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.