Tandasil takes her boyfriend Larry to the West Coats’s largest bookstore. She takes a short but introspective bookworm journey, reviewing her life through books and literature.

This story is featured in my collection of short stories entitled Short Songs, featuring characters from The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright series.

     Tandasil didn’t get far before she stopped to look over a display of Mishima books.
     She had lost sight of Larry, who had kept going after they entered Powell’s Books main lobby.
     She thumbed through one of Mishima’s novels, thinking about how she had not read one of his books in years.
     She tried to distract herself with another table, looking over the new fiction display, just as Larry’s bright blue hair appeared in one of the room’s many doorways.
     “I thought you were headed to the music section,’ asked Larry in a quiet voice as he sided up to Tandasil.
     “I got distracted.”
     “Of course you did,” replied Larry with a smirk.
     Tandasil kept her eyes on the books while not being able to hold back a slight smile. She recalled some of her previous boyfriends, some of whom were well read, and some who would have been irritated with her if she made a side trip to a bookstore. She had even been with a few partners who would’ve gotten close to becoming angry that they were wasting time in a bookstore.
     Larry was not as well read as some of her previous partners, but she was able to ignite his reading interest with a few well thought out recommendations.
     As he wandered off to look at the bookshelves at the far end of the room, Tandasil resigned herself to the fact that she would not be able to head straight to any section of the bookstore, that she had to look around and browse her way to the vaunted music section.
     She stopped at one end of a long row of books, the new fiction section. She looked down the aisle, the tall shelves crammed full of books.
     She recalled the first time she had ever been to Powell’s, when her father brought her there during one of their many trips to visit relatives. It was back when the Powell’s was much more wild, when it had a much more organic used bookstore feel to it. The shelves were very high and long and you would find a doorway in the far corner of a really large room and squeeze your way through it to find yourself in another really large room full of books.
     She did not know too many bookworms back then, when she was a child and a teen. She fondly remembered meeting a gang of punks at her high school who had not only heard of Margaret Atwood, Alice Walker, and Ursula K Le Guin, but had actually read their works. She was rather astounded that such a group of disheveled looking young people with torn jeans and old leather jackets could be so well read.
     It was what pulled her into the scene. She developed her love for punk and industrial music on her own, but she never had very many friends who were also into the same kind of music until that point.
     That’s when she started hanging out in the scene and started going to shows.
     She drifted away from the new fiction table to look around the biography section. She wondered if she would ever have the gumption to read a book about Ian Fleming, just as she considered grabbing a book about Stevie Nicks. She winced at the Elon Musk and Vanderbilt biographies and cast her wandering eye for a more noteworthy story. Her eyes grew wide when she saw a book entitled I’m Glad My Mom Died. She picked it up and read the first few pages. She clutched the Jennette McCurdy book as her first find of the bookstore trip.
     “I know you read Bukowski,” said Larry as he appeared next to her and held up a collection of Bukowski short stories.
     “Of course.”
     “Gonna go find me mate Hunter,” said Larry as he turned around and headed to the fiction section.
     Tandasil flashed back to when she convinced Larry to read Hunter S Thompson. She recalled how excited he was after he read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. She was rather appalled when Larry mentioned that some of his friends admonished him not to read it. She asked Larry why they had done so, and he told her they didn’t give him a reason, just that he should avoid the book. That’s when she marched down to the nearest bookstore and bought him a copy.
     She made her way to the literature section after she lost sight of Larry, keeping in mind that if she was not careful she could spend far too much time looking through the titles. She ran her eyes over books that she already owned or had already read: Sluts and Whores by CE Hoffman, PR by Dani Dassler, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robsinon, and Coffee Will Make You Black by April Waterson.
     Tandasil wondered what Skye would say if she saw her with a copy of Middlemarch. As she tried to imagine Skye’s reaction, her jaw dropped when she saw an Irvine Welsh book in the wild. She quickly grabbed the copy of Welsh’s novel Porno as she delighted at the prospect of showing off the Scottish vernacular to Larry.
     She stopped when she found a large short story collection of a very familiar writer.
     Visions of her father came to mind as she looked at the old James Thurber book. She could not help but feel the twinge of guilt, thinking about her father, a man who encouraged her to be curious, adventurous, and always supported her in all of her artistic endeavors. He was there when she got her first tattoo. He helped her dye her hair purple, and green, and whatever wild color she had picked out for that month. And he was happy enough to accept her short-lived foray into lesbianism, when she went out with her first girlfriend.
     She had only heard scattered stories from her friends, and she never pried too much, but she knew Skye, Miranda, Gail, and just about everyone else she knew had abusive and reckless fathers, male parents who made their lives hell. She knew they were people who did not revere or treasure their fathers, for they had absolutely no good reason to do so.
