted my spectacles, and then finished untying him.
As usual, the end was the same. After the initial burst of passion and the protestations, the anger and the fear and the general puzzlement at the oddity—and who could blame them?—it always worked out like this: accommodation and complacence.
We always ended up with Pavlovian trained puppies. Had we been evil in the true sense of the bottomless abyss, we could have raised a consumer army and told them to go forth and buy pounds of manure and Acme widgets at random.
Good thing we were merely old windbags with a personal agenda.
For the record, it’s not as if we threatened these kids with anything specific, just the general suggestion of woo-woo and weirdness. Could it really be that the nebulous unknown we barely hinted at, was the worst imaginable thing for them? This I pondered at such moments, every single damn time; the vast terror inherent in the unknown. . . .
“Don’t try to run, kid,” said Mark also known as Sam—or was it the other way around? Frankly, I give up—taking a long pull of the coffee drink. “Just walk forward at a steady pace. Steady as a steamboat. Remember, we are right beside you.”
“And behind you, sirrah!” Walter added.
We all started to move in a rambling, elderly—ahem, distinguished—cavalcade as soon as James gently prodded the kid off the barstool.
He staggered a bit, rubbing his wrists and stared at us with rounded eyes. As always there was that barrier of time and comprehension between us, a fine translucent film separating the nature of the look of his eyes and ours—never the twain shall meet.
Then, after arranging our motley troupe of literary comedians, with him leading, we left the restroom and returned to the front of the store, walking as might a casual group of harmless, middle-aged, slightly funny-dressed book club members-cum-belletrists who get together here in the bookstore on a regular basis; who discuss the latest page-turner with ardent disdain and critique each other’s memoirs and other authorial messes with eternally hopeful aspirations.
In a sense, that’s who we were. But we were also
“What the—” said the victim. “What kind of freaks are you? What if I don’t want to buy any book, okay? I have no money, okay? I got my own books, okay? Look, I have class tomorrow and I just came in here to study. Don’t believe me? My backpack is still out there in the store—”
“Okay, okay, and okay. That’s fine and dandy,” I said, beginning to untie the kid’s hands from behind. Those famous shoelaces made some tricky Gordian knots, it must be noted. “Glad to hear that you own books and are familiar with the general principle of it, really I am. But you will buy this one more book. Just one. ‘Poe’ on the cover.”
I stopped and then stared at him with my coldest, most unblinking out-of-the-crypt glare normally reserved for special occasions and imbued with a writer’s unique blend of solitude.
“Don’t make me upset,” I said, while a bitter world of intensity and yearning was churning inside, all the pent-up agonized nights of pondering and writing in the dark silence, with only an astringent drink in a glass on the table and the weak candlelight illuminating the despair in my face, the decaying wistfulness of memories, of the many a long ago in a kingdom by the sea. . . . “You don’t want to do that. Be a good kid and buy the book, and all will be well.”
“Uh—” said the kid, seeing only the smallest extent of my intensity, just that tip of the iceberg—but it was enough. “Okay.”
“Good,” I said with a triumphant symphonic up-swell of a smile, adjusted my spectacles, and then finished untying him.
As usual, the end was the same. After the initial burst of passion and the protestations, the anger and the fear and the general puzzlement at the oddity—and who could blame them?—it always worked out like this: accommodation and complacence.
We always ended up with Pavlovian trained puppies. Had we been evil in the true sense of the bottomless abyss, we could have raised a consumer army and told them to go forth and buy pounds of manure and Acme widgets at random.
Good thing we were merely old windbags with a personal agenda.
For the record, it’s not as if we threatened these kids with anything specific, just the general suggestion of woo-woo and weirdness. Could it really be that the nebulous unknown we barely hinted at, was the worst imaginable thing for them? This I pondered at such moments, every single damn time; the vast terror inherent in the unknown. . . .
“Don’t try to run, kid,” said Mark also known as Sam—or was it the other way around? Frankly, I give up—taking a long pull of the coffee drink. “Just walk forward at a steady pace. Steady as a steamboat. Remember, we are right beside you.”
“And behind you, sirrah!” Walter added.
We all started to move in a rambling, elderly—ahem, distinguished—cavalcade as soon as James gently prodded the kid off the barstool.
He staggered a bit, rubbing his wrists and stared at us with rounded eyes. As always there was that barrier of time and comprehension between us, a fine translucent film separating the nature of the look of his eyes and ours—never the twain shall meet.
Then, after arranging our motley troupe of literary comedians, with him leading, we left the restroom and returned to the front of the store, walking as might a casual group of harmless, middle-aged, slightly funny-dressed book club members-cum-belletrists who get together here in the bookstore on a regular basis; who discuss the latest page-turner with ardent disdain and critique each other’s memoirs and other authorial messes with eternally hopeful aspirations.
In a sense, that’s who we were. But we were also
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