Escapes: A Short Story Read online

  Escapes:

  A Short Story

  by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Escapes:

  A Short Story

  by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Kiriki Press, P.O. Box 10858, Eugene, Oregon 97440 U.S.A.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters have been created for the sake of this story and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2002-2012 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Escapes" first appeared in Shelf Life, edited by Greg Ketter, Dreamhaven Books, 2002. ISBN-13: 978-1892058058

  Original artwork © iStockphoto/Zhenikeyev. Modified for this publication.

  eBook Design, Kiriki Press

  This eBook edition was produced by Kiriki Press

  Originally Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Beginning

  Connect with the Author

  Other Nina Kiriki Hoffman Titles

  Escapes

  Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “Where are the books where you write your own ending?” the girl asked me. She was pale and bedraggled; her shoes were scuffed, and so was her face. The shoulders of her long brown coat were sopping from the rain outside the two-story building that housed Brannigan's Bookstore. The brown leather satchel strapped across her chest bulged at her side, its clasps broken and outside pockets gaping to display a selection of her underwear, mostly white cotton. I wondered if I should ask her to check her bag. I didn’t think she could shove anything else into it, though, even if she wanted to shoplift.

  “The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books?” I glanced toward the kids’ section. Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books were from my childhood. I didn’t know if anyone published them anymore. I'd only been working at Brannigan’s for a week, though, and I didn’t know the stock yet. Every time I straightened a section, I found all kinds of books I’d never heard of in my previous incarnation as a bookseller at a big chain store in Seattle.

  David, the supervisor on duty, handed a little old lady a copy of the latest Witches’ Almanac and came to the cashwrap. “Hey, Sylvia, need some help?” he asked.

  Everybody at Brannigan’s was really nice. They didn’t trust me yet. Every time I tried to answer a customer’s question, somebody swooped up and checked on me, which was probably a good thing, as I usually had the wrong answer, apparently. It was as if my eight years in book sales didn’t mean a thing.

  They were watching me as though I was a baby chick in a hen yard. It was nice. It was also driving me nuts.

  I needed this job. I couldn’t go back to Seattle. Peter was there, terrifyingly there, with all his friends, not all of whom I knew, but all of them knew about me. The three earlier times I had tried to escape, Peter had tracked me down with the help of his watchful friends, and then he punished me for abandoning him. Those times I hadn’t left town, just moved to new apartments in different suburbs. To actually escape, I had had to leave everything behind, change my name, my hair color, and my behavior. I still wasn’t sure I was safe, but at least I was somewhere else.

  I liked my new town, Tonkit, somewhere in the middle of Washington State, not on any direct route from Seattle to anywhere else. So it was small, and I was lonely; at least I had my own place. I could go home without worrying that Peter would be waiting in the apartment for me with another suitcase full of things he called toys.

  Well, that wasn’t true. I always worried. The change was that even though I worried, nobody was there when I got home, and the tension that twisted my guts relaxed a little more every night.

  I loved selling books. Books had saved my life time after time when I was a teenager and there was no way I could leave home except by reading. Hell, they had helped me survive the time I spent with Peter. I got a rush helping other people find the perfect escape.

  I was lucky Brannigan’s had hired me. Brannigan’s was the only bookstore in town, and not an easy place to get a job. Some of the clerks had been there fifty years. Nobody ever quit unless they were moving or they died. I’d seen the tall stack of applications the owner had received. My application was good, even though the references were fake. But I had been lucky too, or maybe my interview went really well. I still wondered why I had gotten the job, but I surely didn’t want to lose it. I was still on probation to see how I worked out.

  I could survive being helped too much.

  “I’m looking for the books where you write your own ending,” the soggy girl said in a soft voice to David.

  “Ah,” said David. “Follow me.” He didn’t head for the kids’ section, but back into the stacks where new and used books rubbed shoulders, and parts of each section were set up based on the special knowledge of the clerks. Elizabeth, the owner, had asked me after I was hired what I had special knowledge of, and she’d set up a shelf just for me. “Stock all your favorites here,” she said, “the books you can sell because you’ve read and loved them.” So far I’d ordered a hiking guide, three plant identification books, my favorite biography of Houdini, an illustrated book about the goddesses of India, three historic mysteries, four kids’ books, and eight fantasy novels.

  Miki, another clerk, was nearby, talking to the bookstore cat, Tetisheri. “Watch the front?” I asked her.

  “Sure.”

  I followed David and the customer. I wanted to know where everything was, and I hadn’t heard of this book category before.

  Against the back wall between the sections on Self-Help and History, there was a bookshelf I hadn’t noticed, with a fold-down desk and a collapsible metal chair below it. The books on the shelf were covered in various fabric colors and designs, and none of them had titles.

  “What kind of story is it?” David asked the soggy girl.

  “It’s about a runaway.”

  David tsked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, scanned the book spines. He picked one covered in faded blue denim, opened it, skimmed a couple of pages, and handed it to the girl.

