thunder rattled the entire thrift store — and Lewis’ nerves.
Hastily gathering his books, Lewis walked over to the checkout counter, where a pierced and tattooed cashier was talking animatedly on a cellular phone about a party that she had attended, and the drunken goings-on at that party, and the guy she had met, and so on.
“Excuse me,” Lewis interrupted her sheepishly. “Do you know who donated this book?”
The cashier spoke into her phone with visible irritation. “Hang on a second,” she said to the other party, and then, to Lewis, “What?”
“Do you know who donated this book? It’s, um, rather an unusual book, and I’m, uh, curious about, uh…”
“Look, mister, I don’t have a clue, okay? You wanna buy it?”
“Yes, I guess — I mean, yes — yes I do,” Lewis stammered feebly. He placed the rest of his discoveries on the counter next to the inscrutable little book, briefly wrestling with the notion he should return it to whence it came. “These, too.”
“Hey, lemme call you back,” said the cashier to her caller. She snapped her phone shut and shoved it into her pocket, glowering menacingly at Lewis for having the temerity to interrupt her conversation.
“I found some pretty good ones,” offered Lewis with a diffident smile.
The cashier rolled her eyes and smirked at the books Lewis had placed on the counter. “Red Badge of Courage. Yeah, I had to read that in high school. What a yawner.”
“But —” began Lewis.
“That’ll be three-fifty. Wanna bag?”
“Yes, please. I’m walking, and it sounds as though we’re in for some rain.”
Lewis pulled a coin pouch from his pocket and pecked around in it, extracting fourteen quarters one at a time and placing them on the counter. The cashier dropped his books carelessly into a reclaimed plastic grocery store bag and began glaring in exasperation at the presentation of each coin. She scooped up the money and dropped it into the cash drawer, turning away and retrieving her cellular phone to signify that the transaction was complete. “Thank you,” said Lewis. As he left, it occurred to him that it was he who ought to have been the recipient of that particular nicety. No matter.
A light sprinkle commenced, prompting Lewis to as brisk a pace as he could manage. He held his books close, pulling the plastic bag tight to shield them from the rain. Arriving at his apartment, Lewis carried his books directly to a small table in his makeshift library. He removed the new additions from the plastic bag, wiping them dry with a soft rag and placing them on paper towels. Ordinarily, he went through each book page by page, unfolding dog-ears and removing pencil and scuff marks with a large art eraser. Then he would place them on the appropriate shelves in alphabetical order by author. Another F. Scott Fitzgerald right next to the others. Stephen Crane next to Hart Crane. Hemingway… he would need to make room on that shelf.
Ordinarily he did these things, but today was different. Today, he had found a book he couldn’t read.
Lewis’ book collection comprised more than five thousand volumes. Each contained at least two stories — one told by an author, and one told by a person who was just living their life with no notion that anyone would ever hear their story. Lewis had long ago gotten over the sensation of voyeurism. They were just stories.
Sometimes, though, he worried that these stories had become a sort of counterfeit life, a replacement for ordinary social interaction, an empty substitute for “real people.” Perhaps he had become an observer of life, rather than a participant, but what of it? Real people could be so difficult to deal with and understand but his stories always played out effortlessly and in such rich detail. It was better than the real thing. Better than real people.
And they were real, too, weren’t they? The people in his stories? Sometimes he wasn’t certain. Perhaps he was making the stories up there on the spot and experiencing them as some form of elaborate daydream or hallucination. If so, he was not merely substituting one reality for another — in fact, his reality would be rendered completely fictional. But hadn’t he read once that made-up stories were truer than true stories?
Lewis sighed heavily and frowned. The answer was in this book. He just knew it somehow. He picked up the thin leather volume and gave it a puzzled look. If they were just daydreams, then what made this book any different? Why couldn’t he read it? Oh, of course he could read it in the conventional manner, but that wasn’t the point, was it?
“The Book Reader,” he said out loud. Leaning against the table, he gripped the book firmly and closed his eyes. He concentrated on the feel of it, the weight of it, the smell of it. Nothing. Rain pelted the roof of his apartment and a slight flickering from the lamps followed another loud crash of thunder.
At length, he carried the book over to his chair. The shabby recliner was old and comfortable and accompanied by an antique brass floor lamp that had been peering over his shoulder as he read for as long as he could remember. He sat with a small, short groan, rubbed his eyes, and gazed at the finely tooled leather book cover and the ornate gilt lettering. He opened the book, thumbed gingerly past the title page to Chapter One, and began to read aloud:
“The New-2-U Thrift Store was drab and gloomy and permeated with the dank, musky aroma of mildew and dirty clothes. At the front of the store, gray light from an overcast sky gained entrance through large panes of smudged window glass. More cold and inadequate light drizzled begrudgingly from flickering fluorescent bulbs in the store’s water-stained ceiling.”
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About The Book Reader:
The Book Reader took second place in Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine's Annual "Twist" contest in 2002.
About the author:
D. L. Mackenzie was born in a New Jersey army hospital in 1962 to a cross-grained airman and his long-suffering bride, and was reborn as a writer decades later during a Las Vegas bacchanal. Having publicly confessed his dream of becoming a writer, he embarked impetuously on a profoundly unprofitable project with the unlikely title "The Secret Journals of Phineas J. Magnetron," which garnered an EpiGuide Award and plenty of other unwarranted praise. Mackenzie has written scads of scandalously intemperate opinion pieces, but remains smitten with classic fiction by such authors as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. His new (2012) series "The Magnetron Chronicles" brings Phineas Magnetron out of mothballs for new tongue-in-cheek neo-Victorian adventures in the heady Age of Steam.
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