and sorted onto their shelves.
I love the place. I know that book sales are declining and paper going the way of the digital dodo, that Kindle reigns supreme and that there is a whole generation of people who’ve never held a physical book in their hands, but there is a romanticism to the bookshop that I can’t believe will ever truly disappear. The scent of the fresh pages mingled with the thick aroma of coffee, the beautiful hush punctuated by the subtle tones of friendly chatter. It’s a paradise. A little refuge from the noise of the world outside, with a thousand stories to tell and mental universes to expand.
Of course, it’s traditionally more of a young person’s milieu, or at least it was until young meant digital and books meant old-fashioned. There are more grey-haired heads in here these days than brown or blonde, though I haven’t yet spotted the first white streak on my own. Can’t be long until I do, though. I don’t feel a day over thirty – hell, I don’t really feel different to how I did when I was in my twenties – but there are going to be forty candles on my cake soon enough, and I can’t play the child forever. Forty. One of those round numbers nobody appreciates: no longer young, not yet venerable. And you have to live with it for a few years, since ‘the forties’ are much the same as forty itself, until you hit the edge of fifty and suddenly you’re catapulted from ‘in her prime’ to ‘middle aged’. Damn, if the categories aren’t a bitch.
But whatever age may be or mean, work in the bookshop is a joy. Enough in the way of responsibilities and activities to keep me busy, without becoming crushing. Stress isn’t something I crave, nor the ‘fast-paced action’ of a more pressing grind. Leave the mad rush to others. I crave the quiet. The solitude. The rhythm of a nicely patterned life.
The solitude, of course, is relative. One is never alone, even in the dim lighting of a small bookshop. I talk with the customers now and then, though the conversations are usually brief and rarely terribly personal. And I have colleagues, some of whom have become friends – an extension of the little family that David and I constitute at home.
‘Double-caf, half-fat, cooled down, no foam latté, as the lady ordered.’ As I approach my corner of the shop, I’m greeted by Mitch Tuttle, one of those collegiate family members and, in fact, the owner of the little shop. He says the words in his usual sing-song style. He’s sporting a tired pair of trousers, untended wrinkles long since transformed into permanent creases that spider out from his crotch and knees. A belt holds them in place, hidden somewhere beneath the paunch of a stomach wrapped in a badly patterned shirt. The stress of managing such a bustling hive of worldly activity, he regularly joked, had ravaged his otherwise classical good looks. A boss with a sense of humour is not the worst thing in the world.
But his timing is off. Mitch is jovial, now, at 8.25 am – a time of day when this is more or less inexcusable.
He’s carrying a paper cup in his enormous hands. There’s a smirk, two bushy, unkempt eyebrows coming almost together as a smile wrinkles the whole of his face. Too many wrinkles for a man who hasn’t yet seen fifty.
Of course, the drink he’s announced is all wrong.
‘Shit, Mitch, I take tea. Just black, plain, tea. A miracle this shop makes a profit at all, with you at the helm. You’ve got a memory for details like a sieve.’
I take the cup, wrapping both hands around its warmth and shaking my head. Tut tut, Mr Tuttle. But it’s a ritual, not frustration. We both know the familiar script and all the gestures that go along with it. ‘Not like it hasn’t been the same order every day since we met,’ I say.
‘Thought I’d be spontaneous, force you to try something new.’ He grins, his teeth uneven but spectacularly, unnaturally white. The peroxide blonde of the dental world.
My eyebrows aren’t as pronounced as his, but they’ll still mount a good rise when the moment calls for it, and I prop them up in mock disapproval. Then a sip of my drink – tea, despite Mitch’s pronouncement, strong and hot and exactly as I like it. Of course. And in a cup from Peet’s, which we’ve collectively decided has Starbucks outgunned on all counts. We’ve all long since grown tired of the coffee we brew in-house. That’s for the patrons. We ourselves will take something a little more refined, thank you.
‘Susan still keeping you to the new diet?’ I ask him. The script had run its course, and I’d noticed Mitch had opted out of his usual coffee and sported a cup with a teabag – orange-coloured, probably indicating something herbal and revolting – dangling out of its lid.
‘The fascist,’ he mutters, looking defeated. ‘If it hasn’t been brewed from a weed or a berry, I’m not allowed anywhere near it.’
‘Commiserations.’ I’m laughing as I answer. ‘I’m still getting smoothies.’ There’s no need to elaborate. Mitch knows the story and shakes his head empathetically. If there were more hair there, it would flop with the exaggerated motion.
He’s carrying two additional paper cups in a holder, filled with whatever contents are bound for their recipients on the far end of the shop, sighing for good measure but still smiling as he walks away. Big steps, lumbering but confident – a great, heaving land mass on the move. Mitch, needless to say, doesn’t cut the slimmest of figures, and I can see why Susan wants him on a diet. Still, poor thing. I probably shouldn’t refer to him as a land mass.
I’m momentarily captivated by the motion of this boisterous, generous man, hunting down the prey to serve as the targets of his daily good deeds. I catch the look of satisfaction that covers his creased face when he spots the smiles they offer in response, and for a moment feel the melancholy that comes from wondering why there aren’t more selfless souls like Mitch Tuttle’s in the world. And definitely more bosses. But I also catch the sly sleight of hand that flicks a donut from the counter into his grasp as he saunters back, and my devious smile is instantly back. I feel exonerated from the guilt of the heaving-land-mass reflection.
‘I know I said I wouldn’t nag you.’ I let my words stretch out as he approaches. My eyes point to the deep-fried treat poorly concealed in his grip.
‘A promise I’m glad you consider as inviolate as the oath that put that ring on your finger,’ he answers, motioning towards my hand, before I can go further. He steps into his small office at the side of the shop, divided from the floor by a glass wall, and plops his overweight frame into his seat. I can hear the donut drop onto the desk next to his herbal tea.
A second later, I’m quite certain, it’s gone.
Libra Rosa is hardly the largest bookshop in our part of the world. Even in a society where they’re fast disappearing, the Bay Area still has its share of some of the greats. Green Apple in San Francisco has branches scattered around the city, some covering multiple storeys and bringing in authors and speakers while cultivating book-sharing and the lovely art of the second-hand. Johnson’s in Berkeley caters to the hip. Iconoclasm in Marin fosters the new age, as do a half-dozen others like it. There’s a little bit of something for everyone. The only thing the shops share in common is the Californian-liberal ideal that they should be nothing at all like the high-octane bookstores of New York and ‘the big cities’. They’re quiet little holes-in-the-wall with small-town vibes and a pace deliberately laid-back to suit the pot-happy lethargy of the NorCal literary culture.
Libra Rosa is, among the mix, pretty standard. A tribute to its location in Santa Rosa – an oversized town just fifty-five miles north of San Francisco and the last opportunity for residence that San Fran careerists can reasonably consider for a daily commute – the shop has been shaped by Mitch into his vision of a perfect, if miniature, out-of-town literary tribute to the old Haight-Ashbury days. Rows of new books, stacks of classics, and a small section for the second-hand, with