     Tandasil rarely talked about her dad to her friends. She did not feel comfortable bringing him up, as if talking about her good and supportive parent would sound like a bad note among all the hellish abusive father stories, or if it would simply sound bizarre to them. She could easily imagine Skye or Miranda giving her quizzical looks if she told stories about her father Jerry.
     She impressed herself as she left the large fiction section, as she had managed to traverse the store’s literature section and walked away with only one additional book.
     She passed by the language section while she was still theoretically on her way to the music section. She briefly looked through the French section, wishing she had kept up with her desire to learn French, wishing she had been able to summon the gumption to really keep up with her lessons when she was a teenager. She looked through the French dictionaries and texts before looking around the fiction titles, seeing how much she could understand as she read the spines of their fiction collection. She found a few translations of popular American books and a few titles she could not make out, up until her eyes became wide when she saw it.
     Grabbing the book La Conjuration Des Imbeciles, she could scarcely believe she had a French translation of A Confederacy of Dunces. She took the book with her as her desire to learn French had suddenly been reawakened by the concept of a Francophile Ignatius.
     As Tandasil weaved her way through a few non-fiction sessions, she spotted an extra large dictionary on a stand, over by the reference section.
     She could not help herself.
     She walked up to the extra large reference and looked it over, Carefully opening the heavy book, remembering how her father had one quite like it, the largest book in his extensive personal library. Her dad had let her mother paint its cover, even though Tandasil knew her father wanted her to leave it be. He acquiesced since she was so determined. That was when Tandasil learned that her father was not going to let minor irritations get in the way of his relationship.
     He never told Tandasil that it was so. She was able to surmise it on her own when she was still quite young.
     She ran her eyes along the words and decided she was going to engage in a chore that her father insisted upon when she was a child, to go to one of his dictionaries at least once a day and find a word she had never seen before and learn it.
     She was looking through the pages when a woman made an announcement over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have found a small pink sock on the second floor. If you are missing a small pink sock, please come to the information desk on the first floor.”
     She decided to peruse the reference aisle, looking for other interesting books, her detour inspired by the dictionary.
     It wasn’t long before she found herself in the theater aisle. She knew she would not be able to explore the section without acquiring at least two books.
     She was halfway through the section when Larry appeared at the end of the aisle. He had three books with him.
     “Ah, dabblin’ in the theater I see!” said Larry as he exaggerated his British accent.
     “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” said Tandasil as she held up the August Wilson book. “You ever read something so good it was scary?”
     Larry looked around the shelves. “You Yanks need more pantomimes. You take theater too seriously here.” Larry took a book down from the shelves. “Didn’t you do a Beckett thing once?” he asked as he looked over a collection of Samuel Becket’s plays.
     “A short film, yes. We did our own version of Waiting for Godot, with my friends Sean and Marcie.”
     “Right. You named it after that unreliable twonk.”
     “Waiting for Sam. The notorious flake.”
     Larry smirked. “Skye got famous after she punched him out at the On Broadway.”
     Tandasil made a face. “She’s done worse beat downs.”
     “Yeah, but not ones that made her so popular with the club crowd!” Larry looked down at one of the books in her hand. “What the bloody hell is that?” asked Larry as he pointed at a multi-colored book in her hand.
     Tandasil held up the book.
     “Shakespeare was a woman?” asked Larry in an incredulous voice.
     “I’m kinda obsessed with the Shakespeare authorship controversy.”
     “Yeah, I’ve heard of that. I don’t know too much about it though.”
     “Tsk!” said Tandasil as she shook her head. “You’re supposed to be offended. You know, being British and all.”
     Larry held up his hands. “You’re right. But really, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a front, knowin’ those hoity-toity types.”
     “Exactly!”
     Larry squinted at the book. “You really into that whole thing?”
     “I’m kind of obsessed with it. Keir Cutler, Diana Price… I really think the idea that a grain merchant from Stratford couldn’t have been the true author.”
     “Dearie me. You’re gonna have to school me on that.”
     Tandasil rolled her eyes at Larry. “Brace yourself. I could talk about this subject for hours.”
     Larry left Tandasil in the theater aisle to resume his exploration of the bookstore.
     Tandasil decided to make her way through the arts and crafts aisle. She was looking over various artistic subjects when she noticed someone at the other end of the aisle, looking at her with wide eyes .
     A toddler with black bangs and wearing a white overalls was staring at her.
     “Hello,” said Tandasil.
     The toddler smiled and waved at her, just as a woman in a pantsuit ran up and took the toddler by the hand.
     “Maria, don’t wander off!” she groused in a hushed voice as she pulled her away from Tandasil.
     Tandasil watched as the parent led her bewildered child away, the parent only casting a quick and nervous glance at Tandasil’s tall and slender tattoo-covered self.
     She looked down at her armload of books and wondered if she should grab a shopping basket before she made it to the music section. She contemplated thinning out her choices so she wouldn’t burden herself with too many tomes.
