There is a street that cannot be
accessed by those who wish to
go there, with the general
(though not guaranteed)
exception of the employees of
the shops on the road. The
street is long and winding and
made up of cobbled rocks.
Irregular wonky shaped things
with more angles than brims, the
cobble is the specific shade of
rusty safety pins, and the stones
are ground at the edges to fit
together into a smooth path.
There is a clock in the center of
the street. Its ticks are echoed
through the surrounding white
bricks that engulfs it. Shops line
it on both sides and across.
A girl appears seemingly from
nowhere and walks up the
middle of the street. She peeks
into the windows of each
emporium, a polished emblem
hanging above every bright
painted door. Cake and dress
shops shops are more numerous
than any other. Silver scales
mark an accountant’s; this store
is filled with desks, pens, and
papers.
She continues on.
A little boutique, made of white
clay and greyed trees with a
grass sod roof marks the end of
the way. A rusty brass wrench
hangs above the door. It squeaks
and it flaps in protest of the
wind’s most gentle lullaby.
The windows are dirty, caked
with centuries of dust and muck
that they have been frosted over
in a brown caramel seal. It is
impossible to see in. Thick black
curtains are drawn to keep light
away from precious artifacts on
display for those who venture
inside. A rusty ladder leans up
against the building, meeting the
shop just above the left window.
Silver bells dangling from the
faded red door clonk together in
jangled bangs and clangs. The
tarnished knob clicks and sticks,
but, with a firm push, it gives in.
The little girl, her black hair tied
back in pigtails and large pink
frames slipping down her nose,
enters. She wears a yellow
knapsack. The zipper does not
close and the contents spy out
from the top ready to run away
if an opportunity unveils itself.
Her coat is blue.
The door creeps open and the
girl steps into the musty, damp
air of mold infested books.
She swallows and tiptoes in past
the welcome mat worn bare
before the entrance way. The girl
coughs. One of the windows
scrapes opens of its own accord
to let in the cool breeze and the
door shuts behind her. She
jumps. “Hello?”
There is no response but the the
coo of birds and the flapping of
pages. The books watch her
from the shelves. Potted plants
pant of thirst from their perches
on book stacks. Deep brown
perfect circles of rot outline each
clay plate. Shelves filled with
abandoned treasures divide the
room into sections connected by
labyrinths. A wood dummy sits in
the corner reciting poetry to
himself. Board games are piled in
cities.
She goes for these first, uses
monopoly pieces as building
blocks for the worlds she creates
on the candyland board. She
plays in silence.
Music rises from the dead air.
She looks up from her games. A
gramophone sits on a desk in a
corner, and a red page of
laminated lined paper the size of
a movie poster is taped to the
wall beside it. The text is hand-
written in black ink with no
regard to the lines. It has a list of
tasks. The corner rips as she tugs
it free from the raw drywall to
inspect it further. The date is
written at the top. Her name is
beside the date, and below it,
lining up with 9AM, is written
play pretend. The rest of the
schedule is blank.
She folds up the sheet and tucks
it into her backpack; she leaves
the sack and schedule next to
the desk and crawls up a three
legged stool. The girl runs her
finger along the desk. She
inspects the finger. The dust is
paperback thick. She sneezes
and tumbles off the stool hitting
a closet that wasn’t there before.
The closet doors open. A mop,
bucket, broom, and dustpan fall
free, collapsing on top of her.
She rolls over onto her hands
and knees. The cleaning supplies
clatter to the ground in a heap
and she stares at them. She
crawls to her feet, takes hold of
the broom, and picks it off the
ground. The closet door is still
open. It is filled with feather
dusters, sponges, soaps, and
glass cleaner, a large sink,
buckets of rags, and paper
towels. There is also a full sized
warhammer secured against the
door. Below it is the schedule.
She blinks. The girl tears off her
yellow backpack, snatches out
the contents by the fistful,
throwing her colouring books,
pencil crayons, and toys across
the room. The schedule is gone.
She peers at the page on the
door; Clean Shop has been
added beside 10AM.
A clock sprouts from the wall
and chimes the hour. She turns
to it. She turns back to the
broom. With tiny, awkward
hands, she grabs the broom and
sweeps the floor in front of her.
It takes several minutes for her
to get the hang of it. But then
the broom begins to write poetry
across the wooden planks. They
do ballet through the corridors
between bookshelves, and
perform plays in the courtyards
that open up outside of the
literature labyrinth. When the
dust bunnies have all fled in
fear, she mops, then dusts the
shelves. Her dusting takes her up
ladders through the roof, and
down slides into the basement.
