Anomaly in Abnormality, Part I

Cats have two extremes that they hover between throughout their lives: Dead and immobile versus perpetual motion. They might be dead and immobile sometimes, but those little brains never stop… as a matter of fact, they seem to work better then than when climbing something they shouldn’t be.

Tao sat motionless, his eyes locked onto the thing in front of him. It was (a) shiny, (b) moved, and (c) didn’t look like it was going to eat him, and thus made it fair game for staring at. The little orange—all right, cats are colorblind—light but not quite white colored shape floated left to right, then left again, then right again, its little gills flapping and its head darting this way and that. Ooh, it went left again. And right. If it wasn’t in that giant glass square thing, maybe he could get to it. Well, hold on. There was a big black lid up there. Some light shone through an opening. Maybe… if he could get up there… he could reach his paw in there…

He turned around and jumped off of the small brown—that is, rather dark gray—table that separated the fish tank from the larger table that people usually sat at. And people meant hands. But there weren’t people now. Not yet anyway. But there would be, just after he finished his bowl of food. He wasn’t hungry enough yet though.

Cause and effect, cause and effect. A leads to B. In this case, B was that goldfish—or is that really, really light fish—and A was getting on top of the tank. The kitten leaped onto the table, then on top of a bookshelf in the corner. And there was the tank. The tank with the fish. A moment later Tao landed on it and peered into the water. There was a waterfall into the gap from inside the lid somewhere, and it was making a weird humming noise. Ah! There was the fish. And without so much as a thought, his paw swiped at it, and missed entirely.

After a while of this Tao gave up and returned to his bowl. Just as he was finishing, the door opened. A man with long curly hair plodded in and flipped the light switch. Tao looked up from his food bowl and mewed at him.

“Morning to you too,” he murmured in a rough voice, the kind that made you suddenly aware of the mucus in your own throat. He threw his jacket on the table, and Tao backed away instinctively. At the fish tank, he unscrewed a small container of food and sprinkled a few flakes on the surface. They floated for a moment before the fish darted up and ate.

Jade poked her head through the doorway. “Cadby? How’s the fish?”

“Great,” he grumbled. “Not so cheerful. It’s morning. God, I hate opening.”

“Eh,” she shrugged. “C’mon. Let’s go. You can get the kids table. I think there’s a new book out by the guy that wrote Giggler Treatment.”

“Fun.” He cleared his throat, much to the relief of the narrator, and took a bite from his cereal bar. He sighed and walked into the store.

Cadby was not what one could call a morning person. He wasn’t that much of an afternoon person, either. Rather, he was the type that woke up around evening and in such good humor that it was as if he was a completely different Cadby entirely. Hell, daytime happened to other people. Combs—happened to other people. Style—also happened to other people. But money, he decided, had to happen to him so that other, vital-to-survival kind of things could continue to happen to him. So work happened.

He liked working in the bookstore. Okay, he tolerated it. Dammit, he was not gonna be stuck working in a cubicle somewhere, that was for sure. Sitting around staring at screens was not his thing. But he was surprisingly patient with people after a cup of coffee, mostly because he wasn’t quite awake enough to be frustrated with them. It was just part of the flow of the day.

Cadby was one to take care of the stubborn, ignorant morons that no one else wanted to handle. To him the Customer Was Always Right, which can be enough to shut anyone up instantly. After all, complaining people hardly want the people they’re up against to just give in. Then they look stupid.

Nicholas Earthenwhare, who was scheduled later in the day, was another one to give the stubborn, ignorant morons to. Typically annoying customers were not directed to Nick unless it was, say, a slow day… and the customer had managed to piss off one or two other employees. That was the kind of person Nick was. He gave them exactly what they didn’t want to hear.

He didn’t really argue, he didn’t shout. He just made them look like idiots in three sentences or less. Any further than that and you’d wonder why this person wasn’t seeking professional help. Any further than that, and they would be seeking professional help, or at the very least be confused about their lifestyles.

Nick had a talent of knocking people off balance.

***

In a bookstore, there are the customers, the employees, and the Regulars.

The Regulars are, arguably, what makes working in a bookstore worthwhile at all.

Cadby’s first experience with one came when he was reordering the Humor section. The Humor sign had been replaced by a plain paper one, which read, in Sharpie pen, “Humour.” Apparently Nick had done that. The British were the ones that got it right, he said, so they deserved to at least own the spelling of the word.

