The New-2-U Thrift Store was drab and gloomy and permeated with the dank, musky aroma of mildew and dirty clothes. At the front of the store, gray light from an overcast sky gained entrance through large panes of smudged window glass. More cold and inadequate light drizzled begrudgingly from flickering fluorescent bulbs in the store's water-stained ceiling.
At the rear of the store were hundreds of used books jostling one another on rough-hewn bookcases. There in the book department stood a man about seventy years old, clutching a book to his chest. Lewis Singleton was short, slightly built, and gradually shrinking with age. His old tweed jacket drooped from his dwindling frame. Baggy trouser legs draped inelegantly over worn oxfords. One of his shoelaces was untied.
When Lewis had first entered the store, he had blinked and grimaced at the squalor and the pungent aroma, but he always grew accustomed to it quickly. He had made a small stack of three books he wanted to buy, placing them one on top of the other on a wobbly rack of eight-track tapes adjoining the book shelves. A fourth book was clasped over his heart. His eyes were closed.
A woman with a sour expression and frazzled hair ambled up to the bookcases and swept her eyes briefly over their contents. With a pinched look on her face, she huffed and gestured with disdain at the disorderly stacks. "This is a waste of time," she said.
"Pardon?" said Lewis, startled by her unexpected utterance.
"You can't find anything here. Everything's all mixed together. Look — here's a bunch of mystery novels all jammed in with old National Geographics. What a mess!"
"Mmm hmm," replied Lewis, nudging his glasses up a bit. He put his book on the little stack and resumed looking for more. He caressed his bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger as he read the title of each book one by one. His dim awareness of the woman's presence began to dissipate.
"Last week I bought three romance novels," continued the serious looking woman, "but when I got home, they had pages ripped out and one of them had a dead bug in it. I think it was a cockroach."
Lewis continued to scan titles attentively, but managed an absent-minded response. "It's so rewarding to find a good one, isn't it?"
The woman squinted scornfully and dismissed him with a flip of her frazzled hair. Lewis cocked his head a bit to read more easily the titles from the book spines. "No... no... no," he said to himself as he read each title. Eventually, his eyebrows leapt and his glasses slipped down his nose a bit. He reached down to pull a tattered paperback from a warped and splintered shelf. "See. Here's one!" he said, turning to display his find to the sour woman, but she had disappeared into the housewares department some ten minutes earlier.
Lewis shrugged and began his ritual examination with the care of an archaeologist unearthing a brittle shard of ancient pottery. The once glossy cover had become crazed and worn, but the binding was sound. He flipped through the pages and sniffed slightly for the aroma of mold or mildew that might disqualify the book. As the pages paraded past his practiced eyes, he looked for any obvious signs of irreparable damage, such as torn out pages or excessive ink marks. It passed muster.
Turning to the front cover again, he read the title aloud, "Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald." Carefully opening it, he noticed smooth cursive handwriting on the inside front cover. It was similar to the writing found on the inside front cover of so many books. "Alison Smithers, English 204, Mrs. Savala." Alison had been a college student, clearly, and Mrs. Savala must have been her English teacher, although he couldn't tell precisely when. The college bookstore stamp listed the price of the book at $1.45. "Must be pretty old," thought Lewis.
It was almost thirty-five years old — older than Alison had been when she bought it for her literature class at the community college. It was the only book she had saved from her college days. Lewis cradled the battered book in both hands, his eyelids fluttering a bit as they closed.
Mrs. Savala had not liked Alison's term paper about Tender is the Night. Alison had pleaded with her to read it again and be a bit less critical of her somewhat overblown interpretation of Fitzgerald's symbolism. Finally, Mrs. Savala had relented and given her a passing grade. Alison had graduated from the community college three weeks later, taking a job as a stenographer. But she married impulsively a few months after that, and her life took a swift and discouraging turn.
