by Stewart Wood
Normally Wally loved the bookstore. The anonymity, the tilted
averted eyes scanning up to down, the polite side stepping dance of culture and
concentration, the photography books, the swimsuit calendars.
But today there could be little browsing, no leafing through
the new Ludlums and LeCarres to find out just what sort of reluctant hero will
be nailing both the Russians and the girl spies this year, no checking to see
if there is an old Louis L’Amour that he forgotten enough about to wonder just
how the rangy drifter saves the ranch, shoots the lawyer, whips the foreman,
find the gold, and marries the marm. Wally always regrets the moral losses
reflected in the new sleaze adult westerns where the mountees have nothing to
do with horses or Nelson Eddy.
There is no time for the patriotic surge of the WWII section
or the wistfulness for the 19th century and back nor the sneer or
snarl at the latest felonious or notorious ghostwritten anecdote collection.
No! Today is mission time, assertion time, goal-oriented, problem-solving,
therapy-related, tax-deductible time. Self-Help Section time.
Wally hates the self-help section. Hates realizing that he’s
actually suffering from or at least in danger of every one of those goddam
maladies and stigmas, that these smug-ass, all-knowing authors, degreed,
royaltied, and stultifying, have figured out a solution to. Every time he
ventures toward those dreaded shelves, he sees, at the corner of his clouded
vision, the helpful salesperson, inevitably the tall blond one, voluptuous,
eager but intelligent blue eyes, moving cheerfully but ominously his way. He
always panics, grabs a book, any book, and opens it blindly but with intense
concentration. It works. She pauses, smiles, furrows her brows quizzically, and
changes direction. Only then he realizes he’s reading something like Acne
and You or The Joy of Voyeurism.
But not today. Today there is purpose. His shrink,
discerning but unsubtle, has ordered Wally to buy a book on Shyness, in a
public store, probably from a blond. If he uses a credit card, he’ll even have
to remember his phone number in the midst of the crisis.
There is really only one decent way to handle a self-help
book purchase, but it’s expensive and involves deceit. A guy can’t just walk in
and buy the book he wants because that means he’s at least worried and probably
sick. He has to buy at least two or more unrelated but carefully selected
volumes so he can pretend that these topics are but a small part of his
master’s thesis research. He can’t just walk up to the counter with Dealing
with Baldness, Male Menopause, and Ingrown Toenails No More.
But he can if he wears a stethoscope and picks up the new P.D.R. on the way. A
more honest person could simply throw in a Writer’s Market 1993, The
Elements of Style, and Writing for the Self-Help Market.
And in a rush, the random selection method works almost as
well, and that’s all he has time for today. Hoping that this works out a hell
of a lot better than when Dr. Hartley told Mr. Heard to be assertive, Wally
finds that Shyness tome, just as his nerves are starting to jangle, and before
anyone threatens him with assistance. His palms begin to sweat, his breath
shortens, baitens. The great Bashful Attack is only moments away. Christ! Wait!
There’s a guy handling the check-out counter right now. Maybe he can take the
money. Picking up two more academic looking volumes on his way, Wally stumbles
to the cash register just as the blond returns to take over. He tries to smile
but the sweat is stinging his eyes. He tries for serious and dignified, but
drops his wallet as he plops the books in front of the pale lovely terrifying
vision who is –Oh God!—She’s talking to him and smiling as he gives her the
Texaco instead of the Gold Amex he keeps just such occasions. She keep on
talking and smiling and twinkling and making weather chat and wanting to be
sure that’s all, and putting in bookmarks with the store’s logo with delicate
naked un-diamonded fingers and writing his phone number on the charge slip and
her name on his copy and telling him to hurry and come back and the whole
unbearable thing nearly kills him.
Fumbling his way through the mall to the parking lot, he
lumbers into a trash can next to a bench, where he sits to steady those little
neurotransmitters that are screeching across his synapses. Jesus! That was
close. What was wrong with her? That silly smile of hers; that knowing look
with the little downcast pouting eyes; trying to be friendly; giggling about
the Texaco car; humming her little siren song. Thanks a lot, Doc. You send your
acrophobes to window washing school? She probably chortling with her cohorts
about him right now. That the way the are when they know they’re cute and
bouncy.
He has a cigarette to quiet his nerves, but it doesn’t work.
Just like the goddam stress book he had to buy last week said it doesn’t. But
he is resilient, and recovers some outward calm. Taking the Shyness book out of
the sack, he realizes that what has just happened and what it is all about. The
was right. Shyness was a monumental life obstacle, but really only an
unnecessary by-product of his own warped imagination and self-absorbed
fantasies. There is a lump in the book. Opening it, Wally finds the pen
belonging to the store that he had signed with. A chance. An opportunity to
calmly return to the store and the blond with the pen, apologize gracefully,
establish eye contact, be civil and witty with the essentially innocent but
over-solicitous hired help. Charm her socks off.
Glancing around toward the entrance, he is struck with
horror. She’s there. Coming out of the mall entrance, looking around, looking
at him, waving. Holy Shit! It’s just a lousy pen. I don’t want the damned
thing.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Cox, I was hoping I could catch you.” Catch me?
Jesus! I was going to bring it back. What do they do if you steal a book, for
chrissakes?
“Yes, uh, here,” he says, extending the pen, “I, uh, just
found out, er, just realized that I had it.”
She ignores the pen and clears her throat. Something is
different. She seems a little nervous.
“I, ah, forgot to give you your discount card for next time,
where you get off—you get 10% off—on your next purchase.”
He nods thanks and takes the coupon, but she goes on, determinedly.
“And I also want to tell you, because you’re such a good
customer, and you come, ah , here a lot, that we’re having a wine and cheese
and autographing in the store later tonight with two contra-gate parolees and
that you should come. At six, if you want.” She smiles, knowingly again, but
this time it doesn’t seem so malicious, and then she turns and leaves him.
After a while his amazement begins to subside and his mouth
starts to close, and unfamiliar feelings of confidence and triumph well over
him. Boldly, he dumps the Shyness book in the trash can along with the two
others he hasn’t ever looked at. He smiles. He grins. He breathes deeply and
slowly. He would never be Shy again. He would kiss his shrink’s feet. He might
pay the bill. He would live in love and sweetness and voluable gregariousness
forever. Pocketa, Pocketa.
Later that same evening, as the delightfully loquacious
Wally and the now demure blond lingered, longingly, over brandy and coffee, Mr.
Ralph Carson and his wife, Edith, were making their customary aluminum can run
through the mall garbage. Mr. Carson, a retired Greyhound driver, and Edith, a
no-nonsense, but warm-hearted LPH, who still volunteered at the neo-natal unit
when she could, didn’t really need the meager harvest of the cans, but it gave
them adventures and surprises to share and beat sitting around the T.V. set.
When Ralph found the new discarded books, he brought them immediately to the
more widely-read Mrs. Carson, who looked at the titles and was unimpressed. Tossing
the books back in the receptacle, sh told her husband, with a smile, “Forget
it, Ralph. After all those passenger-miles and all those new parents, we
certainly aren’t shy. We’re also never gonna have a Porsche to maintain, and we
sure as heck already know how to cope with priapism.”
Ralph, who didn’t know exactly what she was talking or
smiling about, but who could read the look in her eyes like it was the
Interstate through Waco, didn’t object when she took his hand and led him
slowly back toward their ’81 Plymouth on the edge of the deserted lot.
