Quitting Time

She shoved the bundle of papers behind some large volumes on a high shelf and made her way through the narrow aisles to the door. Once outside, she took a deep breath, invigorated by the cold, fresh air. The sun was starting to peek out of the clouds. She walked down the street smiling, her life restored.

It was by chance that she’d entered the bookshop thirty minutes earlier. Having just missed the 2:15 bus, she had a forty-five minute wait for the next one. It was chilly. Her jacket was light. She headed for the Starbucks down the block and walked right past the shop when she stopped and turned back. She’d gone by the place dozens of times but had never been in it. She might as well duck in there for a little while and spare her budget the cost of a latte.

It was a quaint old shop the likes of which she hadn’t seen in a long time. This was no well-lit, modern franchise with the latest bestsellers artfully and strategically displayed, but a dingy, old-fashioned shop crowded with countless old volumes stuffed on tall shelves separated by narrow aisles. The proprietor, engrossed in a paperback, hardly noticed her entrance. Small and modest as it seemed from the outside, the interior of the shop felt enormous, and every spare inch of it was occupied by books. Like a waif lost in a forest of tall trees, she stepped hesitantly through the towering stacks of books, glancing at titles and lightly touching the spines of books with her finger as she glided by.

She plucked out books at random and leafed through the pages, taking in a sentence here, a phrase there. She wandered through shelves of fiction, history, science and philosophy. There were books written in English, German, French and Spanish. Some were in languages she didn’t even recognize. It was overwhelming. Around her was the wisdom of the world. Everything that people had thought and felt and learned was recorded in those tomes.

Maybe it was the mustiness of the air or the dizzying rows of books all around her, but she began to feet faint and her legs became wobbly. She tottered toward a table beside a small besmirched window at the rear of the shop and lowered herself onto a rickety wooden chair. She craned her neck to look out the window, but it was so grimy that she could barely make out the figures wrapped in coats hurrying along, busily going about their lives. She turned back to the towering shelves and surveyed the acres of books before her.

So many people had spent so much of their lives struggling with ideas and summoning the words to fill these books that now lay unread and forgotten, moldering in this gloomy cavern of a bookshop. She opened her bag and pulled out a sheaf of papers. She had spent seven years of her life filling up those pages. The hefty document was the pride of her life; it’s what gave meaning to her existence. So much work had gone into creating it and so much had been sacrificed for its birth. She caressed the manuscript to her chest.

Remembering her appointment, she set the bundle of pages on the table and checked her watch. It was time to leave to catch her bus and meet the literary agent who’d expressed interest in her masterpiece. She looked once more out the window and then at the shelves looming above her. For a moment longer she sat there lost in thought, then she made a decision.