A loud metallic clanking roused Lewis from his contemplation. He sighed heavily and opened his eyes. The sour-looking woman with the frazzled hair was clattering through an assortment of pots and pans with ill-fitting lids. She looked up at Lewis from time to time, shaking her head at the comical trance-like behavior of the strange little man.
Lewis frowned a bit and smoothed the thinning hair at the back of his head. He laid the book on top of his stack and returned his attentions to the dilapidated bookcase, scanning briefly to find the spot where he had left off. "No... no... no."
Three shelves later, Lewis extracted a clothbound copy of The Old Man and the Sea. He already owned four copies, but that was never an issue. He fanned the pages, savoring the faintly musty aroma. The inside front cover had been labeled with a rubber stamp. Over time, humidity had caused the stamp pad ink to bleed into the heavy stock of the book's cover, creating a ghostly purple aura around each of the block letters. "From the library of Garry Musgrave," it said. Lewis held the book close, and a stream of images began flowing through his mind.
Garry Musgrave was an old man when he died in his own bed after a relatively short bout with cancer. He had lived in a small town in Vermont, where he had been a well-respected pillar of his community. A retired bank president, he had indulged his love of books by assembling an immense library, eventually building an addition to his home to accommodate the sprawling collection.
Mr. Musgrave was well known for helping the neighborhood kids with their homework, and frequently suggested and sometimes loaned books to students assigned a book report. Justin Lawrence had borrowed the Old Man and the Sea from Mr. Musgrave, but had never returned it. It wasn't his fault, though. No, something had happened to Justin — something sudden, something awful...
A loud crying commenced at that moment from another corner of the thrift store. Two children were playing with Star Wars light sabers, but one of them was not using The Force. The reddening welt on his face was evidence of this and his tearful appeal to his "mommy, mommy!" was proof positive.
Lewis pursed his lips in annoyance and put copy number five of The Old Man and the Sea on his growing pile of stories. He heard a low rumble of distant thunder, and wondered how long it had been going on.
He tried to hurry, but another fifteen minutes passed with Lewis emitting a low, monotonous, "no... no... no." The last shelf did not look promising. It held another clump of National Geographics, some children's books, a book on how to beat the tables in Las Vegas, a self-help book entitled "That's Just the Way I Am," a microwave cookbook, and one very slim leather bound volume that was backwards — spine facing in instead of out. Lewis' knees popped audibly as he crouched and eased the book out from the shelf.
"The Book Reader," it was called. He had never heard of it, or the author, but it struck his fancy somehow. He thumbed the pages checking for damage, but there was none. In fact, it was in perfect condition; the binding crackled crisply as he opened it, as if he were the first. There was no name or other indication it had ever belonged to anyone else.
Lewis held the thin, stiff book over his heart and concentrated deeply, breathing slowly, but he could not clear his thoughts. A curious awareness rapped on the door of his mind so insistently that he could not entertain other visitors. "That's what I am!" thought Lewis. "I'm a book reader. Like a palm reader, or a mind reader, or —"
The history of this particular book remained a black mystery. Lewis frowned. "Odd."
He pushed his glasses up a bit more and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. A resonant clap of thunder rattled the entire thrift store — and Lewis' nerves.
Hastily gathering his books, Lewis walked over to the checkout counter, where a pierced and tattooed cashier was talking animatedly on a cellular phone about a party that she had attended, and the drunken goings-on at that party, and the guy she had met, and so on.
"Excuse me," Lewis interrupted her sheepishly. "Do you know who donated this book?"
The cashier spoke into her phone with visible irritation. "Hang on a second," she said to the other party, and then, to Lewis, "What?"
"Do you know who donated this book? It's, um, rather an unusual book, and I'm, uh, curious about, uh..."
"Look, mister, I don't have a clue, okay? You wanna buy it?"
"Yes, I guess — I mean, yes — yes I do," Lewis stammered feebly. He placed the rest of his discoveries on the counter next to the inscrutable little book, briefly wrestling with the notion he should return it to whence it came. "These, too."
