Page 10 of It’s Me They Follow
T he Shopkeeper was loving on her copy of Conversations with Sonia Sanchez when ME showed up at the bookshop door.
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said. “I could watch you do that for hours. You can keep on.” She didn’t want to be late for her writing group anyway, so she grabbed her coat, locked up early, and said, “It’s okay. Let’s go.”
He slipped an apple into her bag. “I washed it for you.” There was something else she wished he’d wash for her. Her mind wandered, but she shook it off as fast as she could.
He is a monk , she reminded herself. He is a monk in training. She grinned.
She looked away. Looking too long could be problematic. They ate apples together as he walked her to class.
“‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away,’ my grandmother used to say,” The Shopkeeper told him.
“Somehow people have given apples a bad name.” He grinned as usual, even when he was serious.
“Yeah, I mean, like, everybody thinks it was an apple that got Eve caught up in the garden. It’s the apple that’s poisonous in ‘Snow White.’ It’s Steve Jobs and Apple computers.
It’s Johnny Appleseed colonizing everything.
But apples don’t deserve that reputation.
The narrative on apples needs to be rewritten,” she said.
“Speaking of writing, how’s yours?” He switched gears.
The Shopkeeper had been so focused on opening the bookshop that she’d barely picked up a pen. “It’s not.”
He laughed while they walked. “Where are we walking to?”
“I’m taking a writing class at the university. And I’m selling other people’s writing and critiquing writing, but I am not writing.”
“That’s DEEP,” he said, rubbing his beard and shaking his head. “I know that university.”
“I’ve just been busy opening the bookshop,” she said. “And trying to manage this stupid condition. And I’m scared I’ll fall asleep in the wrong place, and then, poof ! It’s dangerous. You wouldn’t understand,” she huffed.
She was on the defensive as she walked down Broad Street toward the university. Over the years, she’d learned to duck and dodge, bob and weave across streets to avoid people touching her. He worked to keep up.
“You’re cute when you’re on the defensive,” he said. “And fast. I wish I could pinch your cheeks.”
She ignored him. When she was on a mission, she was very focused.
“I’m just saying, word on the street is, you are a writer who doesn’t write. That you wrote Conversations with Harriett years ago and haven’t written anything since.”
“I could care less about the word on the street. I live in an apartment.”
“You should write that down.”
“What? My jokes?”
“Your EVERYTHING! Your dreams, your ideas, your angry rants, your love spells—do it for our great-great-great-great-grandchildren.” The Shopkeeper grinned at the thought of futuristic grandchildren still reading books as they floated around in outer space.
“Some of us spend our entire lives trying to find what you have.”
“What’s that?” She was puzzled.
“Direction.
“How’s the opening?” he asked. “What are you gonna make appear out of thin air next?”
She didn’t understand his question.
“You know, the thing you do when you say things, and then— poof —they appear, like your awning. What are you gonna make appear next?”
She’d never thought of it like that. “Well, to be honest, next on my list is furniture. Shelves, tables, chairs, desks, anything we can rest books on. But every time I make something appear— poof —out of thin air, it appears slightly messed up. Like my awning.”
“My great-aunt has a junkyard.”
“A junkyard,” The Shopkeeper replied. “No, that’s not what I need.”
“But she has furniture.”
“In her junkyard?”
“Yup. It’s free if you’re free tomorrow.” He power walked beside her.
“Free ninety-nine? Free like Harriett? Or free like free today, but now you’re indebted for the rest of your life?”
He nodded his head yes, then shook his head no. “Free like free your mind, and if so, then it’s a date.”
She wanted to blow him a kiss when they got to the university.
But it wasn’t in her character. He waved goodbye and shimmied his shoulders like Will Smith.
The Shopkeeper shoulder shimmied back and was early for class for the first time since she was a girl, and for the first time since she was a girl, she felt safe.