[Cruelty, Stalemate, Frighteningly, Rare, Ancient]
Amy is pounding dough in the kitchen, when I walk in. The kitchen smells delicious. In the five years since my aunt died it hasn’t smelled this good. Although yesterday's fresh bread does run it a close second.
“What are you doing up so early, Laura?”
“It’s your first full day and I didn’t want to miss your first breakfast.”
“That’s sweet but you were probably up half the night, reading weren’t you?”
“Yes but it’s fine, I’ll go to bed earlier after the book club. It’s just the Fellowship is my favorite book, and it was so much fun re-reading it and the fantasy book club meets tonight, so I won’t be able to read it tonight.”
“Then you should just savor it, read just one chapter a day. That way you can stretch out your enjoyment. It’d last you almost a month, if I remember correctly. It’s pretty long and has a lot of chapters.”
“It has twenty two chapters. I’d take your suggestion because it really would be the best way to fully enjoy it. But I’m worried that just as suddenly as my eidetic memory was taken from me, it might just pop back, at least that is what the neurologist told me, could happen. So I’m rushing my enjoyment I know, but if I don’t rush it, I might not have it at all. It’s a damned if you do or damned if you don’t situation.”
“Laura wouldn’t it be better for our mystery solving if you got your memory back?”
“I’m all done with that Amy, that was just to get justice for Lachlan, clear my name, then clear Monique’s name. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt besides I felt really bad for Harry. I don’t want to catch people and put them in jail.”
“I always liked Harry as did you, Laura. But he killed eighteen years ago and again last week, then he threatened to do it again. So it’s a very good thing that you investigated and it’s also a very good thing that Harry is going to prison. So that he can’t hurt anyone else. None of that would have happened if you hadn’t investigated. An innocent girl would have gone to prison and Harry would still be here in town waiting to explode again, if anyone came close to exposing him. Aside from the death and a friend going to prison, I had a great time doing it. I wish I had been retired at the time, it seemed to me that you and Anais had all of the fun.”
“I really just want to get back to running the store, and reading, besides we have a lot going on with the store. We now have a sister store in Woodstock.”
“I know Bianca said we could go to Woodstock for a long weekend. The writer’s collective down there has a guest room, where we could stay for free. Wouldn’t that be fun.”
Actually it did sound like fun.
“Well before the summer is over we should take a trip down there.”
“Actually next week there is a Renaissance Festival. I’ll drive and I bet Anais would want to go as well. But you’d probably need to talk to the owner about their spare room soon. It could be to celebrate my retirement.”
“Okay it sounds like fun, Amy.”
“Maybe something mysterious will happen down there and you can investigate.”
I laughed.
“I certainly hope not, I want to watch the Shakespeare plays, eat a turkey drumstick with my hands and drink plenty of beer. In other words, I want to enjoy the Renaissance Festival. It’ll be like being in Middle Earth. What are you baking there anyways?”
“Cinnamon rolls, but they need to cool a little bit more before I can put on the icing.”
“They look cool enough to me.”
“That’s because you want one. But the icing will melt right away and turn into a liquid. So here, have one without the icing, it’ll still be plenty sweet.”
“No, just put a little icing on it please, Amy?”
“Alright but no complaints if it’s soggy. Make some tea and by the time that’s ready, so will your bun be.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
“So Laura, you’ll call the other owner today?”
I turned on the kettle and took out a couple of mugs, and the tea.
“Yep, promise.”
“Bianca said she is super young, just eighteen, but she has been running the store for the past two years.”
“What Amy, she started running the store when she turned sixteen?”
“Yep can you believe that, she runs the store and the collective. Her father was killed by a hit and run driver, she inherited the store and collective, while in her final year of highschool.”
“She must have skipped a grade or two to graduate so young. She must be pretty smart and serious to keep a store and collective afloat. I’d be closing this place down if it wasn’t for Bianca and her ‘New Deal’.”
“Laura, you could learn about economics if you wanted to. With your brain, you could learn anything you want.”
“Just because I can remember a lot of facts, doesn’t mean I understand the concepts lying underneath them, Amy. It helps a lot for sure. I can even spout off the theories underneath a lot of science stuff, and maybe even give detailed accounts of how the scientists who discovered it. But as far as understanding the math that supports the theories or pushing beyond what is already proven that stuff is beyond me. My memory works best for reading, writing, history, geography, philosophy, and the social sciences. But medicine, hard sciences, math. Not so great, and economics I always loathed.”
