Shapeshifters in Love

First published in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature

I

Bill ignores the center racks, where the books change weekly and make him dizzy, and heads to the classics section. He picks up a book and begins to read. He reads the same book every day, almost the same three pages, moving forward a word or two each day. The book looks used now. The clerks frown at him, though he does not notice, and they want him to stop. They say nothing, however, because—as far as they can tell—he has never been in this store before, has never picked up that book before, has never read those three pages. It’s not his fault that every day someone enters—a man, a woman, a child, someone—and that someone picks up that copy of that book and reads it from three seventeen until three twenty-four. The book is Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea. He is not yet halfway through.

Bill has ignored or adapted to the changes of three hundred years. He walked these wooded shores with the natives, with the French, and finally with the Americans. He has seen woodlands fade away and become, now, this quaint southern village. He accepts these changes as best he can, camouflaging himself under a daily shift of form, and comforting himself in whatever consistency he can find. For more than thirty years, the bookstore has been part of that consistency.

This town to him is made up of the things that resist change: buildings, roads, light poles, and trees. Over the years he has forged a routine and a path from which he never wavers. Page and Palette, a rambling bookstore made up of interconnecting rooms, fits in one small niche of that routine. It is not a destination; he has no destinations, but rather the constant present moment that is moved forward by strict routine. The routine is the rain; each moment a single raindrop.

Another day passes, and as the appointed time approaches, so does he, walking easily down Section Street to the corner bookstore with its long bank of windows in front. He walks beside two-story buildings with the stores at ground level and apartments above, and as he passes Fairhope Pharmacy on his right, across the street a woman takes a jogging step around a waste receptacle between The Book Inn and The Cat's Meow, and Bill feels a rightness in his soul.

Memory finds no hold upon the quicksand of people and cars and seasons and trends. The rightness comes when the sameness holds, and at times like these, he becomes a man with a past.

The receptacle is wood, painted white, with flowers planted at its top. A split-brick sidewalk runs between the stores and the street, and, just past The Cat's Meow, a balcony hangs over the sidewalk, looking down at the corner of Section and Fairhope Ave.

Blind to the details about the woman, he notices only her movement around the receptacle. He ignores the scattered people along the sidewalk. They mean nothing to him. He would ignore this woman, too, except for that simple movement which triggers a memory. He has seen that movement before, not once or twice, but everyday. Everyday, at this moment, a woman—a man, a child, someone—takes that same little jogging step.

Perceived memory triggers emotion, and that emotion produces in him a physical reaction: he smiles. The smile, though, is new. He does not smile at this time of day, has never smiled at this point in his walk. Anxiety swells up, erasing any thought of things being right.

A day passes, he sees her again, jogging her step around the receptacle. The sameness again thrills his soul. The emotion again brings the smile. By the third day, the smile becomes part of his routine. It ceases to be something new, ceases to be something scary, and without the anxiety, it lingers a little longer on his face.

By the end of the week, the smile comes with him as he enters Page and Palette. As he reads The Old Man and The Sea, he has an idea. He wants to talk to her, this creature that has entered herself into his routine.

The thought pleases him. Two weeks later, he is used enough to the idea to act upon it. Talking to her must come in steps, slow, glacial steps, to control the chaos such changes could bring.

First, he decides to wave to her. At three fifteen he hesitates slightly at the moment he sees her between The Cat's Meow and The Book Inn. The boldness of that hesitation thrills him. Pushing on, he lengthens the hesitation day by day. After only two weeks he comes to a full stop before continuing on to the bookstore.

Not wanting to rush things, he leaves it at that for another week before pursuing the actual wave. At last, though, he is ready, and at the right moment he twitches his forearm. Within days, the arm is actually moving. By the end of a month, he has raised the arm with his palm pointed to her as if warning her to stop. Day by day, movement is added to the upraised arm. The day the act is finally achieved, he fails to notice it. After three days, however, he understands that he has reached that moment when at three fifteen he stops, looks at the woman across the street, raises his arm, and waves.

