Episode Two: The Nietzschean Nymph

[Rated R]

I met Panicker two years before marrying into his family, the same afternoon I wandered into his strip-mall bookshop. A loud clanging sound welcomed me as I pulled the handle of the glass metal frame door. His immense stature loomed over the center island-like counter; his ponch sat uncomfortably atop the lap, forming a loose seal between belly and thighs. The rickety director's chair barely held his form, and I couldn't help but notice the gray cat lying within his creases. Neither of them looked up, nor greeted me, until Panicker finished reading the last page of the book's chapter.

Slowly lifting his eyes from the page, I had already moved into the stacks, blindly searching, tying to make sense of the store's eclectic and unusual organization. Beyond the store-front remainders, romance quickly greeted me, imperceptibly at first, but then blended into the parse section of fiction. I was confused, thinking that I must have missed an important strip-mall divider sign directing the customer to the next section. As I rounded the corner, meeting with what I took to be World History, I heard his voice blurt out.

"Science fiction is in the back."

It was a warm, detached, husky voice, catching me off guard. His eyes looked down as he started the next chapter.

"Actually, I'm looking for the Landscaping and Architecture section." I answered from behind the shelves. I paused waiting for his response, interested that he assumed I was looking for the science fiction section.

"You seem more Science Fiction," not caring that the comment might actually strike me as a slight insult, nor concerned that I was out of his sight. The gray striped cat stretched easily across his expanding lap. Panicker raised his head this time, looking up from above the top of his thick black framed glasses.

"I guess I never really got into it." I wandered from the stacks, my eyes gazed in his direction, first meeting the gray cat's, rounded, stretching.

"Is it friendly?" I asked.

"He only bites small children," He cleared his throat.

I smiled at his sarcasm.

The large open space behind his center island-like counter housed three colorful plastic lawn chairs, providing a suggestive boundary for the children's section. Over-sized picture and activity books rested undisturbed on the two plastic tables in its center, toys in plastic crates waiting, begging, to be disturbed.

"Your cat hates children?" I asked glancing back over my shoulder as I unintentionally entered the Science Fiction section.

"Deeply." He shifted in his seat, reaching for his true-black plastic index card box. "He hates to be held."

"What's his name?" leaving the Science Fiction section, sitting down, becoming comfortable in one of the plastic children's chairs, as I fondly remembered my youth.

"Whose name?"

Like many bookshop owners, he had been asked too many times for the name of a title, an author, or a book. Years ago, Panicker had become impatient and unsupportive of these tedious questions -- "it was the real downside of the job," he would explain to me months later. He had learned the hard way that his customers were not interested in his favorite authors or titles, nor his opinions about writing, stlyle, nor form, so he began developing an ability for generalities. He would learn the sections.

"Your cat's name?" Pausing, "I was just curious."

"Get out of the children's section. It's closed."

I stayed seated, ignoring him, moving the robotic arm of a toy I found in the plastic crate. Its elbows were fixed at 90 degree angles and its hard plastic chest formed an upside-down triangle, pointing downward to its weighty lego-like feet. Pushing on the backs of the 90 degree elbows made a punching movement toward the romance section. As many people, I suspected, I wondered what it would be like to have the batteries to this toy. It was already pretty interesting without them.

The Children's section occupied most of the space behind the counter, while the front of the store was dedicated to Romance, True Crime, and the Coffee Table sized Remainders. The Remainders were books that publishers couldn't sell. They were the unwanted, the Remainders of the publishing mega-houses. Above the shelves of the Romance section' overgrown green leafed tendrils cascaded downward toward the floor, contradicting the room's painted plywood feel.

"Really, What is the cat's name?" I asked again trying to re-establish conversation.

"The cat?"

