Excerpt from Etcetera and Otherwise, “Twenty-Eight Days Remaining”
Twenty-Eight Days Remaining
“Girls who wear glasses can always take them
off. The old man had lived in the big house all
his life, and he intended to stay there.”
—Duncan Robertson, Errors in Composition
Then she sighed through the door of my bookstore, and she was tall and blonde and cupped the sunshine between her copper thighs, and she was young and glimmering and new, and oooh she had tits like backyard apples, and oooh she had a firm assonance, and I knew right then I was going to suffer for this girl, and I was an idiot for knowing it.
“Hello,” I said to the tall blonde girl. “Welcome to my bookstore.”
“Hello,” she replied in a temporary voice. She flipped a single strand of amber hair over her shoulder. I couldn’t see it, but I imagined the single yellow hair floating down behind her, to trace the curve of her summer dress, her winsome bottom. She winked at something beyond me. “What does your sign mean?” she said.
“My sign?” I said.
“Your sign outside. It reads, Focus: Where The Sons Raise Meat. Do you only sell books about the sun?”
I leapt over the counter. I leapt over the counter and the distance separating us, to stand within her cocoon of perfume. In that leap I leapt many other things, including the One-Fathom Ocean, a mincing march of ants, and a shadow cast by the long-fallen radio tower. I said to the blonde girl, “I will show you,” and took her by the hand.
She let me hold her hand. It was warm, just like a hand. And soft. We wandered through the bookstore.
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