It is Saturday afternoon.

The bookstore (Cantos Bookseller in Roanoke, VA– thanks to Julia M for finding all these reviews of the nutty place) is deserted except for me, Mike, and a fiftyish bookseller with three feet of hair in several shades of gray and one of those floppy hippy dresses with a cardigan over it. Although I do not look at her legs, I imagine she is wearing striped stockings like the Wicked Witch of the East.

I pick up a book at random. It turns out to be cowboy pornography. I flip through.

I inform Mike, “This guy is having sex with a meatloaf.” I proceed to read the page incredulously out loud.

Distracted by this high quality* pornography, I don’t notice right away when the bookseller sidles up and hovers expectantly. When I pause to take a breath, she pounces.

“Interesting book, isn’t it?” She asks in a voice that grates and shrieks like sandpaper on a chalkboard in a classroom full of members of a preteen step team.

“Yes, it’s very… unusual**,” I reply.

“You actually have to BUY the books before reading them,” she snaps, snatching the book from my hand and putting it back on the shelf. “Otherwise it becomes A USED BOOK.”

I am dumbfounded and have no response. She flounces away, triumphant.

Discombobulated, I continue to browse. A few minutes later I see a book called How Starbucks Changed My Life. Thinking this looks like a refreshing change from the usual whining about how Starbucks is destroying an American coffeehouse culture it apparently actually invented, I pick it up. I am careful to only read the inside flap– hyper conscious of the bookseller, who stomps past me, glaring at my hands to make sure I am not looking at any actual pages. The book turns out to be a tedious mid-life crisis vehicle about someone who was downsized from a high powered job and learned to be a simple barista. The very thought makes me want to scream. I hate it when privileged people with tons of money decide they can reinvent themselves and join The Proletariat just by getting some crummy job that the rest of us had in high school and pray we will never have again. And then write a bestseller. (Admittedly, it can’t happen that often but I still hate it.) I put the book back as though it has burned my hands.

We leave the store. As we are leaving, the bookseller, who won’t look me in the face anymore, asks, “Are you just looking for a good book to read, or what?”

I mumble a reply to the effect that I was just browsing and escape.

Customer service, folks.

* “high quality” is a code word for “wrong- headed and poorly written.”
** “unusual” is a code word for “it sucks.”