Caitlin & Company
A great bookstore—it was Caitlin’s dream and Colleen’s plan to create nothing less. They also wanted a good bookstore. But what was a great bookstore? Was greatness to be conceived strictly in financial terms? The attainment of a positive-cash-flowing, bottom-lining going concern? Of course, that was the goal, of course it was; they were not babes in the woods. And that would not be easy, or simple. For one thing, they had to factor into their success equation strategy that their tiny business’s commercial objectives were affected by macroeconomic forces, local and national, the grand-scale buying and technology trends out of their control. Since neither woman held a master’s degree in business administration, the subject quickly paled once they invoked the term discretionary income. They knew their business depended on that stuff. So yes, bookselling was a tough go, and they didn’t need schooling from The Wall Street Journal. To the WSJ they did not subscribe, though to Paddy Fitzgerald they did.
As for a good bookstore, now—that was different. That was something in their power to achieve from the instant they opened their doors, irrespective of whether the economy was booming or in recession. Paddy might not thrill to the concept, but a good bookstore was more than a profit-generating enterprise. To put it another way, profit indeed took the form of cash, and that was the store’s lifeblood and certainly beautiful, but there was also a kind of yield not tangible enough to register on P&Ls and Cash Flows and Income Statement spreadsheets. A good bookstore demands sound book-loving and book-talking people on the floor and in the back. It requires an extensive enough inventory of perennial favorites along with hot current books to hand-sell, as well as putting systems in place with reliable distributors to speed up special orders of units not in stock. All that may seem thunderously obvious. Though not to everybody. Alternative logic might go this way: Who can compete with online megabeast booksellers, with their virtually limitless inventory? Therefore, some bookstore owners adopt specialized themes, like architecture, or design, or feminism, or LGBTQ, or social justice, or politics, or crime and mysteries, or food, or whatever. Other courageous stores curate their offerings, geared to local tastes, prejudices, and demographics. Anything could work, depending.
In other words, these two entrepreneurs were feeling their way along, and for now Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell’s, Indiebound, and the rest need not feel threatened—for now. Colleen speculated there was probably a kooky bookshop in some nook of the book universe offering for sale one book at a time and one book only: “But man, it is a fantastic book that keeps flying off the singular shelf.” Then Colleen quickly circled back, with grimmest determination: “Forget that. The scientologists already opened that kind of bookshop. And look how that worked out.”
Caitlin blinked, unsure what such scientists were doing with their business, and also unsure how seriously to take her business partner or if she needed a new one.
So, most definitely feeling their way along.
Whatever the business model, when it comes to good bookstore ambience, warm, welcoming lighting artfully situated never fails to appeal to customers, and so does reliable air-conditioning to fend off high summer’s depredations. Of course, when there’s a steaming heat wave outside, people don’t automatically gravitate to a bookstore, they head for the pool or the beach—but they hoped they might do so equipped with one of those notorious summer beach reads. (“Beach read” was a term Caitlin struggled to understand because she would have hated to read at the beach, one of her favorite places to go when younger. She loved swimming and being burnished by a deep bronze tan, which happened in a flash for the milk-skinned girl.) And when it’s chilly outside—well, there’s nothing that compares to curling up with a book before a real or imaginary fireplace. Some bookstores opt for background music, which involves a little bit of risk insofar as individual tastes make for tricky complications. One customer’s Gregorian chant is another’s Eminem or Grateful Dead. Others opt for library reading room or monastic silence—either may work beautifully, again, always again, depending. A coffee bar can be excellent, too, if the baristas are hip and stylish and captivatingly inked, and if quality control is vigilantly monitored. And if a license is affordable, a wine bar. It’s hard to imagine a bookstore that doesn’t feature readings, and sure, they can be a chore to organize and authors can be prickly prima donnas, but the payoff is enormous: readers see and hear favorite writers in the flesh and in action—and with any luck (it’s by no means a sure thing) they buy their books and have them signed. The down-homey touch can be a winner as well. To that end, Hilda would daily bake a fresh big batch of cookies, either her world-renowned chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, and Colleen would enticingly set them out near the cash register, where the aroma would transport the spirits of customers who craved them like they were designer drugs.