“Mmm,” a man next to him said, or hummed. It was a senior—ah hell, it was a short old man. He had one finger in the air as if trying to say something.

“Yes?” Cadby asked in the typical employee voice, which said: “I don’t care, you want something solved, so let’s just get to the part where you tell me what’s wrong as quick as you can.”

“Well, mmm,” the man said, “I was wondering, mmm, if you could be so kind as to, mmm, point out… my, mm…”

“Yes?” Cadby repeated, trying to hold the same voice as before, but lining it with a sense of urgency in the interest of keeping his patience.

“Have you seen my, mmm, magazine I was just, mm, reading?”

“Well, sir—”

“Mmm! Jameson.”

“Jameson. I’ll, uh—” Damn! These are not the kind of things you get trained for. “Well, where was the last place you had it?”

“I, mmm, I think I had them over by the… over by the chairs over there. Mm. Yes.”

“Did you check there?” Cadby’s voice was climbing in frequency with every sentence, while still trying to keep a smile operating correctly on his face.

“Now listen here, mm, I might be a little, mmm, slower than most… but mm, I’m not that… that… that…” He waved his hand in a circular motion, as if encouraging the next word to come out.

“Yes, sir—Jameson, I understand. But it can happen to anyone. Really.” He stole a glance at the chairs at any rate, and, as if by magic, or perhaps really bad karma, a magazine was laying there. “Look,” Cadby tried, “I think someone’s put it back…”

Jameson turned. “Oh yes! Mm! How nice of them, mm? Thank you, take care now.”

Cadby wasn’t exactly sure what to take care of, other than his sanity. Sanity, as it happened, was something Nick had explained about some time before, during Cadby’s first days of employment.

Anomaly in Abnormality, Part II

“I can’t believe I just had a shouting match with some idiot over a price!” Cadby said, walking into the break room, his hand over his eyes. “What do they think I am? Fucking insane?”

“You’re not yet?” Nick asked, flipping through a book. He was making rather a mess with the muffin he was eating, but then again, who can eat a muffin without a good half of it turning into crumbs?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cadby snapped.

“Oh, it’s not a personal thing,” Nick said. “It’s just part of the job. Either you’re insane when you walk in, or the job drives you to it. Really fast. Fast like downhill without a—”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up, I get it. Look. People have got problems. I’ve got problems. We’ve all got our damn problems. But their problems are not my problems!”

Nick waited a beat, and then continued: “Brake. But they can be pretty fun sometimes, because they think they’re right all the time. All the time.” The repeating-things bit was starting to get on Cadby’s nerves. Nick turned a page. “Do you think Hobbes is a real tiger, or’s he just in Calvin’s head?” he asked, looking up.

“What are you reading?”

“Calvin and Hobbes. Ever read it? Comic strip, awhile back?”

“Not… that I remember…”

“Oh, you poor, deprived soul.”

“Wha?”

“Nothing.”

***

Some time later—days, weeks, months, it didn’t matter; Cadby’s memory of time was all clumped together in one giant puddle of Silly Putty—he was sitting in one of the Comfy Chairs during his break, flipping through a book. It was, incidentally, Calvin and Hobbes. Another one of the Regulars—Geek Squad as he was known among the employees—sat a ways away typing on his laptop. He really did look like a geek, now that you thought about it—he had the fucking glasses for it, for Christ’s sake.

Nick was at Customer Service, playing with a paddleball he’d found in the kids department. He was the only employee that ever seemed to have spare time. For the rest of them there was always something going on, stocking this and keeping an eye on that. Even when there wasn’t, they continued to look busy, or at least like they took their job seriously. Look, of course, being the key word.

But Nick was always bored or amused. When he was bored he was doing something to entertain himself, like playing with a Slinky or picking something random out of the bookshelves. When he was amused someone else was doing something to entertain him, usually not consciously.

The tap, tap, tap of the ball was an interesting background sound when the music paused in between songs. Geek Squad over there took no notice. He was probably programming or hacking or trying to find a network or whatever it is that geeks do.

At one point he closed his laptop and tucked it under his arm, much like a book—Cadby finally realized in one of those stupid moments of inspiration you wonder why you never had before that this was why the things were sometimes called notebooks—and walked over to Customer Service. He asked about a book with “illustrations… regarding CSS programming, and written by the same person, at least I assume, that wrote the book about JavaScript because the font’s pretty much the same.”

