Page 23 of It's Me They Follow
“Looks like the work of That Energy!” the round woman said with a look of disgust. “They hate books, ya know.” She scratched her head. “Especially old ones. I told you to watch out. Maybe I can get you some help from within the neighborhood, but you know, that’ll cost ya. Not even the police will come without an okay from the old guard.”
“I don’t know. And I don’t care. You win. I quit.” The Shopkeeper seethed and spit through her teeth. The round woman went to pat her shoulder and tell her not to give up but got hollered at by The Shopkeeper at the top of her lungs. “Don’t touch me!!!! Don’t FREAKIN’ touch me!!! Don’t touch meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!”
The round woman’s eyes got big. She was caught off guard, so she said, “Well, then, I guess you got what you deserved, you quittin’ little shit.” The round woman walked away withthatenergy.
The Shopkeeper called her sister—no answer.
She called Ray—no answer.
She called Rose—no answer.
The Good Doctor—no answer.
ME—no answer.
Then, against her better judgment, she called youknowwho. And of course he answered. He always answered.
“Be right there, champ,” he said when he arrived.
“Get up,” he called out from up the block. He was devouring a cheesesteak from Max’s that dripped hot oil and mayo. “And stop feeling sorry for yourself. You know these people don’t read,” he told her. “And you’re sitting outside with a cash register, just asking to be robbed. This is Fishtown, my Gee. Get up!” When he arrived, she noticed his fingernails were longer and cruddier than ever before.
He’s right, she thought sarcastically. What was she thinking? She should have thought about this when she’d decided to open a bookshop in The Land of Fishtown.
She tried to stand up, but her behind was flat and numb from the concrete. He picked the cash register up off the ground and said, “Let me help you.”
“Thanks.” She reached for it once she was on her feet.
“No... for good,” he responded.
Her face matched the bookshop.
“I told you you’d be calling me, and anytime you call me, I’m gonna make you pay, because it means you’re being weak. And you feel that pain right now in your chest, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Pain is just weakness leaving your body.”
For some reason, that awful logic made sense to her—that she deserved to pay for playing weak, and he was the perfect person to give her that pain.
“You always come crawling back, and it’s gonna cost you every time until you get this lesson.” He licked the grease off his cruddy fingers with a tongue like a serpent. “You know why you always call me?”
She called him because once upon a time, he had been her happily ever after—the best she could imagine for herself, considering her condition. She’d bullet pointed reasons in her head: He used to sell books too. She met him outside on a corner one day with a stack of used books and incense. He was the first person to take her dumpster diving for books. They’d find abandoned libraries in closing schools and pick through free books for hours, laughing and reading and making up word games. He was the first person to read her a whole book in a night. He’d wanted her to know Black Ice and Black Thought and Black Opal intimately, so he’d introduced her to them personally. He used to share his poetry. He took her to her first open mic at a spot in Olde City. They used to send each other love letters.How do I love thee, let me count the ways, and see who could come up with the most ways. And most importantly, he never bothered her about her issue with touch. He just hadn’t made it a thing.
But as they got older and he had more and more womenwhom he could touch and touch and touch, he had more and more children with those women, so he wrote less and less. And read less and less. And had less and less time for The Shopkeeper. He became more and more money hungry so he could feed all his children and all his women. And he became less and less humane.
She opened the bookshop door for youknowwho to go inside. But he stepped one foot in and then stepped right back out. “Oh, hell nah. Nope. Not gonna happen, champ. If you’re expecting me to help you clean shit off your walls, you should think again. You must clean your own shit to get this lesson, playboy. Either that or give me a key, and I’ll clean it later with some friends.” He licked his grubby paws, stuffing the end of the cheesesteak into his mouth.
She thought about giving him a key for a hot second but remembered.
“These keys belong to Ms. Harriett.”
So, like a good antagonist, he took her cash register instead, got back in his car, and drove off, saying, “I’m rooting for you, champ.” Though he had also just stolen from her yet again.
Somehow she still believed him. At least he got her off the sidewalk and back on her feet.
The Shopkeeper went and got gloves, bleach, trash bags, a new lock, and incense.
This was her shit. If she didn’t clean it, who would?