Not so well-known or valued is that the coolness factor of a good bookstore ratchets up by having a nonhuman creature with a sweet personality on the premises. Cats in a cross-species venue might be problematic, being that they are, as everyone knows, noncompliant cats; and a parrot, stunning and impressive to behold as well as entertaining, can also be annoying and possessive and loud and, well, repetitive. Baby goats are absolutely adorable at the petting zoo, but fair warning: they eat paperbacks (and everything else).
As for Floozy’s, everything fell into place when they borrowed Francesca’s pooch, an arrangement that worked out all the way around. The dog care permitted her to attend to her frenetic capital campaign fundraising. And her sociable dog was a natural draw. He romped free-range, and for an eighty-plus-pound, athletic, protective and muscular dog, he was unfailingly gentle and affectionate and curious and showoffy—an equal-opportunity nuzzler and pawer of children and adults. So it came to be that Caitlin and Colleen and the staff had a loyal, furry, four-legged staff member to keep watchful company over them and their customers. The only unfortunate adjustment was to insist Hilda not furnish her chocolate chip cookies anymore, because Dickens was rascally enough to pinch one—and as any vet would caution, scarfed chocolate usually leads to doggy ER, if not calamity.
Caitlin and Colleen agreed: it was fortunate fun for Floozy’s to have the dog. But that spurred Caitlin’s suspicion. “Something’s off, Frankie’s working all the time, I get that, we all are these days. But then she leaves Dickens with us, whom I love, and not with Tommy.”
“I know,” said Colleen. “First she says Tommy’s traveling a lot these days, which is good for his business, and which means she’s got the dog solo. Then she reports Tommy said that Dickens scared off a client, which called into question the dog concept in his office. But she said Tommy actually liked when Dickens growled at the guy, whom he didn’t want to work for anyway, a scumbucket two-timing husband trying to conceal assets in a divorce. So I’m confused.”
“Two explanations mean…”
Colleen finished: “No explanation.”
“Both explanations can be true.”
“Or both false.”
“You got a feeling about Tommy?” asked Caitlin, feeling brazen enough to pry.
“Yeah, no, I don’t know, maybe. Basically, once a cop...”
“Which is what Paddy says.”
“I can see,” said Colleen, “how it might have started between those two, what drew opposites together.”
“You can see that, Colly? I don’t know if I get it. I do know sometimes things start up with people, and then they change, and it’s weird and it’s right, and one day they wake up and they don’t recognize themselves. Sometimes totally for the better, and they can’t believe how lucky they are. You know what I mean?”
Colleen understood perfectly. She’d seen in her own home and with her own eyes that very thing happen.
—
Caitlin was pleased, not only about the tail-wagging presence, but about everything. Floozy’s was her baby, and Paddy was 100 percent behind her. She was feeling the love all around. It was as she had fantasized since the night after the gym when she and Colleen first cooked up this idea. There was so much to do all day and night long, almost all of it absorbing and new. She and school had never gotten along, so in a way this bookstore was her full-throttle foray into self-education.
She stood nearby the hot new releases on the display tables and let it all sink in, allowing herself a moment—a moment to revel in what she had accomplished. She looked around. She had no previous conception that walls and tables of books—her bookcases, her stock—could look so beautiful, so substantial, each book promising to tell a story that would make a difference to somebody as soon as it was opened and read. Colleen had proven prescient, too. Caitlin did have a natural gift working with customers—with her people, as she would call them. Several book clubs carried over from the former store, and she was looking forward to getting to know and serve them better, and to furnish books she would recommend. And working with Colleen was an unadulterated joy; she was her rock, her sidekick, her sisterly muse.