"Yeah, the cat." The unnamed cat rolled onto its back as if it knew I was asking about it. His paws stretched outward, beyond Panicker's lap, for an invisible cork or carpet covered pad into which he could flex his seemingly aching claws. Panicker flipped over an index card he had pulled from his true-black index box. He continued writing. After several unsuccessful attempts at kneading the invisible cork pad, the unnamed cat rolled back into Panicker's lap and sank his claws deeply into his meaty left thigh.

"Daaaaaamn, BIILLIE" his voice raised louder than the bookshop's smooth jazz stationed stereo system. Panicker moved quickly, like a gymnast, pushing Billie, the gray cat to the floor.

I laughed, "Fickle things, aren't they?"

He began to regain his composure on the director's chair, creaking, moaning, just as the hemp string brass Tibetan bells began to jingle and clang again. He prematurely broke his silence:

"Romance is to your right."

A woman had entered the metal framed, glass door, and moved over-confidently (almost over compensating) through the Remainders, directly toward Panicker's Central Island Station. Neither Romance nor True Crime distracted her path. She seemed to float effortlessly to the Central Island, looking Panicker directly in the eyes.

"I'm not looking for romance."

He noticed that her eyes were set deep, and jet-black. Filled with anticipation, anger, yet also kindness. Her hair rode lightly upon her shoulders like it was going for a ride atop a lion.

"My uncle told me I should read Nee-chee."

"Are you sure you're not looking for the romance section?"

Panicker prided himself on his ability to "read" a customer. He'd been devloping it for four and a half years and had often impressed himself. He could tell immediately what section his customers wanted -- sometimes weeks or months before the customers knew themselves. He thought of himself as an Adviser more than a book seller, and, as I would discover later, his accuracy rating was about 90 percent. He kept index note cards in a true-black plastic box under the counter and made notes to himself about each of the customers that entered his store. On the one side, his predictive read for the customer and notes about his or her distinctive characteristics. On the other, he recorded the customer's visits to the shop and the sections from which they purchased. Section convergence would usually occur within one or two visits. Sometimes, if it was an especially intractable customer, it might take four but never more than five.

"Did Nee-chee write romance?" The woman with the deep-set, pensive eyes asked instead of answering.

"Of course, and much more." He searched for Billie, the gray striped cat.

"Really?" Her eyes brightened at the thought of a complex author. "So my Uncle was right?"

"Of course he was right, he's family." Panicker stood from his director's chair, walked around his Center Island, preparing to show her to the Philosophy section. He stopped briefly, noticing her inquisitive gaze toward his other customer...the one playing with the plastic robot, sitting in the children's section.

"Please, come." Panicker interupted.

Inside the Philosophy section, that strangely lit section that could have easily housed the erotic material, she stood among the stacks, out of my view. I could smell her subtle smell, musky and hints of patchouli but not overwhelming. As she began pulling books from the shelves, Panicker reached below the counter for a fresh index card. The chair tested its boundaries. I pushed the button on the robot's back, its clenched fist hand sprang into the center of the plastic chairs. As I moved to retrieve it, I could hear the other customer on the other side of shelf, speaking back to the back-cover of a book. The robot's hand had been reaffixed and shot again into the center of the Children's section when she rested her lavender, yellow butterfly spotted purse on the customerless space of the bookshop's Philosophy section floor. She sat down. Her clothes complimented the steel blue carpet.

"He hides him cleverly on the backside of the children's section." I said, finally, out loud to no one in particular.

She stood up, emerged from Philosophy, and approached my weakening plastic chair. Her hands clenched Beyond Good and Evil as if she had been caught stealing it. She looked away, then again, directly at me.

"Is he any good?" she asked searching for my answer.

"Panicker?" I answered.

"Who? No, Niet-shee," examining the spelling of the name on the book. She responded angrily, biting the inside of her lip, while also making a commitment not to bite the inside of her lip.

"His aphorisms are like early-modern versions of a book of quotes. They try to keep it 'real' before keeping it real was even a concept." I paused, "Yeah, he's good. Intense. Thoughtful." It had been years since the last time I read Beyond Good and Evil so, as many people in these situations do, I moved from the specifics of the text to the humanness of the author. "He was supposedly crazy? and repressed in 19th Century European culture?"