“That’s because you and your aunt always hated money. The only things you wanted as a kid were books, and they were free through the store. I remember your aunt having to fight with you to buy new clothes, as you grew out of them. You always said they were fine, for a couple more weeks or months.”
“I hate shopping, it’s just a waste of time. I’d rather be here in the store than some shop somewhere trying on outfit after outfit. Fashion is one of the biggest capitalist grifts there are. People feel they need to buy clothes to be fashionable, yet as soon as you buy them they are going out of style. It’s completely ridiculous, I read we have enough clothes already on the planet for everyone alive and for the next three generations. People buy all those clothes so of course they need somewhere to store them, so they buy a house not to fit their size or their families size but big enough to fit all their stuff. So you have oversize houses filled with mostly useless stuff, that goes out of fashion as soon as it’s bought. Those oversized houses need to be heated and cooled, so you are paying to keep your stuff warm or cool. I learned all the economics I need from Thoreau. It’s cheaper and faster to walk than to take the train. I can just imagine what he’d say about the car. How far could I walk before working to earn enough to buy a car. I could probably be in California. Then add in the insurance, registration, license fees, gasoline, maintenance. I could probably be in Hawaii, if I could walk on water.”
“See, even Thoreau had limits, he couldn’t walk to Hawaii, or Europe. He’d have to take a boat or a plane just like everyone else.”
“He wouldn’t have gone, he’d just go camping, or on a canoe trip instead.”
“Well we can take my car when we go to Woodstock, I know you’d like to walk but it’s nearly two hundred miles and that would take around seventy hours to get there, not counting sleep or stopping to eat. It’d take us four days, walking sixteen hours a day.”
The kettle whistled and I ate a delicious cinnamon roll before going down to open the store. Speaking of walking I’d have to walk an extra mile today to walk that off. But it’d be worth every step. The store was already open when I arrived and I wasn’t late, Lucy was early and Ezra was installing a laptop on the counter. It could be swiveled to face either the customer or the employee.
“Hey what are you two doing?”
“We’re going down the rabbit hole.”
“What?”
“This is the connection to our sister store, Laura. Ezra, talked to their tech person, who is apparently the owner, she already has her side set up. Our customers will be able to video chat to their clerk. Just like if a customer comes up to us to ask if we have the Grapes of Wrath, and we check the computer, they’ll be able to do the same with non-fiction books. If their customers want a book, we’ll see their customer and check to tell them if we have a book in stock. Then it’s just a matter of getting their address and we ship it off. Neat huh.”
“Yes, very cool and thank you Ezra for setting this up.”
“It’s my pleasure, and fodder for my next book. I now have hands-on experience on how to link two separate businesses over the internet. Besides, even if I wasn’t planning on writing a book on networking businesses together, this was a lot of fun getting it working. But for you it should just be a push of the button in the morning and shutting it down again at night. All the software is installed and will autoupdate whenever necessary. Lucy you don’t have to ask for their address, they type it in on their end. All you need to do is just highlight the order, right click, choose either print mailing label, print invoice or print both. And it spits out the information to the two printers. One for labels, one for invoices. Just grab the printouts and the books and poof you are ready to box and ship.”
“This is really great Ezra, I really owe you for this.”
“No, you do not. Not one of us knew that you weren’t taking any of the profits from the store, Laura. It’s us that owe you. Us and every other writer that’s lived here for the past five years. How did you even manage that, living without any pay?”
“Well I have a very very small pension, that was all I needed. I hardly ever eat out and as I was saying to Amy I loathe shopping so as long as we had food and a place to live, I was more than content.”
“I used to go to the bakery every day for a treat, but now that we have Amy, if she keeps baking like she has for the past two days, I won’t have to bother. I’ll just have to go for a walk to make sure I don’t gain a ton of weight. Well I’ll let you two ladies get on with your day. Oh I almost forgot, if you want to talk to whoever is manning the counter down there just tap the ‘b’ key a couple of times, it sets off a ringing sound at their end. Same thing if you hear a ringing here, it means you have a customer or a clerk from their store on the line.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Thank you Ezra, this is just wonderful, thank you again."
“Your welcome, I think Bianca will be down later to show you how the new accounting software works.”
I was not looking forward to learning that. But this video call, shipping software was really cool. I wondered if we’d really increase our business by twenty five percent.
“Guess what Laura, we already got our first order before you came down. "The Dark Elf Trilogy, The Icewind Dale Trilogy, The Cleric Quintet. We had them all in stock. ten books in our first order, before we even opened for the day. The guy was a real R A Salvatore fan.”
“I was wondering if we’d really increase our business but I guess this proves it.”
