August 20, 2012

“Do you buy books,” I asked. 

“Yes,” she said. “Just take the hand cart and bring them back.” She walked out from behind the counter, gesturing to a man playing on his phone who didn’t look up but stood and followed her to the folding table.

“Nobody buys cassettes anymore,” she told him. “I bet you paid hundreds of dollars for this.” She held up the black book in one hand, Rich Dad, Poor Dad in gold and purple ribbons. He grimaced. “CDs,” she said. “I can sell CDs all day, but I just buy cassette tapes for cheap, sell ‘em for cheap.”

The book buyer flashed her sapphire contacts at me unsmiling.

I stammered. “I -- my car, it’s full of books not in boxes.”

She laughed. “Why not?”

“My kids--they did it for me.” 

Grinning, she glanced down, then back at the man with gray-black hair. “I’ll be about twenty minutes. I’ll come out to your car, I guess.”

I had been riding around with a trunkful of books for about a week, the dank of unopened pages permeating the circulated air. Ess-turns and steep inclines had shifted the piles, sometimes spilling into the back seat. But I had agreed to down-size, the collection I had begun from forever ago cut by two-thirds. 

When she was ready for me, the woman waddled out, her long sleeves clinging as the black fabric became blacker with perspiration. 

It was terrible the way she handled each book, reading each title, feeling its weight, making horrible piles. I wanted to rescue some, to snatch one back and tell her “that’s staying with me.” And the urge to say something, to eulogize each one somehow was ever in my throat. That’s one from my last year in college. I was studying French then. I read that one three times. I wished I could close my trunk, tell her to forget it, and drive away. 

But I stood there as she sorted, silent and pathetic. She slowly filled a shopping cart. 

“You must be a teacher,” a man with a pug dog who was exiting the store commented as he passed behind us. I nodded. “I can tell from the titles.”

Blushing, almost choking, I glanced at my feet and swallowed before refocusing on the sorting. And I felt sorry for the ones she didn’t choose, wanted to love them again, give them a place again in my home. 

In the end, there were 5 piles. “Ninety-one dollars,” she said. 

“Okay.” 

She turned to write the receipt. “Some of them are only worth fifty cents,” she explained. “The non-fiction ones, no one buys. Well, some people, but not really. I have to buy them at half of what I pay so I make a profit, you know. How much did I say again?” 

“Ninety-one,” I said. 

“Yes, that’s right.” She continued writing. 

I took my note to the cashier, who counted out the money in fives. At least I got something, I thought, tallying the hundreds of dollars those books represented. I wanted to hate her and that place. But I knew I could not bring my books back to their shelves. I had to make room, had to donate the rest to GoodWill, where I got nothing, not even a donation receipt.