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The bandages end of my crooked fingers graze long, grainy spines of witling books, steadily. The morning's air is damp, fresh rain is askew the glass panes of the old, desolate bookshop, and alongside the ferment of pages lay I. A bookkeeper, older, yellowing, and renounced, similar to the shelves I venture through. Through...and through.
The air in here never gets older, and in the same sentence, it never gets fresher. No matter the times the jingling door opens, and no matter the windows I elbow out, despite the creaking complaints it sings to me in retaliation. Perhaps it has taken a toll on me all these oftens, and this old place just resents me plainly. I was not the original keeper of this antique, but conceivably, I was the longest lived. The owner, an older man with a kink in his neck and his suit a pilled leather, had been kind to me those months ago.
That evening, it had been raining, comparable to this very afternoon. I had been wet behind the ears, both in skin, misery, and environment. I had been young, about 22, one foot off the jeep in a line of ten other men similar to myself. My body had been tarnished with all the colors of a kaleidoscope, but my eye shone yellow. I had stood, staring into the yellow light that reflected from behind the store window of the old man’s bookshop, a lamp tucked by a ragged chair next to a bookshelf practically overflown. I remember how tightly I gripped onto the last strap of my knack as I stared into that oh so deep yellow light. The flame from the lamp flickering every which where and way.
Just moments ago, I thought, over and over and over again, that the devil was real. And he wasn’t some monster like the priests at Sunday school told me. He was beautiful, of course, he was, as an angel fallen from grace.
And when he fell, he showed the prettiest of things, but he must have been extremely pained as he plummeted and crashed through the layers of heaven on his way down, because with that beauty came the truth. And the truth was never anything but cruel.
The devil brought beautiful things to the war front. He brought the flashing lights that looked like stars, and the rumble and crackle of artillery that shone a pretty silver but shot blood through my ears. He was the victory, and the defeat, the fantasy and the reality, the justice and the brutality.
But most importantly, he was the cold regret that flashed behind my eyes at the latest moments of the night.
I turned my head back down towards my ledger, scratching a blunt pencil into the sheet.
‘The Grapes of Wrath…still in stock’
These days, I often woke with terrors and nightmares…at times, premonitions. Like I’ll be dragged by the ankles back into those sinful barracks. I’d imagine my hands to be tied up, perhaps in rope, or in a barbed wire fence, and Booker would be looking down at me with that pristine little smile of his. It tortures the life out of a man to imagine Booker, with his curly dark hair that shone a dark raven under candlelight. He didn’t live to see the jeep haul us out of that broken-down cathedral, but I did.
And I think, time and again, what a wicked game life must be. So perhaps sin is but second nature to someone like me. Like a dog to a chain.
Aside from my thoughts, I had at some point heard the door chime, a high-pitched, sweet jingle. My neck is stiff and hesitant to turn my head towards the sound, and my greeting is anything but sweet as I mutter something akin to ‘welcome’.
A small thing has walked in, a beret adding to their height. A boy, from what I’ve seen. Short, mousy, thin as the devil would allow. A beige trench coat, often not seen around these parts, as I have to admit, this is more of the seedy part of town. And to top it all off, a beige scarf tucked underneath the chin, tight and fitting. I pay them no mind, as I often do, content with the executioner of my own consciousness. I turn back to the books easily, my eyes moving towards the next title.
“It’s raining like hell out there,” the boy cursed, amusedly, his voice sweet as wine. My ears perk at the sound, and I find myself turning back once more, for just a glance more. The boy is still barely turned away from me, but his beret is now clutched between his fingers as he wipes his face with a handkerchief. He puts it away briefly into his brown satchel. I find myself smoothing my finger over the corners of my ledger, contemplating whether that was towards me or to himself.
“Yes..absolutely drenched,” I mutter apprehensively.
My voice must have caught his attention, because he suddenly begins to turn towards, and the more he does so, the further my stomach drops. My breath snags, like my lungs have been filled with mustard gas. They ache and burn, and yet I have lost the ability to breathe through it. The bandages around my knuckles tighten around my fists, as if I could hold myself together in the wake that was this boy.
God.
God, god, god, please. If there was something I had done in my life to deserve the burden of hell upon my back, as if I were Sisyphus upon thy rock, I wholeheartedly repent, at this exact moment, I swear on my life I do. I’ll go to church. I’ll donate even, despite knowing that the local pastor always shows himself at the corner pub on Sunday nights. I’ll eat my daily bread... and..and my wine too, with reverence on my lips and whispers of my confessions for every sin I must’ve committed up till this very moment, because this must be a punishment. A divine retribution sent from the big man upstairs himself, because Jesus Christ.