New corners of spherical rooms
are unlocked. Each nook and
cranny is stuffed with new game
materials.
It takes her years to discover
them all. The seventh floor (that
can only be assessed by an
elevator on the fourth) has tubs
and treasure coves of lego
blocks. There is a fire pole on
the second floor that she slides
down with a woosh to go to
Sub-Basement Four complete
with stage and hangers of
costumes and second hand
clothing. Hung behind glass
displays are the works of Jane
Greenwood, Joan Bergin,
Madeline Boyd. In the three
drawer dressers lining the wall
there are rolls of film, video
tapes, DVDs. Posters hang on
the wall signed in metallic ink
Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Temple.
There is a zoo on the third floor
from the top. The animals there
never grow up but devour one
another young and respawn
daily. Above the zoo is an huge
ball pit and obstacle climbing
course. On the highest floor she
has discovered a glass
conservatory. (Though she
realizes there may be numerous
floors above that.)
For a while discovery is
exponential, but then it fades
and plateaus. She contents
herself with visiting familiar
haunts, cleaning the same places
she’s always cleaned, and playing
the same games she’s always
played. The girl sprawls on the
desk, her eyes glued to the door
trying to figure out how to play
cat’s cradle on her own. Her
colouring books are filled. She
pokes at the glass roof of the
conservatory with her broom to
test for hidden doors when the
silver bell, down twenty flours,
over six rooms, and one
gymnasium clangs. She freezes.
Taking a moment to remember
the sound and its origin.
She races down the spiral
double-helix stairway (engraved
at the top with the names
Friedrich Miescher, Rosalind
Franklin, and in a single line
together, Watson and Crick)
jumping the steps to skip every
adenine combination, hopping
and choosing which genes to
land on like a virus. Down.
Down. Down she goes. Until
finally – breathless – she sprints
the final lap through the maze
and get’s to the door. An old
man in a fuzzy wool brown suit
stands before her. He has a
pocket watch and a hat.
“Hello!”
He eyes her up to her ponytails
and down to her shoeless feet.
“Hello.” He adjusts his foggy
glasses, and the girl can see
behind up that it is snowing
outside. “I need something
repaired.” The man is fat in his
plaid suit. His little glasses fit over
his beady eyes and his scruffy
facial hair flies in all directions.
“Well, I actually don’t work here.
But why don’t you come to the
desk and I’ll see what I can do
for you?”
She leads him through the
bookshelf forest to the desk now
polished and free from dust. “So
what seems to be the problem?”
“I need to repair my tomorrow.”
The girl peers at him “Are you
sure? You don’t even know if
anything is going to be wrong
with it.”
The old man sighs. A stool hops
from between to bookshelves
and bounces over to catch him
as he sits down on open air. “I’ve
let myself go, m’dear. I’m fat, I
lack any sort of style. My wife
wants nothing to do with me. I
lost the job I hate and can’t find
any sort of work.” He collapses
onto the desk sprawling his arms
over it and tucking his face
between his hands.
“What do you want to do?”
He looks up. “Hm?”
“Well what do you want to do?”
The man frowns. “I don’t know. I
never thought about it I
suppose.”
She nods but bites her lip.
He sighs. “You don’t have a way
to fix it. I understand, nobody
does.”
The girl nods again.
The man slips from the stool and
turns towards the entrance.
“Thanks anyways, but I think it’s
time to face the facts.” He makes
it through the maze unguided,
the girl shadowing him her
hands sweating and lip quivering.
The old man pauses his hand on
the doorknob his eyes to the
ground. “You know? You could
really use a new carpet.”
She bounds over to him and
inspects the rug. “Could I?”
He strokes his scruff and glances
around. “And if you pulled back
the blinds the books shelves
would look more attractive.”
“Would it?” The girl grins. “Want
to help me put all these clever
ideas to use? There’s lots of
places that need work.”
“Well, are you sure?”
She gives him a single nod.
“Definitely, I could use the help
exploring and keeping everything
tidy.”
She spins around, waits as the
backroom she never needed
spawns from bookshelves and
empty wall. She disappears into
the room. A row of hooks are
screwed into the wall and she
pulls two aprons from the
closest ones. She puts one on.
The other she hands to the old
man. He ties it around his waist
and slides off the stool, she
comes around and grabs his
arm. “Let me show you where
the broom is kept.”
The schedule is no longer taped
to the wall. It is several pages
long, pinched to a clipboard that
is nailed to the closet door
under the dwarven warhammer.
