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A twenty-five-year-old page falls out of my red clay diary today.
This must have been who I was way, way back then…
PRETTY BREEZE
The fluffy gentle cotton blue and white frock floats in the breeze past the book shop window.
Contained therein is a young slim body topped with blonde long hair flowing flowing flowing in the June-cool Thursday morning.
Another day at the shop, and I the shop owner stand at the window affixing postage stamps and pressing them against the upper right-hand corners of envelopes.
Just the other day, a white sports car pulls up before the parking meter in front of the book store. Moving gracefully out of the driver’s side is another young woman dressed in high heels and short short dress, her stockingless legs evenly toned and steady on the pavement as she walks around the front of the car and bends down to open the passenger door.
Gently, she removes a small basket from the seat and just as gently carries it to the book shop door and enters.
I recognize her as a regular customer who, a few weeks before, was body-large with wedlockless child, the same child who now occupies the basket she totes. I am introduced to the infant Sidney, whose tiny feet and toes curl in silent slumber, oblivious to the old books and the old relic proprietor and the young exotic dancer who has decided to raise Sidney on her own. She is now back to dancing at Sammy’s Go-Go Lounge.
The customer beams at the basket and its contents, picks up the books I’ve been holding for her these last few weeks. She pulls forth a large roll of five-dollar bills.
The tab is fifty dollars, so now I am ten five-dollar-bills richer.
I watch as she carries her precious cargo to the car and drives away, then go about my business and file the experience away with all the other unusual and eccentric happenings of book shop life.
The infant Sidney is a living contact between me and my customer.
It occurs to me later that the five-dollar bills are probably equally personal objects, since they have most likely been received as tax-free tips during her performances.
I have a sense of personal contact with all my customers, though the interchanges are varied and vexing and joyful and sad, depending on what and when and where and how.
They are all part of my family, in a way. In a way.
Sometimes I feel that the act of opening a book and finding a pressed flower or a love letter or a four-leaf clover is just as personal an act as discovering a basketed infant or a folded five-dollar bill recently pressed against the skin of a young exotic dancer in the remains of a big city on a cool June morning
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.