Fiction: The Bookstore
Sep. 30th, 2011 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clare_dragonflyTitle: The Bookstore
Word count: 1035
Rating: G
Prompt:whatawaytoburn's: "Tell me a story about a bookstore that's never in the same place twice."
Notes: I wrote another story about this bookstore once. (I think it had the same title.) It was terrible. But it's cool to discover that this bookstore moves around!
The sign said “We have every book in every language ever written,” and it was raining hard, so she went inside.
The short, bald black man behind the counter looked up and smiled at her. She smiled distractedly back. She didn’t really believe the sign—the little, aluminum building didn’t look like it could hold all the books published that year, let alone ever—but with all the books crammed into rows and rows of closely-spaced shelves, all the colors and words surrounding her, she was starting to imagine it was true.
The rain drummed loudly on the roof, cars roared and splashed by, the train whistle sounded as it left the station she’d just come from, but she barely heard any of it. The books took up her whole mind. She looked about for signs, hoping in vain for some way to focus her attention, but there were no genre indicators, and when she stepped closer to a shelf so she could read the titles she saw why. They were crammed together in no order that she could see, different titles, colors, authors’ names, and genres. A children’s book about elephants next to a romance novel. A nonfiction book about the Indo-European language family next to a thriller. Cheery chick-lit next to dark science fiction. Some were new, some were so cracked the titles were nearly unreadable; some were paperback, some were hardback; some were fat, some were thin, some were short, and some were fat.
She walked on, her hand trailing along the shelf, drawn purely by the force of her surfeit of choice. She let her eyes skip over the titles, reading only the ones that caught her attention for some reason. She smiled fondly at a collection of fairy tales that she’d had a copy of as a child, grinned with pleasure at the first book in a mystery series that she kept up with slavishly. But she didn’t stop until she reached a title she’d never seen before.
A Foreigner’s Guide to Living in Algeria. She reached toward it slowly and almost involuntarily, wondering for an irrational moment how the store could have known that her dream, since childhood, had been to live in Algeria. There was no reason that she knew of for that longing; she must have read some book about the country as a child, and it had kept its hold on her imagination ever since. She had read many books about the country, fiction and nonfiction, even poetry, but she’d never even heard of this one. And she’d been poor all her life, barely getting by on what was currently a secretary’s salary; she’d never been able to afford to visit the country she dreamed of so frequently.
She opened the book, a thick paperback, and opened it to a random page. Instructions to help with renting an apartment, and on the facing page, a house. She flipped through randomly, and it opened to a page on translation jobs. There was a whole section on finding a job, another on the different areas to live in the country, another on the culture and important differences from the US and UK. She felt her heart beating fast and her hand trembling.
She also felt a curious resentment toward the book. Where had it been all these years? If she had known such help had existed, maybe she would have had real hope of living her dream.
But there was no time for regrets, not really. She closed the book and pressed it to her chest. Then she noticed that there was another, identical book beside it, but this version was in French. She frowned, peering at it. She’d taken French in high school and retained a fair amount. Maybe it would be a good idea to buy this version too, if only to practice her French.
But then she looked at the price, though about how much cash she had, and reluctantly decided to leave the second version behind. It probably didn’t have much that would help her, and she could practice her French online.
It wasn’t until she’d paid for the book that her head cleared enough that she could hear that the rain had stopped. She went outside with her book in a bag and smiled up at the sky as she started her walk home.
—
She stayed up late that night reading the book, then read it on the train in, then the train home. Somewhere along the way she decided she wanted the French version, too. The more she could practice her French, the better, and it might have some information—perhaps from real Algerians—that the English version didn’t.
But when she got off the train, it was gone. She knew exactly where it had been, and there was nothing there, just an empty lot with bits of trash scudding through it. As there had been, she realized, every other time she’d passed this way. That was why she’d never noticed the bookstore before.
She touched the book in her purse to make sure it was real.
—
Five years later, she was living in Algiers, with a fulfilling job as a translator and a happy two-year marriage to an Algerian man. She was walking home from the doctor’s with joy in her heart, having just learned she was pregnant with her first child.
Then she saw the sign. It was in Arabic, but she’d learned enough of the language in the last few years that she was able to recognize it. “We have every book in every language ever written.”
It was a different building, a style of architecture that better fit this city, but she knew it was the same place. She walked inside and saw the same short, bald proprietor. He smiled and nodded at her, the same way he had those years ago, not seeming to recognize her. She trailed her eyes over the books and saw that they were all in Arabic and French.
A French book on pregnancy caught her eye. She smiled and bought it, knowing it would be the perfect way to let her husband know the good news.
Did you enjoy this story? You can see all my fiction posted at Dreamwidth!