She distantly examined me for several moments, then spotted a colorful chair directly across from my seat. She returned, staring. My gaze continued with hers, until she broke, looking down into her brightly optimistic purse. Digging through a lighter, the birth control, her wallet, car keys, she managed to find a receipt from the Duty-Free shop in Berlin.

"I don't know about aphorisms. I'm looking for inspiration," her pen pressed hard into the scrap of receipt. She stood from the chair, tossed the paper in my direction, and walked toward the front of the store. "Meet me here Friday night at..." her sentence broke off as she turned to Panicker, asking what time he closes the shop on Fridays.

"Next Friday?"

"Yes, next Friday. Is it different than this Friday?" She was growing impatient.

Panicker began to respond with a story about his Friday evenings and the unpredictability of store hours. His hands made a clicking sound, summoning the cat.

"8 O'clock." He finally responded.

"Good. Tell your friend to be here at 7." Her tone was direct, impatient. She turned and smiled at me.

The Tibetan door chime clashed violently as she pushed the strip-mall's glass door open. I tried to divert my eyes from her tightly cut skirt as she turned back to the children's section, "7:00pm sharp." I nodded just as she added, "I'll bring the wine."

"I'll start a tab." Panicker shouted to her as the resonating bells vibrated.

::

One week later, I opened the metal framed, glass door as the sun was beginning to wane in the west. The chime announced my entry, violently. Panicker sat, reading in his director's chair, looking up as the bells sounded. I approached his Center Island. Billie was sleeping, perched on the counter in the lid of a cardboard box. Lying next to the lid, the box itself was filled with paperback books, neatly arranged militarily precise, spines facing up. Billie's eyes opened, and he shifted slightly.

As I approached the Central Island, the smell of days-old, stale cigarette smoke filled my nose. I reached, gently petting the lion-like child hating cat.

"I would have never pegged you as a smoker." Billie livened, beginning to move, stand, and turn 180 degrees. I softly massaged the back of his striped neck.

"I'm not." He paused. "Many of the customers are." His large body shifted and the director's chair creaked, begging for mercy once again.

Several years ago, new book sales began declining when the Mega-More opened across the street. They bought in bulk, obscene bulk, and sold their books 60% off the cover price. He couldn't compete with their prices so he began buying and selling used books as a way to stay in business, to finish his 5 year lease.

"Romance readers like their smokes. They also like to read in bed, blowing their smoke into the pages of my books. I vomited the first time I smelled it. Imagine, reading 20 to 30 of these so-called books a week. And then collecting them, placing them in a box, a brown paper bag, returning them to me for a couple of dollars. My bookshop has become an oasis for the one handed reader."

He challenged me to a test. "Go to Romance, smell. Not too close but smell. The older the copyright, the stronger the scent. I can tell the book's date based on its smell."

I laughed thinking of cancer sniffing dogs. Animals with a supposedly acute sense of smell.

"Go on." He urged. "Your nymph won't be here for 15 minutes."

"My nymph?" I laughed as I stepped up onto the raised floor under the Romance section. I grabbed a random book off the shelf -- I couldn't find a discernible organization. Authors were mixed with titles, book spine titles seemed to blend into a foggy sea of greens, reds, blues, and white. I removed a book from one of the stacks, noticing the muscular and shirtless Native American Indian whose pony-tailed jet black hair waved flag-like over South Dakota's Badlands. In one arm, he ravaged a voluptuous blond-haired maiden; her white cotton sun-dress flapped in the Badland's winds. In the other arm, his artfully sculpted bicep and forearm reached upward, toward a smoke filled sky, summoning the two eagles floating in the slipstream above his maiden. "Two Eagles Taking," the lower quarter section of the book's cover read. There was no mention of an author, only the words, "The Western Plains Series." I turned the book on its side but found no authorship. Opening it, examining the publisher and copyright page, the smell of years old, chocking smoke filled my nose. My throat's natural reflex kicked, I dropped it as I backed away.

