poemtry and prose

Autumn approached the boy, "Excuse me, can I help you find something?"

He spun around and faced her. His mouth opened and closed for a bit while his mind groped for the right words to say. His eyes darted from Autumn down to his paper and back to her face, now showing a puzzled and concerned look on it. His eyes began to water at the corners and the edges of his mouth turned up in an half hearted attempt to smile.

He choked back a small cough, took his time to stand up a bit straighter, and looked Autumn directly in the eyes, "Er, um... no, thank you. I am not sure anyone has what I am looking for."

Autumn pushed her head back a bit. "That is an odd statement to make." she started. "Maybe if you let me look at that piece of paper you are holding, I can help you find the book you need."

The boy looked around very nervously and quickly shoved the piece of paper deep into the front pocket of his corduroy pants. He shook his head and took a step backwards towards the door.

"Sorry, I cannot let you do that, ma'am," he said. "No one has what I am looking for. Sorry to have bothered you."

And with that, the boy darted back out the main door and down the street. Leaving Autumn standing in the middle of her store, feeling very lost and confused. She wondered what she had said.

She was still standing in the room when the door buzzed once again. This time, Andrews sauntered in both hands holding cups. His left hand held a paper cup with steam pouring out in it. It had the Coffee People logo printed all over it. In his right hand, he held a clear plastic cup and straw coming out of the top of it. Inside, a dark mixture of coffee mixed with ice swirled when he pushed open the door. Autumn looked up from where she was staring at the floor, still looking confused.

"Hey, Autumn, here is your chai," Andrews said. "You look out of it. Did I miss something? Or screw up somehow?"

Andrews rushed over to Autumn's side. He set the two cups down and reached out to touch Autumn. However, before he could touch her, she drew back a bit.

"No, you did not screw up. And thank you for going out and getting me the chai, you Andrews, I am fine. But yeah, right before you came in here, someone, a potential patron wandered in." She shook her head slightly and grabbed her stool from behind the front counter. "It was a bit weird, I will tell ya. This kid walked in, holding a yellow paper. I was in the back, of course. But I had the oddest feeling about him. Like he was in trouble and trying to locate the one item in the world that could help protect him."

"He refused my help," she continued. "I tried to get him to show me what was on the paper, but he refused. Instead he just shoved it back down in those brown hippie pants of his and ran out of here. And then you came in."

Andrews listened patiently while Autumn babbled on about the store's odd and unexpected visitor. His face, while focused completely on what Autumn was saying to him, did not expose any emotions at all. When she was done telling him about her new visitor, he took a sip of his cold mocha and gave his lips a big smack.

"Well," Autumn began, "What do you think of that? Am I going crazy or just hoping my life was a little bit more exciting? Come on man, you are just staring at me like I am some sort of idiot. I will say this though, I can feel it... that kid is in some sort of trouble and I really hope he learns to trust someone before it is too late."

Andrews nodded, he knew better than to dismiss Autumn's strange premonitions. More often than naught, her intuition served her about what people were feeling. "No, I believe you. I do not think you are going crazy. At least none more than I already am." Andrews smiled wide. "I would not think too much of it. He was probably high on drugs or something and just did not want to make himself look all dumb in front of a pretty, young bookshop owner."

Autumn laughed at the comment, "Hah. Nice one there buddy. Better watch it or else I will call the um... cops or homeless patrol on you." She giggled knowing that he would not take offense to her slight jab and then took a sip from her warm chai. "Mmm, now that really makes this morning much better," she thought to herself.

"Okay, I gotta run. You know I have other things to do during my day than to hang around a bookstore, talking to one of the more interesting people on my block," Andrews started as he threw his now empty plastic cup in the waste basket behind the counter.

Laughing, Autumn placed her hands on the counter, "Yeah, sure, fine, you go get on with your all important business. Like running a store is not as hard as playing. Thanks again for helping me catch up a bit with today and I will catch you later."

Andrews mockingly bowed at her as he waved good-bye from the door. Autumn waved at him, while absently looking at the nearest stack of books.

She sighed once more, and said aloud to herself, "Well, I guess I better tend to my bookly duties. The day cannot be all fun and games, ya know."

Starting in the back of the shelves, Autumn started straightening out the books and re-alphabetizing them. It was a never ending process and something that Autumn did to help speed up her day and pass through the long work hours. The fact that she kept her shelves so neat and tidy was probably another reason why her bookstore was amoung one of the more popular stores in town. People really could find what they were searching for in her stacks, unlike the bigger stores where their shelves were half full and messy with books from the wrong genre placed haphazardly in them. It was a pet peeve Autumn had, whenever she was forced to go into those stores and find a book that she did not offer in her store. She had to hold back and bite her tongue from wanting to reach out and reorder and restructure all those books.

