The Used Bookstore

You have to turn sideways to let anyone past, and there's a cat asleep on the Russians.

I come here to not buy things. The owner knows and doesn't care. He reads behind the register with his glasses pushed up on his head and can go an hour without looking up.

Poetry is in the back, past travel, under a bulb that's been out since spring. A woman is standing in it with her phone light on, working the shelf at eye level, tipping each spine out an inch and pushing it back.

She's been at it long enough that she isn't browsing. She's after one book. I know the posture.

In travel there's a guy with a Michelin guide to Italy, 2009 edition. He's not going to Italy. Wedding ring, work jacket, Tuesday afternoon.

I pick up a paperback with a broken spine and water damage along the bottom corner. Someone wrote a name inside the cover in pencil and then erased it badly, so you can still read it if you tilt the page.

She finds it. I hear the sound — the small satisfied noise — and then she's past me toward the register.

She pays in coins. He counts them into the drawer without looking at them, and the bell over the door goes, and the cat sleeps through all of it.