"For fuck's sake." I shouted.

Panicker's laugh filled the room, surprising me by its level of intensity, its volume. I wasn't even aware he could laugh.

"You're kidding me, right?" I turned the corner, moving away from the scent of the Romance section. "That's disgusting."

Panicker regained his control as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It called out as if it was being tortured.

"Oh my." His eyes were wetly dabbed with laughter.

"I get boxes, no bags, of that shit everyday. It's my best selling merchandise. Some customers read 30 to 60 books a week. They bring them to me because they can't take them anywhere else. I think they end up re-reading their own books three or four times before they realize they've already read it. I'm told the publishers now use computers to mass generate them. A program can change the characters' names, the setting, the nationalities of the men, the action, the plot -- the women are always white, lily white. Voluptuous and vulnerable, in fact. Next month they're set to release the 'Reconstruction Series.' It's narrated by an Army Officer's widow as is set to be cross-promoted with a made for TV series about Civil War Reconstruction."

Panicker reached for his coffee carafe (sp?). "I brew it in the morning but the Thermos seems to keep it warm all day."

I walked toward the back of the counter, sat down on a plastic, colorful chair, absorbing his words. Billie hopped in my lap, shifting, kneading my thighs, purring.

Several moments passed in silence when he raised his voice, "Sometimes I remind my customers that I am Indian too." He grinned, shifting his weight as he spoke. "But they don't seem to want 'this' kind of Indian."

"What? Sarcastic? Rude? and unappreciative of their literary choices type of Indian?" I responded sarcastically.

"Exactly," he responded without much thought.

"So I am curious. How do you?...." my question was interrupted by the Tibetan jingle bells. I had almost forgotten about my Nietzschean nymph-date.

::

Her doe-like, black eyes looked mildly bloodshot as she approached the bookshop counter. Billie was far from removed, hopping off my lap exploring the elsewhere. He wandered into the bathroom where his litter-box sat, smelling much better than the Romance section.

"You won't believe this," she said, storming, seering into the bookshop. Panicker reached for his plastic box but was interrupted by the beeping credit card machine.

"Then why bother telling us?" He answered with obvious discomfort, shifting in his chair.

"What?" She asked not considering his not so subtle question.

"Allen is fucking Sally."

"A transvestite?" Panicker asked earnestly.

"What?" She asked again, ignoring his comment, looking to me for validation.

"Replace fucking with 'actually.' He was being funny. Old school grammatical style." I closed the pop-up dinosaur book I was reading.

"Actually What?" she shouted missing Panicker's attempt at humor and my attempt at clarification. "Sally's husband is my friend." She paused. "I've known him since high school."

"And who's Allen?" I asked.

"One of the fucking pilots. The fucking pilot." She responded impatiently, without worrying if actual children were sitting in the childrens' section.

"Sounds like the name of the next Romance series." Panicker suggested as he shifted in his chair. The chair that screamed for mercy. I held back my laugh at his deadpan inside humor and instead made a coughing sound from the base of my throat.

Michelle began to tell us of her flight to Berlin, the episode in the hotel, the affair. I began to wonder why I didn't know her name.

"Sally and I were sharing a room...like we do when our layover is in Berlin. We ate dinner downstairs in the bar and the next thing I know she's back in our room explaining why she's staying next door. In Allen's fucking room!" Her dramatics drew me in more deeply.

"His fucking room?" Panicker paused. "Man, there's a room dedicated to that?" He removed the paperback books from the cardboard box, inspecting them, creating small piles on the counter top according to genre: pirates, fighter pilots, housewives, indians, civil war soldiers, and so on.

Michelle was truly upset so I decided to break Panicker's sarcasm. I tried to speak to her.

"Come, sit with me." I pointed to the blue chair in the childrens' section. "I have a Merlot and a Riesling." I figured she might appreciate something a little fruity.