By noon, she finished the Literature section and was half way into the Romance and Mystery shelf. It was a light day for her, as she only had one or two customers all morning. The first was another local store owner, looking for a cheep and easy read to help her get through the slow week. Autumn helped her select a new mystery novel as they chatted about the lack of business. Apparently, it was not just the bookstore that was feeling the tight crunch and lack of patrons. The store's second patron was a young business man out on an early lunch break. He ended up taking a few minutes to peruse the Business and Self Help sections of her store before settling on two purchases. One was a hardcopy version of How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci and the other was the generic paperback of Getting Things Done. Both of them were popular reads with the business community and The Leonardo book was one of Autumn's favorite reads. Anything that helped her see in new ways and experience life to the fullest degree had to be good, in her opinion.

Autumn decided that it was time to poke her head out of the bookstore and see if Andrews was around. The air outside had warmed up a bit and the rain finally stopped beating its revenge on the world. Instead the sky was grey and cloudy but calm. Autumn smiled and squinted a bit, as she caught a bit of sun behind a break in the clouds. And just as if he had heard her, right on cue, Andrews rounded the corner, still dressed in the same attire he had on in the morning. This time, however, he work a tattered military style canvas backpack over his shoulders.

"You are definately an enigma Mr. Andrews," Autumn said as she leaned against the cool red brick building.

"Who me?" Andrews grinned. "I thought it was about time that you would be getting hungry. So I decided to head back this way to see if I could order you something to eat. Oh and there is no need for you to get nasty in calling me mister. Just Andrews." Andrews took out a cigarette and light it.

"One of these days I will get you to tell me what your first name is. And you should really stop smoking those things. It is gonna kill you. I swear it upon my grave. And yeah, you are absolutely correct. I am hungry and would love it if you could please be my gopher and go get me some food."

Andrews smiled and shrugged, puffing out a small ring towards Autumn, "These things have not killed me yet. In fact, they keep me warm during the rainy season." Autumn snickered at the thought, in Portland, like much of the Pacific Northwest, it was almost always raining; so she did not buy his story one little bit.

"Okay, so what does my misses want for lunch today?" Andrews said.

He watched Autumn as she thought about what she wanted for lunch. He had always admired her for her courage to open yet another bookstore in a city that had the world famous Powell's. He had enojyed hanging around her, listening to her well read and thought out ideas, and watching her and her store grow into a semi-prosperous place. She had done well for herself, with all the odds stacked in her favor. She was one of the reasons he continued to stay in this cold town that looked down upon people of his type instead of packing everything up and heading to the warmer, Southern regions.

"Could you go grab me a veggie poboy from that Jason's Deli place up on twenty-third?" Autumn said, heading back into the store, Andrews in tow.

"Is it that new place, they put in near the New Age store?" Andrews asked, not being familiar with the deli nor that street. He tried to avoid it at all costs and he knew that Autumn loved sending him up there just to get his goat.

"Yeah, you will not have any problems finding it I am sure. Oh, and if they have it, I will also take a Mountain Dew. If they do not, I can just drink some water from the store's faucet," she said, handing him another twenty dollar bill.

He took the money and off he went. He returned five minutes later with her sandwich and another paper cup. This time there was a straw in it and the cup had pictures of sandwiches and food printed all over it in a green ink with the bold, black letters saying Jason's Deli stamped all over it. Andrews handed Autumn back her change and told her that he had to go tend to some other business. She pouted a bit, hoping that he would hang around her store a bit more to help break up the monotomy of her day. Instead, she ate in silence, waiting for the door to chime. While Autumn loved solitude, she did enjoy conversing with others about books or politics or art. Which is why, she choose to settle down in Portland and open her store.

The afternoon picked up a little bit more as the local universities and schools let out for the day. She helped many junior and high school patrons find suitable copies of books they were needing to read for their English classes. She chatted a bit with a few of her college patrons about their studies and the gripes of being a student in the current Oregon eductational system. Despite her somewhat busy afternoon, Autumn felt her attention get pulled back to the day's earlier incident with the boy. She just could not shrug off the fearful way he acted and his bizarre behavior. There was something strange about it and Autumn's intuition told her that it was not just going to fade away.