“I see,” Nick said, intensely interested, hanging onto the man’s every word. “And do you have a title for this book?”

“I can’t seem to remember. Can you find it for me?”

“No… I need a title or an author.”

“Well, you should know it. It’s a pretty well-known series, in and out of the computer industry.”

“Not well-known enough for you to remember it, though…”

“Don’t you recognize it? It’s not clicking? Anywhere? Can you find someone else, another employee that’s more knowledgeable about computers?”

Nick walked out of the little counter that was Customer Service, and around to Geek Squad, who was still going on about his book. He took the laptop from under the man’s arm and opened it towards him.

“You look like someone knowledgeable about computers,” Nick said. “Why don’t you Google it so the rest of the nerds—I mean, fellow workers in the computer industry can tell you your book’s title?”

The scene froze for a second or so, and then Geek Squad snatched his precious portal to the technological world out of Nick’s hands. It snapped shut as he tucked it under his arm again and walked away.

“Logic,” Cadby heard his coworker say. “They never see it coming.”

***

And then there was the Librarian. She was old, and ran a school library. For these two reasons, she thought she knew everything about books, and therefore had an excuse to make really stupid demands.

Alyssa and she never got along too well. Mostly because Alyssa was the manager, but the Librarian thought she should manage the manager. For instance, there was the one time that the books were stacked just the wrong way, and why didn’t Alyssa arrange them so the best-sellers were more towards the front end? Or the time that she thought she deserved a discount for being a librarian. Or the time that the “10% off” stickers were placed on the wrong parts of the book—“The spine! You put them on the spine so it doesn’t block the cover!”

Nick had it down to a science. At one point he was in the break room and the Librarian argument of the week was taking place just outside, so he took a marker and drew on the whiteboard the exact steps he knew they were going to go through. Not that it mattered that the week’s schedule was already there—he just erased it without a thought.

***

Then there was the Preacher, who got offended at the “anti-Jesus” books the store had to offer. After Gregg had had his fill of the man the first day he complained, Nick got a description of him—just in case he should return to try to spread the Good News by complaining about everything that was Bad News.

Cadby sometimes saw Nick as a very selfish little bastard, but when he dealt with the Preacher it seemed as if he was never anything of the sort.

Nick recognized the man several minutes after he entered the store. He made sure to place Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code somewhere on one of the display tables where it could be easily seen. Actually, though, the Preacher didn’t take the bait—instead, Nick found him looking disgusted in various sections of the store.

Cadby was at Customer Service when Nick asked to switch. He still got a pretty good view from the register he was at.

The Preacher was direct—he marched straight up to Customer Service and demanded he see the manager.

“I’m afraid she’s busy at the moment—” Nick began.

“Well, I’m shocked!”

“Shocked at what?”

He listed a whole series of books whose points of view he completely disagreed with, and would probably like to toss into a bonfire, or use as a substitute for toilet paper.

“Ass,” Cadby said quietly to himself.

“Sorry?” the person he was helping asked.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. I apologize. Not you.”

“Oh, no, I understand. I really understand.” The customer’s face turned into a scowl, and his voice quicker and deeper. “Hell, I really, really understand. Did you know that last week, my boss told me—I work at a cable company—he told me…”

Cadby continued to go through the regular motions of scanning and bagging while allowing his hearing to drift off, making sure to nod and smile and say things like “That’s awful” from time to time. He’d leave eventually.

“Well, I couldn’t agree more,” Nick said to the Preacher. “I go to church every week to worship Christ, and personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that. But some people just want to undermine everything because they can’t find Him.”

“Exactly! Exactly!” the Preacher declared. “If you want to find the Lord, you have to listen! To have patience! You can’t go bashing about everything He says.”

“I know, I know,” Nick agreed, agreed. “But I believe that God has given us all different minds. And sometimes people turn from Him. But that’s their business, not mine.” Only the last sentence sounded like it could have come from Nick.

“Quite, quite. God has designed us all to be different, I know that.”

“Well, that’s why I don’t rip the books off the shelves every day. I think He wants us to know there’re different people out there… no matter how much they might not like Him, it’s too bad, because He made ’em to begin with. They can’t escape that!”