"Oh," she paused, then moved toward the childrens' section. "I completely forgot to bring the wine."

"No worries," I offered. "I had a hunch."

Billie brushed against the leg of my plastic chair. I reached down to pet and comfort him, Panicker re-stocked the Romance.

"I'm not having sex until I am married," she announced unexpectedly to the entire bookshop.

"Wise choice. It only gets people into trouble." My insincerity and sarcasm were at an all-time high. Panicker seemed to bring this out in me.

Her faded jeans were a size too small, even though her slender, size two frame, could probably pull-off a size smaller. Her iron creased, crispy-like, pure white sleeveless shirt accented her slender arms. I looked away quickly, spotting her petite sized breasts. It was obvious that her granite black, pointy elf shoes had recently been polished. She sat down in the plastic, primary colored lawn chair, crossing her legs, as I pulled the wine bottles and cork-screw from my backpack.

"Does your friend have anything to eat? I haven't eaten since this morning...in New York." She added.

Panicker emerged from the Romance stacks, "Not my friend." He disappeared into the back-room, emerging moments later with a tin box filled with "treats." He handed the tin box to Michelle, as he tossed in my direction a large skeleton key and key-ring both attached to an empty plastic water bottle. "Close up when you're finished. Don't make a mess. And don't even think of letting the cat out."

::

Michelle and I sat for hours discussing her friend's loveless marriage, her life of traveling to foreign countries and staying in three, four star hotels, how she was learning German, her dropping out of junior college as a music major, her quest to become a singer/songwriter, and her interest in one day settling down and raising children. I discovered her age, 29, and that her current flight schedule meant she lived mostly out of a suitcase traveling from city to city. Or, if it was her Friday night off, she stayed at her mother's house here in town. Her uncle had been staying with them for at least for the past nine months but she was unsure of the exact dates. It seemed to disturb her that she couldn't recall exactly.

"He's a real hippie-type. I think you two would get along."

"Why's that?" I asked, curious of the connection she had just made in her mind.

"I don't know." She said. "He listens to me and is able to go with the flow of a conversation. You strike me as that type." She paused finishing her glass of wine, and then asked, "Are you a hippie too?"

"I've never been to a Dead show if that's what you mean. Do I look like a hippie?"

"Yeah, kind of. Your hair's shaggy, you study gardening, and you've traveled to Africa, Europe and Asia."

"Geez, I guess that makes me a hippie." I paused sipping from the wine glass. "Or just a cliche'."

"I don't believe in cliche's," she responded. "They're too...limiting...too easy. Some of the people I've met on flights would appear, on the surface, to be business types, doctors, lawyers, you know? Traveling for work, for a conference, for a meeting. Once I get to know them, they're different. Deeper. Not what I was expecting."

Billie interrupted her, hoping into her lap, almost causing her to spill her wine. She pushed the cat, offering, "Sorry, I'm allergic to cats."

Billie lunged twice, away from our direction, toward the Center Island and then hurried, butt high in the air, toward the Tibetan bells.

"I think you offended him. I hear he's a pretty picky lap selector."

"Oh well." She said a bit coldly. "I just can't do the whole cat thing."

"Right," I said and then added, "More wine?"

::

We kissed passionately on the floor of the childrens' section. My mind, blood raced. She kissed with reckless abandon, then softly, sensual, light and calculating. Her leg wrapped around mine, just as she insisted for a bit of distance. I was completely taken by the exchange, her patterned rhythmic breathing...but then she stopped.

"I'm not going to have sex again before marriage." Her voice sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.

"I remember." I whispered into her ear, I adjusted myself, opening my eyes.

"My therapist, she's a Christian too, told me I shouldn't do it again until I am married." Her lips pressed on my lower neck, "It's what Father-God wants for me."