     She grabbed a basket from an information booth before making her way to the music section, determined to get there without being distracted.
     The image of her mother started floating in the back of her mind as she finally made it to the music section.
     She saw Larry appear at the end of the aisle.
     Larry walked up to her slowly, with his hands behind his back. He looked down at the books in her basket. “You finally made it to the music!”
     Tandasil narrowed her eyes at him. “How are you always able to find me?”
     “It’s that GPS tracker I put in your panties.”
     Tandasil tilted her head and gave him her patented raised eyebrow.
     “Or it could be that you’re six feet tall with about another two feet of hair.”
     “Oh dear.”
     “Fine! Let’s meet in the cafe if we miss each other. I need more coffee.”
     “Sounds good.”
     Larry gave a thumbs up as he disappeared around the corner.
     Her thoughts went back to her mother. Jeanine liked the Bay Area, but she knew she had pressured Jerry to move the family to move to Portland. It was one of the few times her father confessed anything to her, when he told her he liked Portland, and he could imagine living there, but he just could not bring himself to leave the Bay Area.
     It had been the only serious sore point of contention between them, the only strike of bitterness that hung over their relationship. They had remained in the Bay Area only on the insistence of her father. Tandasil had to wonder how close they came to moving to Portland when she was still a pre-teen. She would occasionally try to imagine how her life would have been different, wondering if she still would have gotten into the music business if she had grown up there instead of San Francisco.
     She could not imagine not being with Larry, and not managing The Dynamite Chicks.
     It was not a life she wanted to imagine.
     She started slowly walking down the aisle, her eyes running up and down book spines, looking for familiar or interesting titles.
     She smiled at The Story of Crass, one of her favorite band biographies. Girls to the Front, about the Riot Grrl movement was also another one of her favorites. She was tempted to grab a comprehensive book about AD/DC as she also eyed a biography about David Bowie.
     She saw Violence Girl about singer Alice Bag, and Please Kill Me about the early days of punk in New York, books she either already had or had already read.
     She doubled back and grabbed The Story of Crass. She was going to give it to Larry, even though she already owned a copy. She wanted him to have his own personal copy.
     Even though the music section was her stated target for their visit, she left the aisle before looking further, knowing all too well that she would just see something she had to buy and increase her already too large pile of books.
     She took out her phone. “Are you in the cafe yet?”
     “Just got here,” texted back Larry.
     She made her way to the cafe just in time to see Larry talking to two little girls who kept pointing at his bright blue mohawk. They almost flinched when Tandasil walked up.
     “My word! That’s quite a lot of books,” said Larry as she walked up to his table and the girls retreated.
     “I was thinking of putting some back,” she said as she looked down into the basket. “I may have gone overboard. They’ll be a chore to haul back.”
     “Maybe you can leave some at your mum’s house.”
     Tandasil left the books with Larry while she grabbed a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin. She felt the need to fuel up before they made the trek to her mother’s house, the small home her mother bought for herself shortly after her father had passed on. When she got back to their table, Larry was thumbing through the heretical Shakespeare book..
     “Ah yes, I’ve corrupted another,” said Tandasil as she sat down.
     “I was already corrupted love,” said Larry as he put the book down. “You ever think of movin’ up here?”
     Tanadsil tilted her head towards Larry. “I can’t do my job from a distance, especially with that damnable staff.”
     “Yeah, right. But you know, maybe scale back? Go up and down?”
     “We got three bands takin’ off on the label. Skye’s been talking about hiring more help. Even Colleen is getting frazzled, for once. Not to mention all the work you’ve been doing.”
     “True enough. It is gettin’ hectic down there.”
     Tandasil slowly shook her head. “I can’t leave the Bay Area. There’s too much going on, and as much as I love Portland, I would miss the Bay too much.”
     “You think you can talk yer mum into coming back to the Bay?”
     Tandasil’s mind whirled. She knew how much her mother wanted to stay put, how much she wanted to live out her life in her beloved city. But she also knew she was slowing down, that she was starting to feel the effects of advanced age, and it pained her to think about how she would manage if she was all alone.
     Tandasil slowly shook her head. “No. I’m not gonna try to talk her into anything.”
     Larry put his hands in his pockets. “I’m kinda nervous about meetin’ your ma.”
     “Whatever for?”
     “Well… Mama’s usually think I’m a bit out there. Y’know, not the kinda boy you bring home to mother.”
     Tandasil raised her trademark eyebrow. “Trust me, she’s much more out there than you.”
     “Yeah?”
     “I already know she’ll love you.”
     “Love me? Aren’t you overselling?”
     “Ha! She might try and steal you from me.”
     Larry actually looked alarmed. “Oh dear!”
     “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
     Tandasil thought about going back to the literature aisle and grabbing the collection of James Thurber stories for Larry.
     “You ready to go by your mama’s place?” asked Larry.
     Tandasil’s eyes became still. “No. But let’s go anyway.”