Anthony stepped into the bookshop and the bell at the entrance rang out like a triangle. He nodded at the clerk, who nodded back, and noticed that there were no magnet detectors at the entrance. His booted feet clopped louder than the ragtime music that tinkled off the wooden walls of the old joint as he marched deep into its book bestudded halls.
He almost immediately caught his foot on a notch in the wood floor and found himself sore-kneed, face-down, tasting the dusty oak slats. His beard was coated in gray dust as he arose, but he couldn't see to wipe it off. As he passed a postcard rack, he eyed a black and white card which featured Charlie Chaplin in a baker's cap with a rolling pin, standing beside a mountainous glob of pizza dough. Anthony's eyelids fluttered with covetousness.
He plucked two copies from their wire niche with a delicate staccato, gazed left to right at the other meandering patrons and pretended to examine one of the cards as he frantically jammed its twin in the back pocket of his oversized highwaisted pants. It fluttered to the floor with a quiet but still startling scratch. He turned his parascope eyes about to see if his muddled attempt had been spied. His only company in the aisle was an old, grandmotherly browser, facing the other way.
So he bent to pick up the card from the floor, but it was flat against the dusty ground and he couldn't get a grip on it. He'd chewed down his nails and they wouldn't lift it. Just then, he heard the triangle door bell at the entrance and a group of boys crowded into the store, all in school uniforms and chittering like an out of tune woodwind section. They were heading right for him.
He obscured the card with the sole of his boot and made as if he were reading the summary of. of. of.--
A Girl's Guide to 20th Century Sex. Some of the boys sniggered as they spotted the title and passed. Anthony crossed his arms, furrowed his brows, and nodded at them gravely. But the boys stopped halfway up the aisle. They filled it more and more until Anthony was standing in a wash of them, all hunting for schoolbooks like little crabs in the high tide.
His foot was still obscuring the card he'd wanted to pilfer. How could he escape? If he lifted his boot, the card would be revealed. So, slowly, he slid his foot along the ground. To his delight. the card slid with it. He pretended as if he had a limp, coughing as he slipped and slid down the aisle both to part the sea of boys and to obscure the loud scratch of the paper card against the floor.
Would anyone know it was more than just the sole of his boot? He thought not, but then he spied the perfectly card-shaped rectangular track he had left on the dusty floor behind him. So he tried to zigzag, to turn his foot to and fro as he walked. He zigzagged and looked back to see if his ploy had been successful, but as he scraped along with his head turned, he collided with a bookshelf.
It tottered forward, then back, then forward and Anthony leaned forward, then back, then forward afraid to interfere but afraid it'd-- a pile of books rained down on his head, knocking off his cap, banging his nose, and thumping the hollow flooring like a bass drum. All the boys stared, and then all at once giggled gleefully like so many honking oboes and clarinets.
Anthony hurried to replace the books on his hands and knees. When he looked up, the clerk was looking down on him from behind his spectacles, hands on his hips. The clerk frowned. Anthony smiled innocently. The clerk frowned some more, sternly. Anthony lifted his eyebrows, grimaced, and shrugged apologetically. He handed a book to the clerk, who replaced it, handed another, and they continued like this.
Anthony could see the rumpled corner of the Charlie Chaplin postcard beneath the diminishing stack. He made to hand the clerk a heavy volume, but purposefully pinched it by the corner of the cover. The book slid out of its sheath as he'd hoped and landed mightily, corner first, on the clerk's toe. As the man danced about in pain, howling like a sliding trombone, Anthony carefully lifted the card and clipped it inside his suspenders.
His treasure carefully hidden, he put his arm sympathetically around the clerk's shoulders and walked him outside, then sat him on the bench by the door and offered him a cigarette. The clerk accepted the peace pipe and they smoked together in silence. Anthony breathed the fresh air. He patted the empty pockets he'd meant to stuff with pilfered items and laughed at himself. He was outside now.
They ashed their cigarettes on the lid of a trash can and stood up. The clerk pointed at Anthony's dust coated pants and went about brushing the mess off. As he did this, Anthony felt the card come lose inside his pants and slip down his leg, then out beside his boot. At that very moment, however, the triangle-sounding bell on the door rang violently and the boys all came bounding out of the unattended store, rushing in every direction each clutching a purloined volume as they panted away screeching with trumpeting glee. The clerk boomed back at them like a tuba and gave chase, shaking his fist. He spun about, trying to decide which direction and which boy to chase.
Anthony picked up the card and took off his hat and slipped it into the hidden pocket he'd sewed. Then he stood bolt upright as he realized that he was standing before an unguarded goldmine. He slipped in and the chime fell right off the door with a cymbalcrash. Anthony darted about, picking books haphazardly, along with some notebooks and paraphernalia. He filled his englarged pockets, his satchel, his hat and-- a book struck him right in the temple. He spun about and was lanced by the wrinkled lightning stare of the grandmotherly browser, who'd still been perusing the empty store. She threw another book. He wasn't going to retaliate so he rushed to the door and stepped outside.
He breathed a relieved sigh and a gust of wind caught up, rustling up the street with a hollow whistling howl like a low note on a blown flute. It blew his hat off. He caught it and pulled out the Charlie Chaplin postcard, now crumpled, bent, dirty, and scratched. He idly tossed it toward the trash, where it landed beside the still-smoldering cigarettes.
As Anthony walked away with his hands in his full pockets, a gust ignited the card and it tumbled off the trash and onto a cart of 50 cent books which sits outside the shop. They caught like kindling and took up like an orchestra at the waving of the conductor's baton. Another gust blew and carried a spark to the back of Anthony's neck where he was walking away down the block. He rubbed the spot and turned about just as the front wall went up in orange flame and black smoke begun to pour out the door. The fire alarm shrieked like a badly bowed violin. Soon, firetrucks rolled by, their sirens like a duet of squeezeboxes. As Anthony stood gawking with disbelief, a tramp ran past him and bumped him to the ground.
When he stood up again, he couldn't find his satchel.
.JPG)