We continued like this for the next three months. We'd make out on the floor of the children's section, grind our bodies into a heated frenzy, then stop before it became "inappropriate." She'd show up around 7, Panicker would lock up and leave early, and we would drink wine and make out. Each time my blood would race but I enjoyed the challenge of exercising self control. Although I was only 22, I enjoyed the embrace of an older woman. I enjoyed the chaos, the passion. Running six marathons had taught me to appreciate a bit of physical and mental pain, as well as demonstrate the power of the mind to push the body into chaotic spheres, calmly. Besides, she just interested me. She brought something to my life that I had been missing since I left California several months earlier -- a sense of routine, anticipation, and of course sexual excitement.

I began working at Panicker's, first only on Friday afternoon and evenings. Then, in the weekday evenings after my classes ended. My landscape architecture class kept me busy, reading, but I managed to dedicate time to it while I worked at the bookshop. Without many customers, it was a great place to read. Often Panicker would just hang around, long after he was scheduled to leave, reading. Periodically, one of us would read to the other something peculiar that we had just read. Conversations would ensue. Panicker taught me how to 'read' people as they entered the store. He taught me how to direct them to the section in which they truly belonged. It was an inexact science, but Panicker had a knack for it and keen insights into his customers.

The same day I received my acceptance notice for a Summer Research Fellowship at Kyoto University, studying under the same people that had been rebuilding are caring for Kyoto's famous gardens for decades, Panicker also informed me he was planning to close the bookshop, for good. Troubles began when he was forced to compete against the Mega-More. Their 60% markoffs made it nearly impossible to stay in business. And, then, John's Club moved around the corner. At that point, the decision was easy. "Going Out of Business" signs now filled the showroom Remainder section. One Friday afternoon, as he packed books into cardboard boxes but before Michelle's arrival, he informed me that he and his family were moving to London, to live with his sister for a while. To start over.

Of course, I was saddened. He had become one of my few friends in this strange town but, considering his family connections and his dismal customer traffic, I wasn't really surprised. I was just happy the gig lasted as long as it did. I liked Panicker, he promised me that our paths would again cross and there was something certain, comforting, in his statement.

Like clock-work, Michelle arrived. Her flight from Berlin had been delayed so she missed her connection in New York, her flight back to my new town. She arrived directly from the airport, luggage carrier in tow, so she could change out of her flight attendant uniform.

I told her about my internship in Kyoto. She told me about Jennifer, the one sleeping with Ricardo, the pilot. "Another fucking pilot." Panicker taped his last box for the evening and resisted the urge to be sarcastic.

To this point I thought I understood her reluctance to have sex -- hearing about the numerous problems it had created for her colleagues and friends. I sympathised, and compromised. I finished my last glass of wine in the middle of a full-on body grind, x-tian style. She stopped.

"There's something you must see with me. Come."

I fed the cat, locked the door, and sat silently in the leathery passenger seat. Our first stop for the night: a liquor store.

"Need to pick up some drinks." Winking.

She bought a 5th of Grey Goose. It was the first time hard liquor had been introduced into our relationship. We drove east, fast, and exited the Inwood exit.

The Inwood Theatre opened in the late 1940s. It's a theatre in the truest sense. Years later, the day after a devastating academic blow, I went alone to the Theatre to watch whatever was showing at that time. It became my favorite place to watch movies. The art-deco feel complimented even the worst of movies.

Michelle purchased two tickets, two blue slushies at the consession stand, and we entered one of the smaller, more intimate projection rooms. She pulled the vodka bottle from her coat pocket, she leaned over and kissed me on the mouth.

"I really want you to see this movie. I saw it in Berlin a couple of weeks ago. All I thought about was you."

Her admission to thinking about me caught me off guard. I had assumed she just lived her life during the other 6 days of the week. But here we were making-out in a new location, a beautiful theatre, drinking blue slushy vodka drinks on a Friday night. She placed her hand on my thigh as the lights dimmed softly, the room sank motionless into the dark.