Word count: 1035
Rating: G
Prompt:
whatawaytoburn's: "Tell me a story about a bookstore that's never in the same place twice."Notes: I wrote another story about this bookstore once. (I think it had the same title.) It was terrible. But it's cool to discover that this bookstore moves around!
The sign said “We have every book in every language ever written,” and it was raining hard, so she went inside.
The short, bald black man behind the counter looked up and smiled at her. She smiled distractedly back. She didn’t really believe the sign—the little, aluminum building didn’t look like it could hold all the books published that year, let alone ever—but with all the books crammed into rows and rows of closely-spaced shelves, all the colors and words surrounding her, she was starting to imagine it was true.
The rain drummed loudly on the roof, cars roared and splashed by, the train whistle sounded as it left the station she’d just come from, but she barely heard any of it. The books took up her whole mind. She looked about for signs, hoping in vain for some way to focus her attention, but there were no genre indicators, and when she stepped closer to a shelf so she could read the titles she saw why. They were crammed together in no order that she could see, different titles, colors, authors’ names, and genres. A children’s book about elephants next to a romance novel. A nonfiction book about the Indo-European language family next to a thriller. Cheery chick-lit next to dark science fiction. Some were new, some were so cracked the titles were nearly unreadable; some were paperback, some were hardback; some were fat, some were thin, some were short, and some were fat.
She walked on, her hand trailing along the shelf, drawn purely by the force of her surfeit of choice. She let her eyes skip over the titles, reading only the ones that caught her attention for some reason. She smiled fondly at a collection of fairy tales that she’d had a copy of as a child, grinned with pleasure at the first book in a mystery series that she kept up with slavishly. But she didn’t stop until she reached a title she’d never seen before.
A Foreigner’s Guide to Living in Algeria. She reached toward it slowly and almost involuntarily, wondering for an irrational moment how the store could have known that her dream, since childhood, had been to live in Algeria. There was no reason that she knew of for that longing; she must have read some book about the country as a child, and it had kept its hold on her imagination ever since. She had read many books about the country, fiction and nonfiction, even poetry, but she’d never even heard of this one. And she’d been poor all her life, barely getting by on what was currently a secretary’s salary; she’d never been able to afford to visit the country she dreamed of so frequently.
She opened the book, a thick paperback, and opened it to a random page. Instructions to help with renting an apartment, and on the facing page, a house. She flipped through randomly, and it opened to a page on translation jobs. There was a whole section on finding a job, another on the different areas to live in the country, another on the culture and important differences from the US and UK. She felt her heart beating fast and her hand trembling.
She also felt a curious resentment toward the book. Where had it been all these years? If she had known such help had existed, maybe she would have had real hope of living her dream.
But there was no time for regrets, not really. She closed the book and pressed it to her chest. Then she noticed that there was another, identical book beside it, but this version was in French. She frowned, peering at it. She’d taken French in high school and retained a fair amount. Maybe it would be a good idea to buy this version too, if only to practice her French.
But then she looked at the price, though about how much cash she had, and reluctantly decided to leave the second version behind. It probably didn’t have much that would help her, and she could practice her French online.
It wasn’t until she’d paid for the book that her head cleared enough that she could hear that the rain had stopped. She went outside with her book in a bag and smiled up at the sky as she started her walk home.
—
She stayed up late that night reading the book, then read it on the train in, then the train home. Somewhere along the way she decided she wanted the French version, too. The more she could practice her French, the better, and it might have some information—perhaps from real Algerians—that the English version didn’t.
But when she got off the train, it was gone. She knew exactly where it had been, and there was nothing there, just an empty lot with bits of trash scudding through it. As there had been, she realized, every other time she’d passed this way. That was why she’d never noticed the bookstore before.
She touched the book in her purse to make sure it was real.
—
Five years later, she was living in Algiers, with a fulfilling job as a translator and a happy two-year marriage to an Algerian man. She was walking home from the doctor’s with joy in her heart, having just learned she was pregnant with her first child.
Then she saw the sign. It was in Arabic, but she’d learned enough of the language in the last few years that she was able to recognize it. “We have every book in every language ever written.”
It was a different building, a style of architecture that better fit this city, but she knew it was the same place. She walked inside and saw the same short, bald proprietor. He smiled and nodded at her, the same way he had those years ago, not seeming to recognize her. She trailed her eyes over the books and saw that they were all in Arabic and French.
A French book on pregnancy caught her eye. She smiled and bought it, knowing it would be the perfect way to let her husband know the good news.
Did you enjoy this story? You can see all my fiction posted at Dreamwidth!
Aww...
Date: 2011-10-01 06:31 am (UTC)Re: Aww...
Date: 2011-10-02 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-01 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-02 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-03 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-03 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 02:36 pm (UTC)And such a wonderful bookstore idea too! ^-^
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-02 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 02:18 am (UTC)