Under the man’s vigilant
guidance, the girl learns to paint
landscapes with a mop. They
clean windows side by side,
water the plants of the
conservatory, feed the animals of
the zoo. They discover a science
center on the far left of the
building, and an observation
tower. The girl spends hours a
night gazing into the heavens
through a brass telescope. A
gold model of the solar system
engraved with Aristarchus stands
on a dresser filled with books
and scrolls. Droopy eyed she
descends the Escher stairway,
meteorites in her eyes, when a
light in a cozy room with a
fireplace and a couch catches
her attention.
She makes her way past the lake
on monkey bars and steps into
the room. The old man is curled
up on the sofa, a great yellow
blanket wrapped around his
toes. He perches looking at one
of the many books. It’s cover is
brown leather aged and
wrinkled. Gold script on the
spine spell out Tolkien.
Her mouth falls open as she
watches him.
“Yes?” he asks without looking
up.
“What are you doing?”
He glances at her surprised. “I’m
reading.”
There’s a heartbeat of hesitation
as she looks from the book to
the man. “Show me.”
And he does.
The bookstore, already more
vast in dimensions than anything
before it triples in height, and
quadruples in width. Places she
had never even fathomed begin
to exist. As she sweeps out the
lion cages she reads of
volcanoes, and as the stars float
by in the night sky she learns of
oceans deep of creatures the
likes she has never known. She
finds a concert hall by the front
entrance. Music notation,
cassettes, CD’s and records
tower in stacks all with
signatures. Ella Fitzgerald, Duke
Ellington. Computers connected
to hard drives of MP3′s.
The old man replaces the worn
carpet. In the door, he installs a
slot so people can return their
books. The girl pins back the
curtains and light fills the room
with a soft warmth.
The bell on the door rings daily,
sometimes hourly. Cowboys and
wizards are frequent loiterers,
taking time to hide between
shelves so that she must come
and find them. She offers advice
from the bar on the third floor,
and the man does repairs on the
ground level. Broken hearted
couples find love in a sad story.
Every person enters with a
problem and a tale, and they all
leave with a book in hand.
The people come until the fresh
carpet is ground flat, and when
the old man bows out of duties
to finish his own story, it grows
more hectic still.
Her favorite books are left
collecting dust in the loft
bedroom that dangles over the
city. Her favorite games file out
with the books as children begin
to bring their problems in. When
the shelves are bare, she begins
to turn people away at the door
in a grizzled voice.
Her ponytails are replaced by a
no nonsense bun grey secured
on the top of her head.
The shelves, once bright
with color sport only old wood
with dust bunny gardens.
Her favorite haunts are too far
to climb on creaky hinge knees
and a straw back. The shop
begins to shrink. She sits at the
desk by day staring at the empty
shelves instead of polishing and
dusting. The to-do list grows
longer and neglected. By night,
the girl drags her body up to the
room with the fireplace and
reads from the violet covered
book left for her on the couch
by the old man. She hasn’t seen
him in quite some time. But
eventually even that rough hand
sewn novel goes missing from
the shelves.
When the grass in the roof is just
beginning to sprout, an aged
woman ventures out the front
door. The bells lag, taking a
second to remember their jangle
clangs as she goes out. The rusty
ladder leans against the wall still,
and she makes the voyage up to
fix the rusted wrench barely
hanging by one chain.
“What are you doing?” A boy in
rubber boots asks gaping at her.
A herd of children stand behind
him eyeing her.
She scowls at him. “None of
your business, go away!” The old
lady shoos him and his sheep
with a hand but they stay,
staring. “I said go away!” She
half falls, half hops from the
ladder and lands more nimble
than she imagined she could.
She bounds after the boy, her
ever loyal broomstick in hand.
Lickity-split he takes off, the
group scatters, and she gives
chase. “You come back here and
you’ll find this broom jammed
up your backside!”
Her hinged knees give way and
she clatters to the ground and
the old broom flies from her
hand many inches out of her
reach. It picks itself up and
rejoins its friend, and together,
she limps back into her home.
The ladder she abandons leaned
up against the white clay of the
shop telling herself she’ll retrieve
it another day.
As more years wear on, the
woman stops leaving and
cleaning the shop entirely. She
closes the thick curtains, shutting
out the light, keeping the
drooping plants stuffy and
puffing for breath. She prefers
to sit behind the old desk in
damp darkness and write.
Her garbage can is filled with
torn up pages and dead pens,
but she continues to write. The
schedule materializes, it follows
her everywhere until rejection
has it wander back, whimpering,
to the closet, shedding pages as
it goes.The sound of rusted alloy
grinding on metal fills the room.