Sure, there were mundane matters and chores—vacuuming, dusting, refreshing the bathroom, keeping the storefront windows sparkling, helping the homeless drifting in and out by handing out sandwiches and the more than occasional few dollars. Updating daily the slick website that Colleen had put up. Arranging point-of-sale merchandise: pens and cards and gadgets and key chains and novelties of every sort—pure profit and kicky, too. And attending to the banking and the credit card companies and keeping in the loop the bookkeeper and the accountant. And about those bills, of course: that stack of invoices on her desk demanded continual attention. And what seemed like a never-ending stream of communications from publishers and marketers and distributors, as well as emails and phone calls from publicists for poets and novelists and memoirists asking for a forum. Soon she would be attending conferences and sales meetings, where she would acquire the fine points of bookselling. She was humble, because she knew she had a long way to go. She was particularly looking forward to meeting best-selling authors as they passed through town on tours, so full of hope and anxiety over the books they put before the public. Caitlin would make them feel at home.
For a few delectable moments, she gave herself over to the meditative reverie. They had created a good bookstore, yes, they had. She had no premonition this satisfying feeling would be fleeting.
—
Floozy’s was closing that night, devoid of customers. It was after ten o’clock, where did the hours go? Terry was filing stock, organizing materials, straightening out the shelves, making up signs, industrious alongside her bosses. They’d had a strong week of sales, and the first month proved better than they might have predicted. Paddy would review the numbers and be encouraged, Caitlin hoped, and the store would find its legs sooner rather than later.
The store landline phone rang and her incandescent mood instantly darkened.
“Floozy’s,” she said.
“Hey, you.”
Stunned, she walked outside with the phone. “Are you fucking kidding me? Never call me again, never.”
“Wanted to hear your voice one last time.”
“You heard my voice, Baxter, so now go, but wait, how’d you find me?”
“Call it dumb luck. You don’t have your cell phone anymore. And we’re not Facebook friends anymore, so thanks for the diss, but everything’s online, so I saw the puff piece about the store opening. Congrats. Good picture of you. I like your new hair.”
She was relieved that Paddy had not actually killed him, as she had feared when her husband—soon to be ex-husband once her attorney filed the proper papers—seemed to have evaporated, at least until he made his preposterous presence felt tonight on the phone.
“Where are you?”
“Don’t worry. Under a rock.”
“Look, you have to never call me again. You will ruin everything if you don’t get us both killed first.”
“I’m not going to hit you up anymore, sorry about that. But don’t you want to see me, one last time, promise? I’m on my way to Alaska, to work a rig, which with my luck will go kablooey.”
“Work a rig, right, I can see that right now. You’re such a lying piece-of-crap drama queen. We don’t have a future, you get that, Baxter, right?”
“But we had a pretty good past, didn’t we?”
“No, we didn’t, are you high?”
“You’re looking gorgeous tonight. You always do. How long have you had that haircut?”
Furiously, she scanned the whole street, up and down. “Where are you? You stalking me? You are out of your mind. You have no idea what you are dealing with. I’m gonna go, never call me again, now go vanish for both of our sakes, please.”
And she hung up and headed back into the store, trying to look upbeat and feign that nothing was amiss.
That’s the moment a new customer walked in, directly on her heels, and she turned to face him with a practiced shop-owner smile. It was normally welcome to behold such an apparition because new customers are any fledgling concern’s lifeblood, but everybody on the floor was dragging after a long day, and they were hungry for a late dinner. She should take them down the street for those excellent burritos—yes, that was a good plan. This new prospective customer was male, in itself a good thing for owners stretching beyond the target female Floozy market, but it was too late.
“Sorry, sir,” said exhausted but courteous Caitlin, “we’re closing, open again in the morning. Please come back.”
“This’ll be quick,” he said. “Just need Terry one minuto.”
That sounded peculiar, and now that she took a closer look, the scruffy man—battered baseball cap, scabbed-up face, soiled oversize sweatshirt, flip-flops on life support—didn’t resemble someone looking for a beach read today, or ever. “Who shall I say is asking for her?”