The opening scene of "Go Fish," flashed onto the screen as I quickly tried to focus. Her hand brushed against my thigh, closer than it had ever traveled before, she sipped from a blue slushie.

As the movie's story arc was about to crest, she leaned over to me and whispered, "We have to leave. Now. Please." I went with the flow, the chaos, so we left the theatre before the movie ended. The flourescent lobby lights and "Coming Soon!" movie cardboard stands stunned my closely drunk eyes, as we left the theatre and headed to her car.

"Were do you live?"

I realized she had never visited my apartment. She had never met my two roommates, but indeed they knew about her. And, she had probably never spent too much time in that part of town. I gave directions as best I could, thinking she would just drop me off and go back to her mother's house.

As we pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex she slammed on the brakes, just missing a small child crawling on all fours.

"Do you really live here?" she asked questioning my sanity.

"Yeah, I really do."

The child's mother stood in a doorway across the asphault parking lot, calling out.

"That's so fucked up." Michelle shouted inside the car, then opened the window and shouted, "There's a child in front of my car!"

It was 1 am and the courtyard lights dimly flickered. Several neighbors walked to their balcony to see what was going on in the parking lot.

"Stella," a woman shouted from a distant balcony, "You better get your child inside."

The child crawled safely, toward its mother, into her desperation, humiliated eyes.

"I had no idea she could crawl so fast." She shouted into the courtyard, for what seemed to be forgiveness.

Michelle gripped the steering wheel, parking in an open slot.

My room-mate, Maria, was visiting her parents in Buffalo; Reggie had gone to his Grand-mother's house in Mississippi. It was memorial day weekend so, for the first time all year, I had the place to myself for a few days.

Michelle stubbed her big toe on the carboard box posing as a dinner table. Her drunkenness burst forth through her gutteral laugh.

"is this really your place?"

"Yeah." I stinted my response.

She asked which room was mine and then pulled me by my shirt-collar into it, kissing me, deeply, with passion.

"With many issues." I would think two weeks later.

Her body heaved, grinded as she unbuttoned my shirt, removing my tank top undershirt. I could feel our blood boil; we both lost any self control.

::

The following Friday evening, I sat in Panicker's chair taking inventory of the remaining books that did not sell during our "Blow-out Week." Panicker spent several hundred dollars to advertise his "We're Done" sale. He and I boxed books, taking them to the left-overs auction, to try to recover at least a portion of what he had spent. It was better than nothing. His spirit had not been broken.

Billie rested in my lap, silently, sleeping. It was 7:20pm and she was now officially late. Even later, closing the bookshop, as displacement, unrequitted love, and break-up stories entered my head, I somehow remembered my own words, "Enjoy the Chaos."

Three weeks passed until the bookshop closed. As I packed my bags for my summer internship, I remembered thinking Chaos was something to embrace. Structure an attempt to impose. The two formed black and white categories on my mental lists. It way to calm the chaos.

I have to admit that I missed Michelle, her randomness, her chaos. It was this longing that made me place the call. Although she gave me the number weeks ago, I had never attempted to call her mother's house. The phone rang, several times. Finally, her mother's voice answered, "Hello?"

"Ms. Santiere?", Michelle told me she had been divorced several years before. And it meant a lot to her to be called Ms. Santiere.

"Is this Zule?" I was unaware that she was aware of me.

Swallowing hard, I said, "Yeah, it's me."

"Michelle's wedding was beautiful...I am so sorry you had to miss it." She sounded sincere. With feeling.

"Please tell her Congratulations."

"I will sweety. Have a great trip to Japan...I hear you're quite the vagabond."

"Right, quite the hippie, I am."

"No problem, sweetie, not everyone from the south is anti-hippie. Take care of yourself and please be safe in that country."

I stood frozen, motionless, listening to her last words as the receiver's white-noise static became dominant. Billie slept comfortably in the empty childrens' section. Van Morrison's, "Hymns to the silence," played over Panicker's stereo system.