She looks up from the table
squinting through the pink lenses
towards the door. The slit flies
open and a book falls through
to thunk joyless onto the floor.
She grasps for her broom. The
handle lies out of reach, but it
sits inanimate; the broom no
longer hops to her in need. She
stumbles and droops over it.
They shuffle together across the
floor and write only maladroit
sentences and dissonant
melodies. Her back uncoils like a
stiff spring and she begs the
book to leap into her fingers.
The magic evades her. She grinds
her teeth and unwinds her
bones, bending the rest of the
way. The heavy grey book slips
into her grip. The woman lurches
forward, staggers back against
the bookshelf, and throws the
thick paper brick against the
rickety wood. It balances for a
moment then falls over.
The woman frowns at the book,
her fingers claw around the
broom’s handle and she moves
back towards the desk. She
hobbles towards the maze.
Screech. THUMP.
Her eye twitches. She turns
around to stare at the offending
book. She scowls, shuffles
towards the door, outstripped by
passing moths, and strains
forward to grab the book. It
thunks on the shelf, and she
moves away.
Screech. Thump. Screech.
Thump. Screech. Thump. Thump.
Thump.
She twists around. Six books are
piled in a heap at the door.
Across the floor she goes, her
broom clunk clunk clunking with
each step that she takes, she
reaches down, scoops up all of
the books, throws them onto the
shelf, and turns away. She
navigates the labyrinth, then sits
down at the desk, and puts pen
to paper. Her eyes stay at the
door though, and
she doesn’t scrawl a single word.
Screech. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Screech. Thump.
The old woman races across the
room with the fury of a tortoise
whose tail was nipped by a fox.
She flings the door open. A huge
line up of domino people
stretching from the doorway and
around the world twice stands
before her. Each carries a book,
or two, or four, or five. The first
boy in line, a short child of
maybe eleven or twelve, carries
only one. He takes the old
woman’s arm and guides her
back into the shop. He sits her
down and deposits his offering
onto the desk in front of her.
The deep purple cover and gold
twinkly print blinks and winks up
at her. Her mouth falls open as
she picks up the story written by
the old man.
The people file in. The old
woman watches them circle
around the store, stairways
opening from shelves and walls
where she’d forgotten them. The
bookstore is filled with laughter
and discussion. People run
around, dodge between
bookshelves. Others drop their
books off and depart without
lingering. As the book store fills
up, she sinks from the stool to
wander up the new stairwell
where the bar waits filled with
drinks and wisdom.
She works on her book from the
bar stool. Trading advice for
sentences. When the bookstore
begins to empty out, the shelves
crowded with an audience of
books, she moves back to the
desk downstairs, and the bar is
swallowed up once more.
The bell jangles one final time as
she writes the ending words; she
folds the hand-sewn, turquoise
cover over and lets the book
close for the first time. She picks
up her, and the old man’s book,
and she pushes herself away
from the desk. The stool scrapes
against the wide planked wood
as she stands, leaning against her
broomstick. She takes a step,
and the stool backs away into
the old back-room. The door of
the room dissolves into the wall.
Woman and broom clunk
against the floor. Her grinding
bones itch as they scale the stairs
for the first time in a decade.
Dust has coated the shelves
again, but they are covered once
more in colored covers. She
pokes and prods the nooks in
between the books for a place
to shove her novel in. But none
appear. The woman navigates
the temple in nostalgic coma. At
the far side of a room, past the
rich scarlet carpet and the hung
tapestries, is a couch and a
fireplace. She frowns at the
yellow blanket in heap on the
floor and tries to remember how
it got there. Beyond the sofa, is a
window and a bookshelf with
some final places spotlighted in
the bright sunshine. She shoves
the two novels into the furthest,
most modest gap. And, as the
books leaves her fingers, the
window wiggles opens; the old
woman walks out onto the sky,
the broom bracing her against
the wind and cloud. She follows
the current of air into the blue,
waving at birds she’d studied in
books centuries ago.
All but one of the pages from
the schedule fly out after her,
and with them as her guide, she
disappears from sight.
There is a street that cannot be
accessed by those who are trying
to get there. It has cobbled
stone, and on the sidewalk is a
boy in a yellow wool cap and
black coat. He has matching
yellow mist and his face is freckle
plagued. A train ticket is stuck to
his coat. He meanders up the
road to the shop at the end. Its
curtains are closed shut, the
windows dirty, and an old rusty
ladder sits against the white clay.
He tries the handle. The bell
jingle hangs, the door falls open,
and he walks in.