The hair…the curls, the soft curve of the jaw, the round face accompanied by those big, light hazel eyes, the scowl, the frown, the wrinkle of the eyebrow
Oh god, it was all him. It was too much like him. And for a moment, I felt rage fill my system, before a dawning of guilt and shame crept over me like the warmth of liquor on an empty stomach and a sorrowful day.
This was a mirage, a trap, a rapture. This wasn’t possible; it could not. I wouldn’t believe it for a second. Not a single moment of this was true, and god, how I hoped it wasn’t true. All those premonitions, all those nightmares, was today the day I would face my true retribution? My sins?
God, I am a sinner, God I am a sinner, and I know that you have sent me this boy here in front of me as a diviner messenger to remind me where I am destined upon my waning breath, but I can see him with my own eyes…he notices me.
And there's a lilt in his eyes coupled with a sweet, sweet voice. It beckons me closer. Like a dog to a chain.
“Ain’t that about right?” He says further, this time with a smile, crooked–a smirk more to say, one that goes higher on the right than the left. His lips were shiny also, from rain or not, who knows to care.
But perhaps I do.
He smiles like he knows both something and nothing at all, mischievous and jeering. I hardly move from my spot on the floor. My spine is rigid as stone. A part of me, superficial and impulsive, wants to bolt, to run, somewhere faraway. To prove god wrong. To redeem the right to heaven and be held in the loving arms of eternal gratitude. But the other, oh, how sinful it is. It yearns and craves and desires to take. To cross the precipice of this very room, and press a hand to his chest—to touch, to devour, to feel if his heart beats differently than his did, seconds before it stopped. If it didn’t…I would return to my spot next to the bookshelf. I would pick up my ledger and press that blunt edge of the pencil deeply into the papyrus until it crinkled under the weight of my disappointment.
But..
If it did?
I continue to watch him scrupulously from the corner of my eye. His attention waned between the reflection of the window, the big one up front displaying the shelves of books that line the store floor, and the actual droplets of rain on the glass pane. His thin brown fingers press up against the glass whilst the other musses with his hair. Chin length, curls, large and loose, a deep, deep black that I swear shines blue under the flicker of light. I swallow hard, my shoe drumming against the hardwood floor. My mind urges him to leave. To turn away and to never return. To leave me rotten, repenting, and revered. Paradoxically, I wish he wouldn’t.
“Must be quite felicitous here. I often fancy books…and rain. On the odd occasion, rain. The smell is sometimes delectable, and gets me all shivery…” he says, his voice wispy and faraway.
His words drift through my ears like a gentle wave, beckoning me closer. I resist and stay in my spot. At this moment, I think back to a bible verse one of my colleagues told me during basic training.
“Must be quite felicitous here. I often fancy books…and rain. On the odd occasion, rain. The smell is sometimes delectable, and gets me all shivery…” he says, his voice wispy and faraway.
His words drift through my ears like a gentle wave, beckoning me closer. I resist and stay in my spot. At this moment, I think back to a bible verse one of my colleagues told me during basic training.
Back at the barracks, on the front of France in a lone country full of olive women in short hand-dresses, and cotton skirts--a dairy farm was situated amongst a hefty stretch of land. The grass was darker than the ocean and was about knee high. On the off occasion and some other soldiers had groupies within those long patches of green. Lighting a cigarette and a few as we commented exceptionally easy about those summer days. On one of those occasions, Lance had kicked back on the edge of a barrel, missing more of its side than not, a strand of wheat hanging between his molars. Lance was a funny fellow and was right on the line with saying the most curious of things. Like that evening, as we watched a dawdle of women, with hair that crewed right beneath their chins as if spit from a monastery, passed us by. Some glanced our way with the curiosity of a cat in a crack in a wall, but for the most part seemed impassive to our presence. Lance thought it was a good idea to approach us with some food for thought that certainly made my cigarette taste just a spittle of a lot bitter.
' When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate.'
Lance must've thought it was such a grand verse, and honestly, it was quite poetic in its most simplest of forms, but Lance had a way of making the most beautiful of things soiled and dreadful. He was so damn swollen about that quote that he leaned forward with a lurch and slapped his knee, laughing at himself with a doltish expression.