“Not asking. Told you, lady, I’ma need Terry.” Tone antagonistic, bordering on ominous, and then he raised his voice, dispelling doubts as to whether or not he had been dubbed a knight in shining armor. “Terry, where you at, bitch? Don’t be sneaking out the back,” he hollered across the store. “Time you get your ass home, your moms and me.”
“Fuck me,” Terry said as she sauntered from the storeroom. “I don’t think so, Dash, you loser. Why don’t you drag your own ass outta here, take it back on the street, where you belong?”
“What’s up, Terry?” Colleen closed space, protectively big-shouldering, prepared to assert herself.
“This jerk-off is the lowlife scum boyfriend of my mom.”
“Sweetheart, is that anyway to speak to your loving stepdad?”
“No, but I’m talking to you.”
“Fuck if I know why, but your moms misses you.”
“I miss her, too, ever since you heaved her off the deep end.”
Colleen said she was going to call the cops if he didn’t leave right now.
“Good idea,” said Terry, puffing up.
“Got a bone to pick, bitch. Where’s my fucking gun?” he said.
“All right,” said Caitlin, “we’re done, get out.”
“You got it?”
“You’re so fucking high.”
“Not high enough. But hey, looky here, whaddaya know, I happen to got another gun,” which he pulled out from the back of his waist and waved around, theatrically, and nervously. “You’re coming with me, bitch.”
His eyelids appeared superglued wide open, his eyeballs popped out like a cartoon character’s.
“What, now you going to shoot me? You’re so fucked up, you’d probably blow off your own head first, which would be an uptick.”
“You’re right, second thought, I don’t want you back in my house. Been so nice without you. Who needs you bitching and moaning? Always with the Nothing to eat,” he whined sing-song, “Turn down the TV. Wash your filthy clothes. What are you, the queen of fucking England? You think we’re all put on earth to feed you food or something?”
“How the fuck you find me?”
“That flat-chested Joneen, pretty cute despite, she came by sniffing around, and she told us where you’d be. I tracked your ass to the teenager rat hole you been staying. But then you weren’t there anymore. Now you’re living with your slutty aunt who ripped off the inheritance money from your moms, who needs the money because she owes me. I’ll get that money one way or another. You should also close your curtains when you go to bed. Just sayin’.”
“A speed-freak Sherlock Holmes.”
“Never heard, but ’bout time we all go Plan B. I wasn’t planning to when I came in, but I think I’ll have to borrow what’s in the cash register, so pretty redhead girl, hand it all over right now.”
“I don’t think so, mastermind, we can identify you to the cops.” Instantly Caitlin wished she hadn’t shared the all-points bulletin with a jacked-up man wielding a gun.
“Give him the money,” said Colleen, increasingly wary. There stood no chance reasoning with a meth head.
“Yeah, just do it,” said Terry. “He’s out of his tree.”
“Yes, I am. So get out the way.” He pointed the gun at the women, backed them off. Behind the counter he scooped up the cash receipts in the register. He was pissed with the paltry haul. “Ninety-some bucks? You running a soup kitchen? There’s no fucking cash.”
“Man,” said Colleen, “two words, ‘credit cards,’ ever had one? You are a regular Bonnie and Clyde, minus Bonnie and minus Clyde. Going for what everybody knows is a fat score—a bookstore.”
“Plan C. Everybody, wallets, purses, backpacks, whatever. And another thing, now I think about it, let’s have some fun, party time, take off your clothes, now, strip. Case you got any ideas coming after me. Plus, the bitch’s moms can use some new shit to wear, Christmas is coming up someday, next year.”
The women were defiant, resisting, a moment.
“Hurry up, bitches, I could get upset.”
Colleen said, “Sick fuck.”
“All right all right all right,” said Caitlin. “Everything’ll be cool now.”
“Hey, Red, gimme that flashy little watch you wearing, too, fake diamonds and all. Fancy-looking, man, my old lady’ll wear it to the movies. Give it up, bitch. Now.”
