chapter 8 the new bookstore

Easy got up pleasantly that morning. It was going to be her first day of

work, plus she just couldn’t wait to hang out with her new friend Eddie, to

look around every corner of New York. She’d thought about his speech

about this great city and realized that it was a real luck to come and visit it

every year. She now couldn’t see why she has never visited anything yet. 

When she stood up in front of her mirror in her pink pajamas shorts she

gave a look at herself: her skin was terribly pale and her legs too skinny. She

has always complained about how she looked, but her father taught her to

look inside someone before looking at his or her appearance.

Dad.

She still missed him so much. And all those calls they did on Skype were

absolutely not enough. She wanted his hugs, she wanted him to prickle her

and make her laugh until tears came down from her big eyes, which were a

copy of his own. How much she missed those warm, tender eyes of a young

father who had to raise his child by his own since his wife died. That was

eighteen years ago, the day Easy was born. But Dad always kept a smile on

his and her face, remembering her that life was beautiful in all its facets.

Today, anyway, was a bright new day and Easy didn’t want to miss a thing.

She chose to wear a bright red skirt, long up to the knees, with a white Teeshirt.

She wouldn’t bring her violin with her tho, because the theft she had

to witness had been too shocking.

When she left her pink colored room, Easy was soon invested by a strong

fragrance of coffee-and-milk. She descended the wooden stairs quickly with

her bare feet, because she knew that where there was coffee-and-milk,

there were also those tender croissants, filled with jam that changed every

day. It was a nice trick Aunt Jo kept since six years: when Easy first came to

New York she never had breakfast; something that disappointed her Auntie

very much, for breakfast was the most important thing of the day as she

said.

Once, aunt Joanne made her little nephew try one of those croissants she

bought from a near bakery and Easy quickly became fond of them. Aunt Jo

told her they had them in different flavors and when little Easy told her she

wanted to taste them all, her aunt presented her one in the morning, as

breakfast, accompanied with a big bowl of coffee-and-milk.

When Easy reached the kitchen, she found her Aunt with her light green

nightgown and curlers still on, preparing breakfast while swinging on the

notes of a Dean Martin song.

“’Morning Auntie” Easy said, trying to help her Aunt without getting

involved in her dance.

“Buongiorno dear!” when Aunt Jo was in a good mood she talked Italian.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah, I did” Easy thought. She actually slept like a log. “What about you?”

Her Aunt finished preparing the table with the wonderful breakfast and said

“Me too, strangely. C’mon mangia, mangia” Eat. Eat. Her Aunt always told

her to eat even after a meal.

As Easy reached the subway she couldn’t help smile at the idea that

probably she would have found Eddie sat at some seat waiting for her.

This time she would sit right next to him and show him her favorite playlist

on Spotify, showing her all the modern songs she liked. 

But as she entered the tube, she was disappointed not seeing any red cap,

nor any red Converse: Eddie wasn’t there. All her positive thoughts and

energy for the day were replaced by a terrible feeling. Disappointment.

As she took a seat next to a guy immersed in hitting like and reactions on

Facebook, a voice materialized in Easy’s mind: don’t worry, he may show up

later at the bookstore. But what if he didn’t show up at all? Well, he may

had had a setback or something. Probably. But she just couldn’t help feeling

a bit sad.

When she reached the bookstore, Barry was already there, apron on,

sweePing the floor.

“’Morning Barry, how are you doing?” Easy asked as she entered. It was

9:30.

Barry looked immersed in his thoughts: it didn’t seem he had such a great

night. “Oh, hi Easy. I’m fine, what about you?”

“Fine, thanks. So, do we have anything special to do today?” Easy asked,

trying to focus on her work, and not on the idea that Eddie wasn’t there

with them.

Barry smiled lightly as he said: “Nope, I’m afraid we will be doing the same

things we did since we opened: waiting for customers to come”

That answer knocked Easy off her feet. It was obviously rhetoric to say that

customers didn’t use to come here.

And so Easy sat disappointed on her chair behind the counter, praying for

someone to come in soon.

But the hours passed, and no customer showed up. It was 12:30 when Easy

slammed her hand on the counter, saying: “This is not going anywhere!” 

Barry jumped for the scare among the shelves and piles of book he was

dusting. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I just can’t help feeling that people don’t even know that we’re here! Why

doesn’t anybody come?” Easy replied.

“What can we do, it’s been like this since…uhm, well, since I came here,

which was four years ago.”

“But…this is just so…wrong! You work hard to keep this place up, somebody

should come to see it!”

Barry smiled wide for the first time since Easy has met him, and he had a

bright white smile, beautifully in contrast with his dark face: “Thanks girl,

but people usually go to shops to buy, not to see the janitor”

Easy fell silent. He got a point. But she didn’t like that anyway. It was like

she was earning her money for just being sat on a chair. The only one doing

something here was Barry, and poor guy, he must have been sick and tired

to sweep and dust, dust and sweep over and over for no reason: no one

was never going to see it!

“But you’re right, tho.” Barry said suddenly. “Today is particularly boring:

usually Jerry comes here almost every day to take a book or chat with us.”

“Oh, and why wouldn’t he come today?” Easy asked interested. That Jerry

guy was still mysterious to her.

“He’s having his second-to-last final exam at high school. He should be

done by now, however.” Barry said, having a look at the big clock hanged

on the wall.

“You mean Jerry’s still in high school?” Easy asked bewildered. “I thought

he was around twenty.”

“He is, actually. He’s twenty, but he’d lost two years due, uhm, to some

problems” he obviously didn’t want to tell her a lot, but Easy appreciated it

anyway.

