Souvenirs

This was from my travel writing course. It was a short story on an unexpected place.

 

Souvenirs

The smell of caramel mocha mixed with fresh ink overcomes me, filling me with a sense of importance. I feel smarter, more confident, and taller – okay, maybe not taller, but I feel as though I’m standing straighter and walking with an air of dignity. I feel respect for the fellow bookstore patrons I pass, toting books under their arms or flipping through pages of books on Italy or World War II. I know they’ve inhaled the same elixir. We recognize that we are all smart, we are all . . . literate. We are all here for our own reasons, but everyone is accepted. It doesn’t matter what clothes you are wearing or what section of books you are wandering through – unless, of course, you’re only there to look at magazines or CDs – and maybe if you’re looking at the scary back row of special topics – in which case, you’re just ignored.

I come to Barnes and Noble every week, a tradition my friend and I started two years ago. We were too busy with schoolwork, but suffered from not seeing each other, so we compromised and chose to study at Barnes and Noble. Here, we could chat, eat, and shop, all while lying to ourselves by thinking we could possibly get any homework done. I particularly enjoyed going to Barnes and Noble for the people I saw. I inherited this hobby of people watching from my grandmother. We used to sit at the mall and watch people walk by, imagining what they were like, and where they were headed.

No matter how many times I come in, I’m always surprised by how much a bookstore is like its own country. The people are an eclectic culture, the sections of the store different cities. I get to be the casual tourist, wandering and taking it all in. I make my way over to the coffee shop and reach into the cooler for my usual drink – a large, glass bottle of Bananaberry soda. I shuffle through the various varieties of labels and settle for one with a girl crinkling her face at me.

            Sitting at a table in the corner of the café, I wait for my friend to show up. There’s a woman in a dark purple shirt and a light purple – is that a baseball cap, or a newsboy hat? She’s sitting in a corner drinking a McDonald’s soda and eating a bagel with cream cheese. As I walk around to an empty table, she watches me. I feel it. We make eye contact, but she keeps watching. Is she a people watcher too?

            Leslie and I have only been trying to study for about fifteen minutes, and most of that time was spent recounting how a guy in Leslie’s film class came in dressed like a pimp, wearing a purple jacket and carrying a cane, and got into a fight with the instructor where he yelled, “What’s your punishment? What’s your punishment? What’s your punishment?” He yelled this at the teacher for ten minutes, tapping his cane each time. Then, he punched the wall and stormed out. Now, Leslie is reading her history book, and I’m staring off into space. An elderly couple sits across from me. The man is reading a thick book while his wife flips through magazines. She constantly interrupts his reading to read to him from the magazine. The man’s face sinks lower and lower every time he has to listen to an article about weight loss or fashion. By the time she gets to her fifth or sixth article, he looks as though he’s about to fall asleep on his chest.

I decide that I really need to take a break, get up and stretch before getting into my homework. Cleanse the brain. I like to wander through the non-fiction books, the biographies and autobiographies. I wonder who wakes up and decides they want to write about someone else’s life, find out all the gritty details and put them on paper. I’m even more curious to know who wants to pick it up and read about someone else’s life. I picture a woman who goes out for tea with her friends and says, “Gene Wilder had a really amazing life. I was just reading his autobiography before I came out today.” Then, she flips her hair back, takes a sip of her tea, and waits for her friends to ask for more information. They’ll talk about Gene Wilder and his relationship with his father, and then talk about the hideous dress JLo wore on the red carpet, but how Julia Roberts would look stunning in a paper bag.

Back at the table, I interrupt Leslie’s reading, which she warmly welcomes, when I remember that I didn’t tell her about a woman in my college literature class who fell asleep and only woke up when her cell phone rang. She fumbled for her phone and had to pass it off to someone else because she didn’t know how to turn the ringer off.

Leslie and I both return to our reading, but I look up as a couple of old men sit down to a game of chess. They come here every week, drinking their coffee, having intellectual discussions about what they teach in colleges today. Nearby, a young couple sits, interrupting each other to coquettishly giggle or smile. A cashier comes around the corner, stacking abandoned books on top of the garbage can and cleaning off tables. I need another break.

I also love to peruse the fiction section. The First Man on the Moon, Love Walked in, Hello Darling, Are You Working? Titles, covers, stories. Imaginations line the shelves, like dreams on the B.F.G.’s cave walls. They strategically place the journals on tall shelves next to the fiction section. Shelves of fancy leather-bound books, books with stars and moons on them, journals of handmade paper screaming to be written on. They stand at the end of the fiction section shouting, “They can do it, why not you? And while you’re at it, there are fancy pens for sale over by the greeting cards.”

 Leslie is always amused at my need to wander off so much. But I’m quickly bored by the introduction to my textbook, written by a man who sounds like he wrote it standing in front of a podium with a pipe in his mouth. He’s British, of course. Now that it’s later in the evening, there are more people sitting in the café. A group of older people have gathered around a table and are loudly discussing religion. There’s a woman with a high-pitched voice that resonates across the store. She shouts to her husband who is in line buying coffee. The rest of the table talks over her; they are oblivious to the fact that there are medical students occupying the table behind them, clutching tightly to their pens and glaring at the back of their heads. No longer able to concentrate, Leslie and I agree to leave. I grab my stack of books and head towards the register.

I’m a sucker for the bargain racks. Ridiculous books I would normally never even think to look for, books on dream analysis, books called I Always Look up the Word “Egregious” in the Dictionary. And for only five dollars! I own that book; it sits on top of a stack of other books I couldn’t resist while purchasing David Copperfield and Jane Eyre.

Next to the bargain racks is a display that holds my biggest weakness: adorable books that are hardbound, with gold-tipped pages and built-in bookmarks. Better yet, they’re the classics, and only five dollars each. They must know that five is my lucky number. I can’t resist grabbing Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, and Gulliver’s Travels along with a book of Sudoku puzzles from the bargain rack. Souvenirs from my trip.

The same staff members stand behind the counter every week. There’s the tall guy with thick, curly black hair that makes his black glasses seem twice as thick as they actually are. He always wears a button-up shirt, and his nametag hangs on a string around his neck like a tie. Next to him is the woman with washed out pink hair, and black clothes that stopped fitting years ago, giving her the appearance of someone who, at one point in time, had a very strong message to send, but lost interest somewhere along the way.  There’s also the bubbly manager in his nice shirt and tie. He smiles eagerly at me and, with a gentle hand gesture, sweeps me up to the register. “Did you find everything today?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely.” I dump my books onto the counter.

“Are you a Barnes and Noble member?”

“Of course.” I smile and hand him my membership card. He swipes it, stamping my passport. I pay for my books, nodding to the security guard on my way out, toting my bag as if it were my carry-on, and I, the weary traveler, am going home.