The Writer
(Click here for a printer-friendly version)Anna, please stop rearranging the bookstore was all he would say to her when she got back from her grandpa's funeral. She didn't see the note sitting on the counter until he left to go upstairs. He had stapled two pieces of paper together instead of running on to the back of the first. In it, he explained that he was trying to operate a successful business, and that it was his business, and that she needed to stop undermining his efforts. �At a crossroads such as this, one should consider alternative behavior that might be a more appropriate use of one's time,� signed, �Mr. Parish.� Frank Parish was a writer who owned the Friends Bookstore in Dickinson, North Dakota. He opened it about ten years back when he partnered with the public library during a month-long event they called �The Awakening,� an attempt to encourage the general public to read. The library donated over two thousand books with the agreement that they would receive ten percent of all proceeds for the first year. Anna had worked there for the last eight years, managing for the last six.
Inside, the bookstore had a strange atmosphere that seemed to contradict itself. Along with most of the dusty old books from the library that sat quietly still on the dark oak shelves, Mr. Parish had filled the other half of the store with new paperbacks, magazines and �impulse items� such as chocolates and book lights. Old and new intermingled, the bookends squeezing together the silent tension on every shelf, and at any moment the whole store might have erupted into violence. Over the years, Anna had learned the details for just about every book in the store, including the copyright dates. Recently she rearranged all the books according to chronological order, expecting this system to be much more efficient. Apparently Mr. Parish didn't agree.
He was a pale-skinned man with a jaunty step and eyes like a bird�s, narrow yet alert, set close together behind a pair of small wire-framed glasses. On the whole, at the age of sixty-five, most would say he looked quite healthy, when they saw him. Mr. Parish was a recluse. While he dressed fashionably, often in a black sports jacket and freshly polished shoes, his thick grey hair combed to one side, the only time one was likely to bump into him at all was on his way to deliver a new manuscript to the post office. Although he lived in the apartment above the store, even Anna rarely saw Mr. Parish. She knew that Wednesdays were grocery days, when he would send for his regular order, leaving twenty dollars next to the cash register. Even then, she was not to interrupt his studies, so she would climb the creaky wooden stairs and set the paper bag outside his door. From downstairs, Anna could hear his constant mumbling and pacing and typing above her. Occasionally, she would pause to hold her breath and check for the pulse of his footsteps or his keys tapping, counting the beats.
Mr. Parish went months at a time without saying so much as a word to Anna. Sometimes she liked to pretend that he was a spirit who lived in the old building, and he could only communicate to this world through writing, constantly posting notes around the store about how she could �do the job more efficiently, Anna.� They were always typed. After eight years, he had probably written thousands, maybe millions of them, and Anna was beginning to wonder if all that typing she heard was just him writing more notes. She spent a whole winter in the library searching for his writing, unable to find anything.
Mostly, Anna was thankful for the bookstore. It was the only job she ever worked. She started just one week after passing her driving exam, a rule enforced by a father. At first, it was