Page 22 of It's Me They Follow
What do you think?
Love,
Your Sister Friend, Gee
Chapter 11
JANUARY 11, 2020
3:33 P.M.
My Gee,
That letter. Hmmmmm.
First off, I’m fine. Hope all is well with you and the birth of the bookshop. I am excited to see where this takes you, especially now that your trajectory has been interrupted, lol.
I miss visiting your writers’ group sometimes, but mostly I don’t—they are your kind of people and not mine. But I do love that you have them and they have you. I promise to come and see you all soon. I’m so glad you are continuing the practice of saying the mantra! Oh, and look what you pretended up, a sweet-smelling man. You have always wished for true love.
I wonder if ME will unravel you or help glue you back together. This second date was quite interesting. You were dropped in a place, alone and completely content, yet on a date. This date only required you to be present and at ease with yourself. In this short time, I am in awe of how perceptive he is. This ME, in just a couple weeks, has gotten you to take a moment away from your fear and enjoy life. I must admit,the blindfold is sensual for a monk and a very sly way to get you to rely on your other senses. To feel what you heard and smelled during your journey, then drift into a dream, only to awaken in a place we’ve only whispered about in private conversations. Did you conjure this? Is it make believe?
I am truly proud of you for not taking flight when you finally did meet his aunt. What an odd way to be introduced. Funny how there are blind women in his family too. Yet this aunt of his has already read your work—even without eyes she can see! ME is determined to know you. Are you willing to let him try?
The issues you both have could be what heals you both. Love is, however, a tool that can cage us or free us, but the choice is yours. It seems everything in your life right now is a slow-moving car, waiting for you to decide where you want to go and at what speed. This is your adventure to choose.
“You are ready. Well, almost ready,” she said.
What do you say?
Love,
Your Sister Friend, Elle
Chapter 12
JANUARY 12, 2020
9:33 A.M.
The next day, The Shopkeeper didn’t walk to the bookshop; she levitated there, cash register in hand, grinning double wide. It was the hottest January day ever recorded in Philadelphia history. She was so high that her feet didn’t touch the ground. The anticipation of her furniture delivery and seeing ME and finding a cash register—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this alive.
But like her grandmother used to say,Don’t count your eggs before they hatch.It went in one ear and out the other.
In these types of stories, when things are too good to be true, they usually are. And so, as she went to unlock the front door, the lock was broken and the bookshop door was ajar.
She stepped into a grotesque scene of her only copy ofWounded in the House of a Friendtorn to pieces and strewn about, mirrors broken, and chairs overturned.Smeared feces on her walls and on her desk, used toilet paper hanging from her light fixtures. Trash bags slashed open, andher bloody pads spread about. It smelled like death. Like the bloody, shitty death of a baby. She didn’t just cry; she belly wept, thinking of picking through poop and blood to recover pages and trying to tape back together a shredded rare autograph that readStay badddddddon the inside of a 1970 Broadside Press printing ofWe a BaddDDD People, which was covered in piss.i have only one solution: to rise / above this absurd drama that / others have staged before me.
A Post-it note on the wall near her overturned desk said in decrepit handwriting,CAN’T TOUCH THIS!, with an arrow pointing down to a pile of actual human or dog or horse shit.
“That’s it,” she said out loud to the Post-it. “YOU’RE right. You’re ALL right. I can’t touch this. I can’t touch THIS! I CAN’T TOUCH THIS SHIT!”
She took her new cash register back outside. It didn’t deserve to be subjected to her nightmare. It glinted and glimmered in winter’s unseasonable sun. She sat down gracefully next to the cash register in the middle of the sidewalk and wept in the whistling of the day.
“What happened ta you?” said the same round woman who had warned The Shopkeeper earlier about Fishtown and That Energy—she just happened to be walking by again. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“Take a look,” The Shopkeeper said, sitting on the ledge of a mental breakdown. “Go inside and see for yourself what happened to me.” The Shopkeeper’s thoughts spun. Wherewould she put her new furniture? Where would she find more books? And why wasn’t she getting any better? These books were rare copies. Some she’d never find again in this lifetime. She pleaded with herself to relax. Her mind grew more and more out of control.
The smell of the bookshop smacked the round woman when she opened the door.