Caitlin handed it over, and he shoved it into his pants pocket. She was going to miss the Piaget. And she was going to dread telling Paddy what happened to it. She was so stupid to wear it at the store.
“Second thought, sell it, make a couple hundred bucks.”
Colleen couldn’t stop herself: “I’ve lost count, all the ways you’re an idiot.”
“Thank you very nice for the watch, pretty girl. So now it’s showtime, bitches. You, too, Terry, for old time sake, everybody peel. My eyes are up here… Fuck you, Terry, always saying that to me, My eyes are up here, My eyes are up here, had my fill ah you. And you’re pretty foxy, Red. Bet your bush is all nice and trimmed, the way a man likes it. Lemme see.”
“Must be a long time since you seen one,” said Terry.
“You sweaty cunt.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“All my life been told.”
Colleen weighed in: “Something tells me that won’t be a problem much longer.” She would be proven prophetic.
Whatever the nature of the master plan conceptualized by Dash in advance—a plan of his devising being in and of itself a long shot, given who he was and his defective executive function—it was imminently destined to be foiled by a cross-species team working in tandem.
“Oh, fuck,” said Dash, though not, as might be surmised, to any of the women he was in the middle of humiliating. That’s because an amped-up, scatterbrained intruder like him couldn’t miss the brawny dog named Dickens bowling headlong from the back of the store and rushing straight for him, rumbling with a menacing growl deep within his barrel chest. The man lifted the wobbly gun and struggled to take aim at the snarling dog, but he couldn’t gain a purchase and soon regretted it was too late for shooting range practice,
so he clambered for safety and the exit. Dickens vocalized ferociously and lung-ed and assumed a viselike grip of his ankle. The man screamed in agony, wildly waving the gun around, unable to master it, but he did accidentally manage to squeeze off a round. The gun boomed and blasted the mirror behind the cash register, which shattered in a thousand pieces, as the women dove for cover.
It was at this juncture that the gun was dislodged from his hand, Dash and weapon both knocked onto the floor—by an unexpectedly materializing new arrival, a man rushing inside to take him out at the knees. Writhing as Dash was, and repeatedly punching his adversary in the face at the same time, summoning every frantic ounce of his speed-freaky enhanced strength, he also kicked Dickens in the balls with his other foot, getting the dog off him. Then he scrambled from the store, leaving behind his flip-flops and most of the loot, dragging his chewed-on left foot into the night.
The women might have chased him down the block, now that he was disarmed and disabled and barefoot, but what a tableau of bodies presented itself, adjacent to the Recently Released Books table, like roadside triage after a mash-up. The gun on the floor that had menaced them was now unthreatening. The Floozy denizens were mostly alarmed and concerned about poor Dickens, flat out on his side, whimpering, gasping—as Caitlin got down on the floor and cradled the dog’s massive head and petted him. At the same time, Colleen and Terry were also wildly curious, as they stood over the mystery man who was bleeding from his mouth, and who was strangely smiling a skewed, self-satisfied smile.
“That went pretty good, didn’t it?” the man struggled to say. “I think I got a loose tooth.”
“You motherfucking son of a bitch,” Caitlin said.
He staunched the blood leaking from his nose with the torn sleeve of his shirt, a shirt she herself recognized from a weak moment a lifetime ago. What was wrong with her to summon up such a trivial detail, a sad reminder of her poor choices in the past?
“But we have to stop meeting like this,” he said.
“Damn straight,” she said.
“Wait,” said Colleen, “you know this guy?”
“You want to know if I know this guy? Colly, nobody knows this motherfucker. This asshole doesn’t even know himself.” She was referring to disappointment incarnate, sprawled and beaming on the floor, her ex, Baxter.
Colleen didn’t know what she was supposed to do with perplexing information like that, and awaited her cue and further illumination. “At least,” she said, “all the asshole got away with was a few bucks.”
In the moment, Caitlin didn’t correct her, but he also took her watch.