It was by god's mercy that none of those hapless maids had come to hear such a dauntless expression and, quite honestly, blasphemous retelling of god's story. I remember huffing out something crude in response before falling back into my mindless daydreaming. From the corner of my eye, I watched with morbid curiosity as another man alongside me allowed himself to gaze lustfully at the ankles that peeked from beneath the cotton fringes of the women's dresses as they leaned to heft pails over their broad shoulders.
At the moment, I thought of us, not as lusting men, but as some sort of disfigured, horrid amalgamations of humans.
But perhaps that is what we men were born for.
Perhaps in the story of Adam and Eve, Adam was god, a neutral creature, manless, and the iniquitous snake was I all along. And perhaps the gazes we give the things we want, a moment away from devouring them alive...we could not shoulder that blame alone, the sin of want, so we tempt them with words and false restraints to feel righteous when we are close to the taking.
I wonder idly for how long I have felt a sense of righteousness to take from what this boy has certainly not offered.
"You're a nurse, I gather.." I murmur. My gaze drops to the red cross path across the left pocket of the boy's messenger bag, bright and red. A sight often familiar. The boy hums, glancing towards his own bag before meeting my gaze once more.
"Hardly. An assistant, if you will. And you? I find it most difficult to believe that stacking books has brought you such....a robust figure?" The boy answers back easily in a teasing tone, his eyes shining under the light, like something quite shiny had caught his interest.
I envied his affability.
I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose, clearing my throat into my fist.
"Hardly robust." I mimicked with a rough rasp, turning my attention back towards the lengthy rows of books. From the corner of my eye, I notice his common smirk, and certainly, my heart skips a beat. Nausea creeps up my throat as my head fills with frivolous images. I remind myself that this isn't him, and I know that, and I am nothing but an old fool falling for the whimsies of a chance coincidence.
And yet, he is so close...and I ache.
I step behind the front counter, chucking the finished ledger into a nearby drawer and clicking it locked with a thumb.
"Aha, I see." The boy says so matter-of-factly. "How mysterious you are, and how mysterious you must persist. For without such a query, how would you hope for customers to return? If not only to catch a second of time with your quite inexplicable personality! Well, your marketing technique is quite formidable. Color me intrigued." The boy moves across the bookstore, approaching one of the lone bookshelves. He easily grazes the tips of his fingertips across the spines as he seems to think to himself, thoroughly fascinated by his assumption of I.
My eyes follow his every step, every click of his boots against the hardwood floors. They trace every curve that lies underneath that wool trenchcoat, and the belt that cinches at the waist. The tips of my ears heat, unsure completely if I am to take that as more of a compliment than a statement. For a second, I began to think that the boy had some awfully curious statements, similar to Lance's.
"I...don't think that's about right.." I begin, tapping my bandaged fingers across the corners of the wooden counter. A soft rhythmic drum that faded into the sounds of rain pattering against the glass.
A small laugh erupts from the other, like music to my ears.
"Well, then what is it exactly? I won't understand if you stay brooding like that in the corner!" Despite the context, there was a wild childish smile on his face, callow and coquettish. His gaze is smoldering, those light hazel eyes angled upwards, staring at me underneath those long dark eyelashes. I feel my chest tighten, and my teeth begin to chatter. His smile is disorienting, and my eyes snap to the window to avoid looking at your face if only for a few seconds more. But as predictable as the day, I find myself back to you. I force myself into straightening my shoulders, feigning an image of composition.
It's quite humorous, I think, for a split moment, even laughable against the irony. I want this boy...so incessantly, to a point where I bargain with the idea of chaining myself down to this very counter to avoid the inevitability of ripping him to shreds. And if I did so, of course, nothing would be left of the boy, feasibly his eyes left whole, so I may gaze lovingly into them as I continue to devour him completely.
Before I have a chance to reply, my eyes glazed over as I stumble into thought--he suddenly interrupts me.
“Well, it seems the rain has lightened. I'll be off on my own...Have a good rest of your evening, Mr. bookkeeper.” He says with a voice of finality as he tugs his beret back onto his head and pushes the front door open. The golden bell chimes and a ring, and I, left with my mouth hung wide, stare at the space he no longer occupies. My chest heaves, and he’s gone.
But that smirk-those eyes, they linger behind like shrapnel. I stumble forward, pressing a trembling palm against the wooden counter.
‘Christ,” I mutter to no one, voice cracking. “It is you.”
He walked in like a ghost and left me bleeding again.
Booker, oh my sweet, poor Booker.
What god has done to make me regret time and time again.