“Well it’ll work the other way to, we make money on books they ship for us. Non-fiction business that would have gone to amazon. We’re going to be rich.”
“Whoah, my intern is on drugs. No bookseller ever has gone into business thinking they were going to get rich ex for the jerk that owns amazon, and he wouldn’t be rich if all they sold were books. No it’s all the other utter crap that they sell. Which reminds me, what do you call a liberal after you give him a few million dollars?”
“I don’t know what?”
“A conservative.”
“Agg, that's bad, Laura.”
“Not bad, it’s sad but true. Look at the hippies, the vast majority turned into the yuppies, they sold out for a lot less than millions, but sell out they did. So let’s not worry about making millions, let’s make enough to be comfortable, a safe place to live, a reliable source of food. Just a little bit more that we can give to people who don’t have a safe place to live, or don't have a reliable source of food. But reserve your pity for the foolish millionaires or billionaires or even trillionaries, because they have millions, billions or trillions of things to worry about. So much simpler to just have enough. Do you know how to know if you have enough?”
“No.”
“You have enough, if you want just what you have and nothing further. So if you want to be happy, just be happy with what you have. If you need something else just create it. Can’t afford a book, write one yourself. Can’t afford that hundred dollar concert ticket, get some friends and go sing in the park. Can’t afford a TV, count yourself lucky. A thirty minute TV show actually runs about nineteen to twenty one minutes, the rest is ads. Ads designed to make you unsatisfied with your life. If there really was a god, and he had man’s best interests at heart, first he’d get rid of the advertising agencies, then the clerics, and finally the politicians. Then people really would have the free will people have been touting since the beginning of time.”
“It’s a little early in the morning for a hippie rant, even from you, Laura.”
“It’s not a hippie rant, it’s simple Epicurean philosophy, but what are you doing here Anais?”
“Bianca asked me to stop over and look at the final draft of the writer’s contract, for a private, not a lawyer’s opinion on whether it’s legal or not. Also, we need you to come along and look at the third floor. Bianca says that one of the rooms up there needs a rush job, Amy’s moving in?”
So I went up to Bianca’s room with Anais. Bianca had papers spread all over her bed like it was a horizontal whiteboard.
“Come on in you two, I’ve got a few estimates that I want Anais to look at to see if they are reasonable and if the contractors are reliable. Plus Laura I want you to look at the third floor and give your permission before any work has begun.”
“Bianca, I already told Amy yesterday that I can’t wait for her to move in. If you want color choices, that kind of stuff shouldn’t I be getting her?”
“No, she already told me, she wants bright, glossy primary colors, each of the four walls a different shade and she’d like to move in as soon as possible.”
“Well, why not tonight then?”
“Because it’ll take weeks at least to get a contractor in here and finish even one room, Laura.”
“Yes but we have an empty room on the second floor, can’t Amy have that until the third floor is ready? That way she’s not living amid construction and the contractors will probably be happier to do all the same work at the same time. I’ve edited quite a few books about remodels. The general advice is find a contractor you can trust, then get the hell out of his way.”
“Yes that will work, but I thought you’d want to fill the free writer slot right away.”
“Amy’s family, and family comes first. If as Lucy predicts we become rich from the new sister store. I plan on using my proceeds to sponsor another free writer slot. So even if Amy is taking up a non-paying author slot for a few months, adding another slot will in the long run more than make up for it. Seventy five hundred dollars for six months seems like something I’ll easily be able to swing, even if our sales don’t increase. But Lucy already made our first big sale to a customer in Woodstock, thanks to you Bianca. Also, I have to offer Eve a free slot. She represented me pro bono and also told Aiden, Monique’s attorney, just what to do to get her released.”
“Eve will never take a free slot, Laura. You can go ahead and offer, but I know that woman, she won’t take it for free, besides what you guys charge for six months room and board. She's probably paying every two weeks in the inn she’s staying at.”
“I’ll talk to Eve, Anais, maybe we can get a room built fast for her or I just had another idea. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going Laura?”
“I have to ask Amy what she’s doing with her house.”
“Why?”
“Maybe she’d like to rent it out until the third floor is ready for more writers. Let me go talk to her.”
So the three of us actually went down stairs to talk to Amy.
“What are you three plotting?” Amy asked when we arrived in the kitchen.
“Amy, what are you planning to do with your house once you move in here? And would you like to move in tomorrow, you could take Lachlan’s old room, then move to the third floor when the rooms up there are done, or stay on the second floor and the new writers can go up there. They’re younger than us so an extra flight of stairs won’t really matter to them.”