  She turned to the first page. She read a paragraph, then glanced up at David. Her smile was like a shaft of sunlight coming through a cloud. “Thank you.”

  He held the chair for her. She sat at the desk, the book open in front of her. He handed her a pen.

  “Thank you,” she whispered again, her gaze already fixed on the words. David nodded, then took my arm and led me back to the cashwrap.

  “She’s going to write in that book?” I asked. “A book she hasn’t even paid for?”

  “She’ll pay later.”

  “That’s a category? Books where you write your own ending?”

  David smiled. He was an older man, slight and wispy, with iron-framed glasses and a retreating hairline. He dressed in blues and grays, soft sweatery shirts and vests and nondescript slacks. He had a V-shaped smile that changed him from invisible into something cunning, sparkly, and almost dangerous. I had been trying to train myself not to back away when he smiled, but I still stepped back. His smile widened. “We have special customers for that section. Let me know if anybody else asks. It takes a while to learn those books.”

  “Okay.”

  I was helping a kid track down a book about dragon hunting — Miki told me to check Juvenile Non-fiction — when the soggy girl emerged from the stacks. Her c
lothes had changed: her full-length coat was lavender and waterproof now; her leather satchel had changed into a big black suitcase with wheels, and clasps that actually held it shut; her scuffed shoes had turned into elegant high-button boots. Her face had filled out. She smiled as she paid David, using a shiny new credit card.

  Okay, my only clue that she was the soggy girl was that she was buying the denim-covered book. I took a couple steps toward the cashwrap, longing for a better look at her, but the boy tugged on my arm. “They don’t have a picture of the dragon I want,” he said, waving the Illustrated Guide to Dragons at me.

  I knelt beside him and helped him look through the descriptions of the dragons. He was right; there was no black and gold dragon the size of a baseball in the book.

  This was Brannigan’s, so I checked the shelf again, and found two more large books with full-color illustrations. We searched them and finally found the information he wanted. He read it carefully. He asked me how much the book cost.

  “Thirty dollars,” I said.

  His face turned red. “I’ve only got three bucks,” he mumbled.

  “That’s okay.” I rose and re-shelved the books. “I bet this book will be here when you come back, if you still want it. Want to find something else today?”

  He bought a used paperback book about mummies. By that time, the soggy girl was gone.

  On my mid-afternoon break I went into the back office where we did the bookkeeping, kept the overstock, and received new books. It was a dark, cavernous room with shelves up to the ceiling on every wall and no windows. It had a dark pink carpet that reminded me unpleasantly of the surface of a tongue.

  Piranella, the store’s used book buyer, had her own desk there where she repaired used books, covered them with mylar dust jackets, and priced them. The rest of us sat at Elizabeth’s desk when we were on break, below the small oil portrait of the store’s founder, Elizabeth’s great-grandfather Samuel Brannigan. Her desk was an antique monster with lots of drawers in it, most of them locked. We were all taught the combination to her file drawer, where the female clerks kept their purses during their shifts.

  Miki was in the back room, sorting new receiving into categories on three rolling carts.

  I got my lunch bag and the current book I was reading out of the tote bag I had brought. I settled to eat at Elizabeth’s desk. “How long have you worked here?” I asked Miki.

  “Six years.”

  “No kidding? How old are you?” She looked about sixteen, though she was Japanese, so it was hard for me to judge.

  “Twenty-four,” she said.

  “Wow. So do you know every section in the store yet?”

  Miki laughed. “Nobody knows every section. Don’t let them fool you. Yesterday I saw Clifton find a shelf he’d never seen before.”

  “Gosh.” Clifton was the senior clerk. He’d been at the store for fifty-three years, longer than Elizabeth had owned it. “What was on it?”

  “A set of encyclopedias from 1879. Just what somebody was looking for. A dollar a volume for a set of twenty-four. They’d been there so long we don’t even know who priced them; maybe they’d been there since they were published.”

  “Did you know they were there?”

  “I’d seen them before. I’m the only one who uses a duster, remember? I’ve touched more books in this store than anybody else, I bet.”

  “I just saw David show somebody a section of books where you write your own ending. Do you know about those?”

  The tip of Miki’s tongue stuck out of her mouth. She took a stack of books out of a box and stuck them on the New Age section of the cart. “I’ve seen people shop that section once in a while. I get the wanders when I head there.”

  “The wanders.”

  Her black eyes glanced at me, then away. “You know. When the store pushes you another direction?”

  “Um?”

  “You haven’t gotten the wanders yet? Relax. They’ll come. It’s very helpful. When I’ve forgotten where something is, I get these little nudges from the store. Listen to your feet. The floor’s telling them where to go. You’ll wind up in front of the right shelf.”

  “The wanders.” I opened my yogurt and stirred the fruit.

  “Or maybe you won’t get them.” Miki shrugged and opened another box of receiving.

  “I’d like to. Sounds helpful. I just never had them at my other store.”