This adventure becomes part of his routine for several weeks, and then something unthinkable happens. She looks his way and makes eye contact. Actually, this has been going on for days by the time he notices. 

At three seventeen he can barely concentrate on The Old Man and The Sea. The image of her blocks out the words. He has never looked anyone straight in the eye, soul to soul, being to being. After a few days of this he cannot remember what page he should be reading. A few days more and he cannot remember what book. Certainly, this must be love.

II

People seem suddenly thick around him. He cannot be sure of the change. He only knows he notices them more, is bothered by them more. At three fifteen he waves but can barely see her through the crowds and the cars. In the bookstore, he stands before the classics section, upset and confused. He no longer remembers what book he was reading, and the changes bother him. He wants to lose himself in the familiar, but he stands frozen by indecision and fear.

The next day is worse. Every-day life has always surrounded him with things he chose to ignore, but they were there: the people, the cars, these things that changed and followed no routine. Now they are gone, and he feels their absence. He walks alone down the sidewalk. At the appointed time, he stops and waves. 

She jogs round the receptacle between The Cat's Meow and The Book Inn. She is there. He knows the time is right, but he feels he must be late. The sky is too dark. He pushes on and reaches the bookstore on schedule. The doors are locked. The windows are boarded up. He stands at the doors, helpless, and confused.

By three fifteen the next day, the rain has been pounding for hours. The wind whips through the streets, wailing as if lost. He has not yet reached the corner. The wind and rain have held him up. Finally, a minute late, he stops outside Fairhope Pharmacy, raises his arm, and waves, but there is no one between The Cat's Meow and The Book Inn. The streets are deserted except for a lone woman at the corner, and her thin dress is whipped around her legs by the wind. He recognizes no one. The pain he feels at her absence confuses him, as if the rhythm of his life has skipped a beat, bruising the muscles of his soul.

The next day, the rain has stopped, but the streets are flooded. Debris fills the sidewalk ahead, and a woman fumbles her way around the mess. A few cars drive through the streets, and torrents of water spray up from their wheels. Many of the lights are broken. Some of the trees are down. He tries to notice none of this. He stops and waves, but across the street, no one is there. He feels a sting of regret, but already the memory of her is fading.

At three sixteen, he stands in front of the store. The locked doors and boarded windows bother him only a little.

The trees are still down the next day, and he acknowledges them now. He notices the broken streetlights, too. The people are back, but he tries to ignore them. At three fifteen, he stops and waves across the street. Between The Cat's Meow and The Book Inn a woman takes a jogging step around the waste receptacle. He fails to notice. He waves now out of routine alone.

When he stops in front of the bookstore, he finds the boards are down, but the lights are off inside. He stands and looks at the reflections in the glass until three twenty-four and then leaves.

At three sixteen the next day, the lights are on inside the bookstore. People come and go, but he stands on the sidewalk and watches the reflections. Over the next few weeks, the clerks notice that no one comes in anymore to read The Old Man and The Sea. The battered copy is given away. No one notices that from three sixteen until three twenty-four someone—a man, a woman, a child, someone—stands outside the store and stares, every day.

In the glass he sees the reflection of the street behind him. He sees The Cat's Meow and The Book Inn. He sees someone standing on the sidewalk, her back to him. He remembers seeing her in the glass before. He remembers seeing her as he waves. Each day--this woman, man, or child—whoever it is, it is the same person. She takes a jogging step around the receptacle and then stops. 

In the window, he notices something different in her reflection. For a few days that difference bothers him, but then he understands that she is turning. Soon, after only a few weeks, she makes enough of a turn to face him.

Then the day comes when, as she turns to look at him, past him, at his reflection—their eyes meet. She looks into his eyes, soul to soul, being to being. He remembers having looked into someone's eyes before. Out of the deepest recesses of his past, these new emotions stir old memories. He remembers the woman. He remembers the look. He remembers the love that burned in his heart. He looks at the reflection of the woman across the street. He looks away. He has been in love before and been hurt for it. At three twenty-four, he leaves.

-End-