“Actually about the house, I’ve been meaning to talk to you and Bianca about a few things. First, instead of paying me to cook, just give me free room and board.”
“We can do that, Amy, but it’s not enough money, so how about room and board plus five thousand a year. That’s still only twenty thousand in total.”
“You don’t have to pay me to cook, if you are giving me a place to live. About the house, I was going to donate it to the collective. You guys can sell it or rent it out or use it for more writers. It’s only a few blocks away and the writers could walk over here for meals or cook their own, it’d be yours or their choice.”
“I wanted to ask you if you wanted to rent it to us, Amy, not give it to us.”
“Laura, I’ll have everything I need here. I have no one else to give it to, I don’t need the money. My father helped build it, so it’d be nice to see it stay in the family sorta, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean, Amy. Which reminds me, I need to set up a foundation for the collective, so that it lives on when I die. Can you help me Anais?”
“Yes, I’ll be happy to, but after you have it set up just the way that you want it we’ll need to get a lawyer to sign off on it, still disbarred remember. We can ask Eve to review it and sign off.”
“Good, then I’ll go clean Lachlan’s room so Amy can move in.”
“I’ll help, Laura, then I’ll go home and get my stuff.”
“No, Amy, you go home and pack and once I have the room clean, I’ll help you move.”
“As will I.” said Anais.
“Me too,” said Bianca.
Amy went home to pack and Bianca, Anais and I moved the few belongings of Lachlans that the police hadn't seized to the stock room. Then we thoroughly cleaned the room. Then we moved all the furniture out into the hallway and I called a friend of mine and asked him for a big favor. Anais and I got the cot out of the attic and we took the mattress out into the backyard and beat it with a broom. My friend arrived and got right to work.
We each drove over to Amy’s house, four cars better be enough space, because she now had to fit everything she owned into one room. It was fine, as it turned out Amy, had a uniform for her thirty year career so only bought casual clothes for when she wasn’t working along with a couple of formal outfits in case she needed them. She also had a huge stack of board games, which were going to be put in a bookcase in the dining / writing room for all of the residents to enjoy. Some towels, an alarm clock and a small bookcase of well loved books it all would have fit in one car, except maybe for all the board games.
We moved everything to the bookstore stockroom. I fibbed to Amy, said I wasn’t done cleaning Lachlan’s room, but we’d set up a cot for her for just tonight in my room.
“Laura, I’ll help you finish cleaning the room.”
“No, Amy I used a lot of bleach so I left the window open, let it air out overnight then tomorrow morning before breakfast we’ll move everything in. It’ll be just like sleepovers we started having in the first grade. Why didn’t we start having them in kindergarten?”
“Because I was too afraid to sleep in a strange house, and you were scary to me, you and that eidetic memory, you could read in kindergarten, and knew all the numbers and states and capitals. Hell I thought you knew more than my parents and definitely the teachers. But then I got to know you and I learned you weren’t scary at all. So I got over sleeping in a strange house, so we could be friends.”
“Amy, we were always friends, you were the only person who didn’t treat me like a freak in kindergarten, because I lived with all the hippies on the lake. So I thought you were cool, so cool.”
Then Amy went back to the kitchen, Bianca and Anais had gone to discuss plans for the third floor and Amy’s house. I’m pretty sure Bianca was planning how she could make another powerpoint presentation about their plans for the third floor and Amy's house. For someone who’d learned to hate the corporate world she sure was good at it.
Then I went downstairs to find Lucy on a video call from a customer from Woodstock, she was using the inventory computer to find out exactly which of the Rex Stout novels we had in stock. The man bought five of them. He typed out his information and Lucy hit return, two printers spit out invoice and mailing labels.
There must have been thirty books piled onto the counters. I’m sure that business like that won’t continue, it’s just the novelty for the people in Woodstock to have access to our store.
“Wow, Lucy, you got a lot of orders from Woodstock, did any of our customers buy any non-fiction?”
“Yes, about ten of them, but I noticed something. Most of the people who bought fiction from us bought five or more books at a time, but our non-fiction customers only bought one or two at most books.”
“Yeah, non-fiction can be entertaining but it’s mainly written to inform the reader. While fiction is strictly entertainment. I think people want to be entertained more than informed. Come on, I’ll help pack and we’ll get these ready to ship out.”
When I cashed out it’d been our best day, since I took over the bookstore. I hope things keep going our way, it seems that all that bad karma we had dumped on us had swung the other way. Or more in tune with reality, our bad fortune had turned to good. But fortune always swings and there is no happy middle ground.
