I regretfully demand 2) If you don't find me, you'll find the things. You'll touch what my hand touches. : Crowley and Muriel, bookshop bay-beeeeeeeeeee
“Those don’t go there,” Crowley snarled, suddenly appearing at the door of the basement with a case of bottles.
Muriel, formerly 37th level Scrivener, jumped, though not as much as they would have only a few days before, which they were rather proud of. As the nice human lady at the record shop put it, ‘Mr. Crowley’s bark is worse than his bite.’ Muriel wasn’t entirely sure what that meant; all the information they’d ever seen about the demon Crowley indicated that he favoured snakes over dogs, and Muriel was reasonably sure that snakes didn’t bark. But they had yet to see either one up close.
“What doesn’t go where?” they asked.
“Those books. They don’t go there.” He jerked his chin at a dusty corner shelf, far away from where Muriel had started to shelve the items. “Over there. That’s where he kept them.”
“But…,” they started, as he set the case of alcohol down on a chair and snatched the books from Muriel’s hands, “wouldn’t it be better to—“
“Better to what?” The slitted yellow eyes glared at her.
“Um.” Muriel twisted their fingers together and debated trying to take the books back. “Well, better to put them where people can find them? Like, putting books by the same author together? Or maybe books that are about the same things should go together?”
Crowley raised his eyebrows. “People? You think the point of this bookshop is for people to come in and buy books?”
“Well,” Muriel said, with a nervous gush of a giggle, “that’s what a shop is for… right?”
“There are a million other places for people to buy books from, these days,” the demon retorted. “Amazon, for one.” He wouldn’t take credit for Amazon anymore, but online bookselling had significantly cut down on Aziraphale’s foot traffic, and the angel had been so pleased. “This shop doesn’t sell books.”
“So, it’s like… a library? Ooh, or an archive!”
“Yeah, sure, call it whatever you want, just don’t sell anything. And make sure it’s an archive of stuff where only you know where to find things. That’s the important bit. Makes the customers annoyed and less likely to come back.”
Muriel smiled broadly. “Great! I’ll just go, um…” Their eyes lighted on a stack of volumes of poetry that a recent customer had been prevented from purchasing, due to an inconveniently missing wallet and a sudden cold feeling on the back of his neck, as though a large reptile was glaring at him from the shadows. “I’ll just go put these with the cookery books.”
“Sure,” Crowley sighed, “that’ll do.” He looked down at the books in his hands, and for a moment, held them a fraction of an inch closer to his chest.
One by one, he sifted through them. There was the Alanson copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost (originally owned by the grandfather of some pioneer of surgery, printed in 1711, that was still missing its cover), a second American edition of C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra, and a wallpaper-covered copy of Jane Austen’s (Jane! Austen!) Love & Freindship from the 1920s. The Lewis and Austen books, he shoved into the shop’s most uninviting corner shelf, in between a natural history of octopuses and a manual of traditional wood carving. But he hung onto the Alanson.
Crowley fucking hated Paradise Lost. He made a point of making sure every copy that made it into the shop got stored under the lavatory sink with its dripping pipe. But this one had escaped him. Aziraphale had faithfully promised the previous owner in 1956 that he would repair the book and return it to them as soon as they paid, but the years went by and there was no payment, so it remained in the shop, half-denuded of boards and smelling strongly of dust and vanilla, the way old rag paper did as it decayed slowly over time.
He chafed the little book between his hands, feeling the crumbling edges and the imprints of the plump, deft angelic hands that had held it last.
A hand on his chest, reassuring him. Hands on his back, holding him in place when they ought to have pushed him away. Hands that always smelled of old dust and vanilla.
A snarl curled his lips, but it was a silent, half-hearted one.
He slipped the battered book into his back pocket and took it upstairs, along with the case of wine.
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So I fucked up my back in my sleep on Sunday night, because being old is fucking bullshit. And I actually worked from home today, because I couldn’t sit up without wanting to cry and I just was not up for getting on a bus and sitting in an office chair AND dealing with all the shit I had to deal with today for work.
But, because I am a master class in drug interactions, and it is well past working hours, I have found a combination of heat therapy, vicodin, Canadian over-the-counter muscle relaxers, and red wine that makes me feel like... well, not a pain-free human, but a pain-within-normal-parameters human who can turn her head from side to side again. It’s a total flashback to being a dance captain post-college.
That plus the excellent video of Nina Hartley pulling Kate McKinnon’s hair, and I actually feel really rad. So here’s hoping my constructive stretching and PT exercises done under the influence of drugs and happiness stick, and I wake up tomorrow feeling functional again.
Hello, gentle readers. It is winter in New York, which isn't nearly as jaw-droppingly awful as winter in Boston, or Buffalo, or other places that begin with "B". But today I had to spend an hour out-of-doors trying to help my brother find his car. We were not successful, although it turns out we walked passed it twice. As it is his car and not mine, I feel that the blame for my frozen legs rests squarely on his shoulders.
And the whole time, I thought of summer in New York City, and the sweating, and the smells, and the constant fear of having some absolutely foul thing land on my be-sandal foot. But then I remembered things like gelato, specifically, a mix of lemon gelato and lavender honey gelato I once tried at around the corner of the NYC Tenement Museum--
And now that I am safely soaking in a nice hot bath far, far away from Harlem and lost cars*, I decided to share my alcoholic version of it with you all. Sorry, not sorry, traditional French 75.
Lady Bathgin's French 75
1.5 oz dry London gin
.5 oz lemon juice
.75 oz (or more to taste) of lavender honey simple syrup
Brut bubbly white wine of your preference
lemon peel twist to garnish
First make the simple syrup. I know others will mock me for this but fuck them, I spent an hour helping my brother try to find his car that we walked passed twice, so like me, you can make this shit in the microwave. Put equal parts honey, lavender sugar**, and water in a cup. Place it in the microwave. For the love of God let it get hot, but don't let it bubble over. Hot honey sugar water is incredibly painful and will only ruin this otherwise magical experience. Carefully remove from microwave, let cool. If you are in a rush (like me, because of lost car frustrations), put it in the freezer for a bit. Do I look like I give a fuck? I'm drinking in the bathtub!
Once it is no longer BURNING, shake the simple syrup, gin and lemon juice with ice. Strain into champagne glass. Top with the bubbly, garnish with the lemon peel.
Enjoy with some lavender bath salts, or lavender bubbly bath. Lavender. Lavender FOREVER.
~*~
*He did find it. Hours later. After I went home.
**ALRIGHT here's the deal. My mom made me lavender sugar, and I just keep food grade lavender around my house because I'm an old lady. Also the more lavender you use the pinker the syrup gets. PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK.