The Preacher chuckled. “Yes, that’s true…”

“If you’d like to buy something religious, please feel free. A lot of good stuff’s over there…”

“No, thank you. I’m late for a meeting. But thanks for this talk. It’s nice to see God around here.”

“Thank you.”

Cadby was fucking impressed. Yes, he too used the idea that the Customer Was Always Right, but that took talent.

The Preacher walked out of the bookstore. The instant the doors closed behind him, Nick cupped his hands and yelled out, “Sucker!” The word wasn’t just carried by the air, it decided to take a shortcut and sliced through it. He looked around. “Sorry, sorry about that. Please. Go on with your lives. Don’t mind me, I was just checked out of the mental hospital today,” he said as he crossed over to Cadby. “Hey, Cadby, thanks, that was a lotta fun. I’ll take the register, it’s your turn to play idiot.”

Anomaly in Abnormality, Part III

And then there was the Poet.

It began one morning—after all, everything begins one Something—when Cadby and Nick were sorting through boxes of books that had just come in.

“Are you coming to movie night this Friday?” Nick asked, slapping another two books on top of a growing stack of titles such as “Windows Made Simple,” and “Learn C++ in 24 Hours.” Amazing how much fiction sold.

“Yeah, I think so,” Cadby said, grabbing a few books and putting them on display. “What’re we going to see?”

“Oh, I thought Borat might be good,” Nick said. “Someone else is joining us. He’s a Regular, in a way.”

“How’zat?”

“Well, he’s… peculiar, and he’s been here before. I think that’s about half the criteria, isn’t it?”

“How’s he… peculiar?”

“He’s a poet. The insane kind.”

From his limited knowledge of literature, Cadby asked, “There’re others?”

“I’ve heard rumors of ’em, I think. Anyway, he just burst into the store one day asking for ‘great literature’ or something like that.”

“That’s not too weird.”

“No, but when you look like you’ve swallowed a pot of espresso, that’s pretty interesting. And then I found him the next day, back here, unconscious in a chair with books all over the place.”

“That’s one damn determined guy.”

“Another d and that’d been alliteration.”

“Allit-what?”

“Don’t ask, it’s a book word. So I stole the guy’s notebook and it’s pretty obvious he’s a poet. Then he comes back again another day thinking he’s got a medical condition, so I kept an eye on him waiting for him to spaz out.” Another few books on the cart.

“Did he?”

“Well, after I tried to rip God out of his brain, a little. He sees auras around people.”

“That’s kinda bizarre,” Cadby noted, grabbing another armful of books.

“Don’t put those out. Put ’em over there, we’ll shelve ’em later. And yes, excellent deduction, Watson.”

“Who?”

“Watson. Jesus Christ on a stick, you need a serious injection of either books, common sense, or maybe just life. Doyle. Holmes.” It didn’t register. Hell, Cadby’s register was locked and bolted when it came to this stuff. “Oh, never mind. Put those on the cart.”

“So this poet is coming with us? What sort of stuff’s he write?”

“Poetry,” Nick said simply. “At least, that’s what I think. You can ask him when you meet him if you want.”

“So why’s he coming with us on movie night then?”

“Haven’t I given you enough reasons already?” Nick asked, and left it at that.

***

Back in what Cadby groggily considered the present, he sorted through a small heap of books collected the day previously from various places they shouldn’t have been. Ah, here was a biography. Hmm. Ea, El, F, G, skipping down… yes, there it went…

Something occurred to him, which didn’t happen often when he got less than eight hours of sleep. He walked over to where Jade was finishing a table of books and asked her if she had any clue about the Poet.

“Yep,” she said, straightening the piles, “Dalyn. He’s coming with us to movie night. You coming?”

“Yeah, I am. But, question. Why?”

She shrugged. “Who knows, with Nick,” she said.

Cadby had read something once, in a magazine, about smiling. There’s a way to tell the difference between a real smile and a fake one. It wasn’t something in the lips that gave it away, but the eyes. The eyes smiled more than the mouth, he recalled. Something like that. And even though Jade’s statement sounded innocent, her eyes were smiling.

Regulars came and went, usually on a regular basis. Some Regulars he’d known from the beginning, other ones just showed up every once in awhile. But this new one, the Poet, he’d never seen, and apparently it all happened recently. So what was irregular about this Regular?

Not this early in the morning, sighed his brain. Maybe later. But we are not thinking before noon, you understand?