JACK IN THE BOX | redclaydiary.com

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Life, actually…

JACK IN THE BOX

A brief glimpse into my little corner of Paradise…

In the middle of the shop in the middle of the morning I’m in the middle of a 90%-sided conversation with a caller who wants to know which books I will purchase unseen from her simply by her phone descriptions…when a streetman walks in and hovers before me hoping to deflect my attention from the phone-in book lady.

All the while, other customers ebb and flow among the stacks.

Since the phone lady is first in queue, I’m asking the streetman to cruise around and browse until I’m finished—until the phone lady is finished, that is.

Got to be nice to everybody all at once, in the tradition of good old-fashioned over-the-countering.

The streetman’s body-shifting tells me he’s not here to buy anything, so after a while, I politely place the phone lady on hold to find out what’s up.

“I need some meat on the table…I got this jack-in-the-box that’s old.”

Oh, he wishes to sell me something.

“Are you wanting to sell it?” I ask. “Yes,” he says.

I notice that he isn’t carrying anything with him. “Do you have it here?” I ask. “No, but I can go get it,” he replies. “OK,” I say.

I continue listening to the caller as she names the names of books, most of which I can’t purchase because 1) they are not titles that my regular customers wish to purchase 2) I already have multiple copies on hand 3) they’re in bad shape 4) and so on and et cetera.

But I keep listening, because about every fifteenth title is indeed something I might consider buying once I examine it. She continues the litany, I continue checking on my other customers to see whether they’re finding what they need.

The streetman re-enters the store with a shaggy canvas bag, so I motion that I’ll be with him in a mo’. He is sweating from the asphalt heat.

By now, the phone lady has mentioned perhaps a boxful of books that I would consider purchasing should she bring them in…but she’s not through. I realize what I have suspected all along: despite my imagined super powers I simply cannot properly handle a dozen transactions at once.

“Could you call back in an hour so we can continue this?” I ask, since I need to deal with the customers and the streetman. She agrees, I hang up and go around the counter to see what’s in the bag. My insatiable curiosity is what drives me and my business.

He pulls forth a metal-and-plastic cube from the early 1980’s, and I immediately begin turning the handle to see whether the mechanism works. The tune is unrecognizable, so my next hope is that the pop-up figure will work, allowing me to at least give the streetman something for his trouble and his table meat.

A clown pops up on cue and looks rather cute, as beat-up music box clowns go, so I press him back into the box to see once more whether it’s a fluke or something an overgrown child might love to fool with once it goes onto a counter at the shop.

The music doesn’t work this time, and the streetman is getting apprehensive. At this point, I’m ready to pay him something just to be a good Samaritan—uh, good Down-Souther—but he tries once again to make the box work, holding his mouth just right.

It does work this time, which is enough for me. I offer him five dollars and he is grateful and leaves the shop gracefully, leaving me stuck back here in the best of all possible worlds—at an ancient bookstore where broken toys and busted memories co-exist and, on some days, make a rather nice home for themselves