Trying to change topic, she said: “Oh, I’m sorry…however going back to the

loneliness of this place, do you mind if we do some changes?”

Barry shrugged: “Yeah, that’s fine. Do you have some ideas?”

Easy’s Dad always taught her to look beyond what she had under the nose,

to look how things could have been and not only how they actually were.

That was why she couldn’t stand doing nothing to get the bookstore into a

better way.

Barry and she talked a lot that day, about how they could get more clients,

order new books to attract teens �"who were usually the most fruitful

customers- and how they could improve the appearance of the shop:

enough with pictures of boring writers of which nobody cared at all,

enough with these shabby grey-colored walls! It was time to get some

changes!

Barry felt relieved that somebody still cared about this place, and Easy just

had the new, trendy, revolutionary ideas that could save the shop. The chat

they had lasted for two hours and transformed into a real ad campaign:

Easy wanted to create a public page on Facebook, to extend the working

hours up to the evening, to buy books for children and set aside few hours

every day to read some tales to a group of kids. She even wanted to paint

the walls, each with a different color, and arrange the shop window in a

different way every week.

Of course, those were just ideas that couldn’t have translated into reality

without the approval of Eddie, who was in charge. But at that point Easy

didn’t care at all: she couldn’t spend even one more day like that, thinking

about how the shop could be much greater.

And that’s how she and Barry revolutionized the Park Avenue little

bookstore: each day they would do a new thing. They started with the shop

window, which was the first thing passerbys would notice. Easy insisted to

remove all those flowers and “old-vintage-things” to put a trendy

kaleidoscopic background, with bright colors that were more attractive that

a neon-light sign.

Then, with the help of Jerry �"who declared to have revised enough and

could help them- they painted the four walls of the inside respectively

purple, yellow, blue and green, and made a special corner for children, with

a soft red rug and a puffy armchair where Easy was supposed to read to

them aloud.

They’ve also adopted the tactics of keePing the door always open, to show

that customers were very welcome.

The new look of the bookstore actually worked, and when one day they

scored five customers, Jerry, Barry and Easy ended their day having a little

party: Barry’s mom would have prepared some donuts to share with

“Barry’s-dear-colleagues” and they all enjoyed them. But of course, they all

missed their boss: it didn’t feel complete without him.

Everything worked fine, and the number of customers per day kept

increasing, until Easy and her team found out that they were finishing their

books. Now, that was a problem.

“What are we going to do now?” Jerry asked. Today, he was wearing a

yellow-and-black suit with a familiar pin on his chest. His golden hair was

stuck with gel: he was interpreting Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise. Easy

wondered from where he got all those costumes.

Barry went to the counter and pick up a big casebook: “This is where we

keep the phone numbers and e-mails of our suppliers. Usually, Eddie calls 

the DuckSide Home for Books and Magazines” and he pointed at the first

phone number in the list.

Easy felt they have gone a bit too far: it has been almost a week and they

have flipped the shop upside down without even consulting Eddie.

But he even didn’t show up to check us! He just left and disappeared

without saying a word! A voice in Easy’s head popped in again, reminding

her that he had also forgotten about their “deal” of hanging around the

city.

“I think Eddie has to call them and choose the books” Easy said, finally.

“Yeah, but the problem is: in which galaxy could we ever find him!” Jerry

said.

Barry shook his head rolling up his eyes. “His galaxy it’s at number 38,

Village Road, Captain �"and turning to Easy, he continued- I’ve tried to call

him many times, but he wouldn’t answer. Maybe he’s too busy to come to

see us and he’s stuck at home working on something. You can try to look

him there.”

“What? Me?! Why don’t you guys go!” Easy said. She realized she actually

was a little bit mad at Eddie and didn’t want to run after him to take care of

his bookstore. But that place slightly became also hers after all.

“I’m sorry, I can’t go. It’s too far and I work in that pub after lunch, I told

you that.” Barry said, with a sad note in his voice. In fact, if Easy could stay

‘till evening, Barry always apologized and said he had to work somewhere

else. By the way he talked about it, Easy imagined he didn’t like his second

job anyway.

On the other hand, Jerry stood up straight and raised his hand, forming the

shape of a V with his long four fingers of the right hand and spoke quickly:

“I’m sorry, Commander, but Mrs. Mother back at the Head Quarter

required my presence in the evening. I really can’t. And I shall go now

Peace and prosperity.” And he left the place. He really was… special, Easy

thought.

That day had been very trying for Easy and Barry: the first group of kids

came to listen at one of Easy’s stories and it didn’t go like she expected.

Many of the little boys were jumPing and messing around and the little girls

were peacefully giggling and chatting together and only two or three were

actually listening to Easy. She was the kind of person that didn’t like when

people ignored her. But those were nearly hyperactive kids, and clearly she

wasn’t telling them anything interesting.

When Easy got back home, tired and disappointed, she sank on the big,

comfy sofa in the living room of Aunt Jo’s house. Leaning her head on the

sofa’s arm, Easy thought about going at Eddie’s house to tell him about the

books they needed. Why don’t I contact him on Facebook? Nah, he didn’t

answer Barry’s calls, why should he answer hers?

The thing was that she was becoming more and more angry with him. She

thought some kind of friendship has born between them, he promised her

to go here and there, and at the end he simply forgot her. And what about

the bookstore? Didn’t he realize it was an important thing for her and Berry

�"and even Jerry! If she was going to see him, it had to be face-to-face. She

wanted a proper explanation. So she decided to go looking for him at his

place the following day, at lunch time, so she was sure she could have

found him.