  “Your other store.” Another shrug.

  I ate my yogurt and banana and let the conversation wilt, the way my shoulders were doing. I guessed everyone who worked at independent bookstores hated the chains. I’d heard stories about how the big chain bookstores drove little stores out of business, built big stores in locations specifically to kill little stores. It hadn’t happened in Tonkit, of course. Tonkit was too small. In fact, it was surprising that Brannigan’s survived. We were close enough to draw Canadian book buyers over the border, and even though Tonkit wasn’t on any tourist route, we seemed to pull in a lot of out-of-towners. The first day I worked here I had talked to people from Paris, Tokyo, and Cairo. Each had found books in their own language, too. I wasn’t sure how I would straighten the foreign language sections, if they were ever assigned to me. How do you alphabetize Arabic when you can’t even read it?

  I checked my watch. My fifteen-minute break was up. I disposed of my trash, put my book in my tote bag, and headed back to work.

  For a minute there, I’d thought maybe Miki and I were making friends, and I’d felt hopeful. Sure would be nice to have somebody to rent DVDs with (Tonkit was too small to have a movie theater). Microwave popcorn was as haute as my cuisine usually got. I seemed to have soured my chances for friendship somehow, though.

  Just before I crossed the threshold between the office and the store, the pink rug rose up and licked my leg just above my hiking boot and below the cuff of my black jeans. I stumbled into the wood-floored store, slipped, and fell on my butt.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the rug.

  Perfectly flat, totally quiescent.

  The wide black door shut. The lock clicked. Had Miki followed me to the door and locked me out? I had the office keys; all the employees did. Maybe she was making some kind of point. Whatever it was, I didn’t get it.

  “Are you all right, Sylvia?” David held out a hand and helped me to my feet.

  “You ever get the feeling the office is a great big mouth?”

  “Of course, but it never swallows, only tastes. Would you like to straighten the self-help section this afternoon?”

  “Love to,” I said.

  The self-help section was back by the shelf where the soggy girl had been. When I got there, the desk was folded up into the wall; the chair had been collapsed and slid into a little alcove just the right size to shelter it. No wonder I’d never noticed the desk before. I reached for one of the fabric-covered books. They were part of our inventory, and I wanted to know more about them. There was a turquoise one that particularly intrigued me. Before I touched it, though, I turned around and headed for the beginning of my section.

  I spent two hours alphabetizing by author as hard as I ever had. By the time I’d reached Wegscheider-Cruse/Williamson/Zukav, my shift was over.

  ˜˜

  When I went to the office to collect my purse, tote bag, and jacket, I noticed two things: the office was warmer than the rest of the store, and the air smelled faintly of peppermint. Miki had finished all the receiving and was out in the store somewhere shelving new books. I hesitated before I went to the computer to clock out.

  The room acted like a room.

  I logged off, got my belongings, and stood in front of the door for a moment.

  Then I turned and went to the corner past the safe and the file cabinet, where there was a little alcove. I dropped my things and sat down, placed my palms flat on the furry pink rug. It felt rough but not wet.

  “Well,” I said.

  I stroked my hand across the ridged and nubbly carpet. I leaned agains
t the wall. I patted the carpet again. I thought I felt a faint vibration under my hands, a distant purr.

  I was imagining things.

  My imagination was the best friend I had.

  “Guess I should go home,” I muttered. It wouldn’t be as warm at home, of course, and I would have to do what I did every evening, stand in front of my apartment door while my stomach tied itself in knots, steel myself to unlock the door, and go in and look around, gripping the blackjack I had bought before I left Seattle. I had no idea if I could actually use it on another human being. After a check of the apartment, I would settle down with the current book, fix a little dinner and a big pot of tea, read, maybe, all alone….

  My eyes drifted shut. I slid down, curled up with my cheek against the rug. The store was open until eleven p.m., and it was only seven now. Nobody would mind if I —

  “You don’t mind if I nap here?” I asked Samuel Brannigan. He was a sturdy man in old-fashioned clothes. He had wild red hair parted in the middle, and elegant handlebar mustaches. His eyes were bright blue, and his cheeks were ruddy.

  “Not at all. All part of the process. Bit sooner than usual, though,” the painted man said.

  I was sleepy. Probably I was dreaming. “I’m so lonely.”

  “They all are when they first arrive, Lexi. Don’t mind if I call you that, do you? Sylvia’s just not right.”

  I laughed. Then I sobered. “But you won’t call me that in the waking world, will you?”

  “Couldn’t if I would, love. I’m not in the waking world. I died quite a while back.”

  “Not all the way, huh?”

  He laughed. “That’s right. The body’s gone, but there’s lots of me left. How do you like my establishment?” He held his arms out and looked around the room. The walls melted, and we saw through them into the store, where books hung in the air on invisible shelves, each one alive with stories and information, gifts and salvation, waiting to help.

  “I love it,” I whispered.

  “Are you in this business for life?”

  “That would be my dream come true.”