Alone in the city, I wandered aimlessly. Light could still be seen above the buildings, but darkness had crept down to the streets. Nightlife had yet to resume, leaving the narrow pathways relatively devoid of foot traffic. Decorations proclaiming the holiday season had disappeared or might never have existed at all, but the winter chill was as present as ever. I tightened the scarf around my neck, buried my hands in my pockets, and walked with the wind.
With only a few days left before I had to return home I was desperate to absorb my surroundings, but my senses were being overloaded. So many foreign sights and smells cluttered the street. Even the sidewalk beneath my feet felt somehow different, and the air titillated my tastebuds. I was drunk on the atmosphere. Occasionally I had the opportunity to smile at a face as it passed–each one new. A few smiled back.
Ahead of me I saw a table burdened with books. Unable to resist the urge to acquire more novels than I have space for, I continued forward hungrily. The table was standing in front of a wide, paned window that peered into a dream-like second hand bookstore. Inside I could see cramped aisles drowning in shadows cast by towering shelves of some ancient dark wood and another heavy laden table on the opposite side of the glass, giving the illusion that the shop was so stuffed books were pouring into the street. Also visible, was a small counter that stood just past the impossibly narrow door through which all patrons must pass. I assumed it must be the shop owner who sat behind the antique cash register reading a dusty paperback, unaware that he was being studied. He was old, with a shock white beard cascading down to his chest. He looked happy to be there, and I thought that maybe one day I would be so happy to sit and read and not care so much about the world outside.
I looked away and glanced over the volumes stacked haphazardly across the top of the table in front of me. I reached for a tattered copy of This Side of Paradise, and my hand grazed that of another book lover, whose arrival I had not noticed. I looked up and met his gaze. His eyes were, for lack of a better word, beautiful–a deep, majestic blue that gave way to minuscule flecks of green and inner circles of grey.
I smiled stupidly, self-aware. He smiled back, a beautiful, radiant smile.
“Go ahead,” he said in the deep, smooth voice that fills my head while reading Isherwood novels.
I tried to refuse with an addled shake of the head, but this mystery man was persistent. “I’ve already read it,” he said as he picked up the book. He reached out and took my hand. He placed the paperback in my palm, and I accepted it.
My heart quickened it’s pace, and the cold seemed less cold. The wind died down, the light from the window grew brighter, and the city’s noises hushed into distant rumblings that might have come from some forgotten television.
“Is it as good as they say?” I asked, finding my voice.
“Depends on whether or not you’re a romantic. I’m afraid a pragmatic person would find it absolutely drab.”
I sighed. “Isn’t romanticism just a word people use to beautify a diseased mind?”
“You’ll love it,” he answered, with that smile. That smile made me smile.
I wanted to say more. I wanted to know his name. I wanted to crack him open like a book and let his stories spill out. But I just smiled and thought what a perfect story this was, and how one day I might write it down.
He extended his hand as if to say, “It was a pleasure to meet you”. I mirrored his action thinking, “The pleasure was mine.”
As my fingertips brushed his palm, a zap of electricity cracked the still air. This caused him to laugh aloud. I laughed too, embarrassed for no discernible reason. He backed away with a salute and that smile, and those eyes danced in the glowing light from the bookstore window.
“‘When the lightning strikes one of us, it strikes both!’” he sang before turning into the night, still laughing quietly to himself.
Like all my other great love affairs, this one lasted the space of a few heartbeats. I clung to the book in my hand and watched my nameless lover disappear, before I finally turned and walked through that narrow bookshop door, disturbing the quiet old man’s reading.
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