"Hey, lemme call you back," said the cashier to her caller. She snapped her phone shut and shoved it into her pocket, glowering menacingly at Lewis for having the temerity to interrupt her conversation.
"I found some pretty good ones," offered Lewis with a diffident smile.
The cashier rolled her eyes and smirked at the books Lewis had placed on the counter. "Red Badge of Courage. Yeah, I had to read that in high school. What a yawner."
"But —" began Lewis.
"That'll be three-fifty. Wanna bag?"
"Yes, please. I'm walking, and it sounds as though we're in for some rain."
Lewis pulled a coin pouch from his pocket and pecked around in it, extracting fourteen quarters one at a time and placing them on the counter. The cashier dropped his books carelessly into a reclaimed plastic grocery store bag and began glaring in exasperation at the presentation of each coin. She scooped up the money and dropped it into the cash drawer, turning away and retrieving her cellular phone to signify that the transaction was complete. "Thank you," said Lewis. As he left, it occurred to him that it was he who ought to have been the recipient of that particular nicety. No matter.
A light sprinkle commenced, prompting Lewis to as brisk a pace as he could manage. He held his books close, pulling the plastic bag tight to shield them from the rain. Arriving at his apartment, Lewis carried his books directly to a small table in his makeshift library. He removed the new additions from the plastic bag, wiping them dry with a soft rag and placing them on paper towels. Ordinarily, he went through each book page by page, unfolding dog-ears and removing pencil and scuff marks with a large art eraser. Then he would place them on the appropriate shelves in alphabetical order by author. Another F. Scott Fitzgerald right next to the others. Stephen Crane next to Hart Crane. Hemingway... he would need to make room on that shelf.
Ordinarily he did these things, but today was different. Today, he had found a book he couldn't read.
Lewis' book collection comprised more than five thousand volumes. Each contained at least two stories — one told by an author, and one told by a person who had just lived their life with no notion that anyone would ever hear their story. Lewis had long ago gotten over the sensation of voyeurism. They were just stories.
Sometimes, though, he worried that these stories had become a sort of counterfeit life, a replacement for ordinary social interaction, an empty substitute for "real people." Perhaps he had become an observer of life, rather than a participant, but what of it? Real people could be so difficult to deal with and understand but his stories always played out effortlessly and in such rich detail. It was better than the real thing. Better than real people.
And they were real, too, weren't they? The people in his stories? Sometimes he wasn't certain. Perhaps he was making the stories up there on the spot and experiencing them as some form of elaborate daydream or hallucination. If so, he was not merely substituting one reality for another — in fact, his reality would be rendered completely fictional. But hadn't he read once that made-up stories were truer than true stories?
Lewis sighed heavily and frowned. The answer was in this book. He just knew it somehow. He picked up the thin leather volume and gave it a puzzled look. If they were just daydreams, then what made this book any different? Why couldn't he read it? Oh, of course he could read it in the conventional manner, but that wasn't the point, was it?
"The Book Reader," he said out loud. Leaning against the table, he gripped the book firmly and closed his eyes. He concentrated on the feel of it, the weight of it, the smell of it. Nothing. Rain pelted the roof of his apartment and a slight flickering from the lamps followed another loud crash of thunder.
At length, he carried the book over to his chair. The shabby recliner was old and comfortable and accompanied by an antique brass floor lamp that had been peering over his shoulder as he read for as long as he could remember. He sat with a small, short groan, rubbed his eyes, and gazed at the finely tooled leather book cover and the ornate gilt lettering. He opened the book, thumbed gingerly past the title page to Chapter One, and began to read aloud:
"The New-2-U Thrift Store was drab and gloomy and permeated with the dank, musky aroma of mildew and dirty clothes. At the front of the store, gray light from an overcast sky gained entrance through large panes of smudged window glass. More cold and inadequate light drizzled begrudgingly from flickering fluorescent bulbs in the store's water-stained ceiling."