Читать книгу Klick's Shorts - Milam Smith - Страница 5

On another off day I was there almost when the store opened. Trying to not look too suspicious I went to the men’s room, then drifted around the magazine racks before heading to the mystery/suspense section, where I slipped out Thomas Perry’s latest Jane Whitefield novel, The Face-Changers.

I found my favorite fluffy comfy seat; it was in an out-of-the-way spot by the windows that face out on the western skyline.

The day outside was a cool and cloudy one for a change. The Texas summer had died reluctantly. Now we were having L.A. weather, a light jacket for the morning and t-shirt and shorts for after noon.

I cracked open The Face-Changers and got started, thinking I’d read until the Cowboys game started in a few hours.

But Thomas Perry drew me deeper in deeper into his book, making my stomach tighten, making me care more about what would happen to Jane Whitefield and her husband/doctor Carey than to Emmitt or Irvin or Sanders.

It became apparent half-way through that this was a book ‘about’ something other than giving the reader a good time. About good and evil, about standing up and doing the right - no, necessary thing.

Still, the couples floating around the aisle in front of me - the Fiction Section - kept distracting me.

There was more of a challenge in figuring out what couples were all about. You couldn’t just pick out what each person might read and then read what their relationship must be all about. Hell, as often as not one half of the partners were in the book store only to keep (watch/protect/prevent?) their other half company.

The men following their babes around as the ladies browsed fit a certain profile, percentage-wise. They were slump-shouldered, until frustration gave them courage. After they’d read just about all the Guns and Tits magazines on the racks twice, they’d hunt down their mates and confront them, grunting like David Letterman’s imitation of a disgruntled viewer, “You done yet?!”

Most of these women hardly heard their men. Or expertly pretended not to, which was the telling sign of who was the real controller in their relationship. Strong women. Something of which I always dreamed.

Yet it was my experience that few strong women actually had a strong companion. Those that did were usually in a moneyed romance. Years of experience gleaned from my watching betrayal, recording it for evidence on a weekly basis.

A young woman, ripening in her early twenties, hovered over the Ayn Rand section. She wore denim hip-huggers with little to hug, her waist lithe and smooth, exposed, her blouse a tie-dyed flimsy gist of cotton that provided a most amazing view of peachy nubs when she turned just the right way.

Like a gentleman, I averted my gaze after a good half-dozen looks. Moderation is the key to a good life.

Her boob of a beau almost ran up to her. He hid his surliness. Embarrassed that we - er, many of the men sitting in the cushiony chairs had their eyes on his ‘woman’ more so than our - er, their books, he gave furtive glances at us - er, them, knowing full well that if we - they were a pack of dogs they’d eat him alive fighting over her in a rush of heat. His jeans were marred by work, his windbreaker smudged, more brown than the original orange. Moppy head of hair, glasses in black frames. The two looked like they’d taken a time-trip from the sixties.

There was moment when the young man glanced around him at the sea of books. Fear glared in his eyes, darting every-which-way as if they expected the books to assail him. The poor guy was more afraid of losing his woman to a book. He knew - as all true readers do - that a good book makes a most powerful seducer. The fear welled in him ‘cause he couldn’t grasp their perfume, how the seduction happened.

All he knew was that probably his mate spent every spare minute with a book rather than him.

I’d been the opposite in my first marriage. It was I enthralled by the word-riddled pages, learning from them, at the age when hunger for knowledge can overwhelm and give drive to even the laziest of persons. Ideas found in books can sometimes motivate one to experiment and experience the light that created the ideas.

A broad smile bent my face as I watched the young man kick the carpet resentfully as his gal kept picking up a stray book here and there, flipping through it. As she moved down the aisle he followed like the puppy dog he was.

And the nipp - uh, nubile lass moved out of sight.

I sighed. There but for the grace of intelligence go I.