This is an excerpt from my novel What the Hell Ever Happened to Yuri Rozhenko? This work is the sequel to my novel Crash Shadow: A Tale of Two Addicts.

    In this excerpt, Skye visits Powell’s Books in Portland Oregon, after having been informed by reliable sources that their Hawthorne Street branch was not the “real Powell’s”. (Apologies to those who work in the Hawthorne store or who might be otherwise offended by the premise!)

    Her trek to Powell’s had been interrupted when she passed by a pizza-by-the-slice shop. Skye felt right at home with the facially pierced employees and the dark interiors that were decorated with modern art and carefully placed show flyers.
    The book store was hard to miss after she finished her slice and walked a few more blocks. Right on the corner was a large sign that looked like a movie marquee, grandly announcing the presence of Powell’s Books.
    Going in, she was in the middle of a large room with several show tables choked with books. To the right was a long extended wall crammed with books that only ended when it got to the checkout counter. She floated to the back of the big room, hoping to explore most of the interior before going back and looking through the display tables.
    Looking along the non-fiction wall, she was pursuing the biographies when she decided she should see what the next room looked like. Walking through the door and down a short staircase, she found yet another large room full of books. It was bigger then the front room.
    When she finally made her way to the other end of the bookstore, she realized the place went all the way to the other side of the block.
    Going down one aisle, she found an entire bookcase filled with nothing but William S Burroughs. She also found copious amounts of Hunter S Thompson, including a novel of his that she did not know existed.
    Going down one more floor she found the music section. Books on punk, books on jazz, books about metal, and tons of biographies of pop stars and classic music stars. In the midst of the musical biographies she found a book about Frank Zappa, and another one about The Residents. She also found a history of Riot Grrl.
    Going through the music section, she already had four books in her hands, and only because she was trying to hold herself back. That’s when it hit her.
    She remembered the book she tried so hard to find in the Bay Area a few years ago. She combed every used bookstore in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco for it and came up empty.
    Going back to the fiction section she hunted for the S section. It took some time to find the right section, but when she finally found what she was looking for she was astonished.
     There were five copies of Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters on the shelf.
     It was the one book that she really wanted and it was unlocatable in the Bay Area, and there were five copies on their shelf.
     Skye stood and stared at the five white, out-of-print copies. She took them down, one-by-one, inspecting them and looking at the prices. Except for one that had yellowing pages they were all in pretty much the same condition. She bought the cheapest one which was only a few dollars less than the most expensive one.
     Looking down the aisle with five books in her arms, she knew there were more books that she would want to buy if she kept browsing, and she wanted to try and keep her expenses down as much as possible, at least when it came to such things as impulse buys.
     She went back to the music section downstairs. She started at one end and carefully combed her way through the books. She stopped long enough to thumb through a book about AC/DC before moving on and running into a colorful book about The Cramps. It wasn’t used, so it was more expensive than anything else she had already picked out, yet she could not force herself to put it back. She found a few non-fiction books about the punk scene, but they were all about New York in the late Seventies, and she had already read and seen enough about that time and place in hardcore history.
     Coming across a picture heavy book about the Riot Grrl movement, she reluctantly forced herself to put the book back. She had already exceeded her modest premeditated book budget. Standing up, she had only scanned through a few sections of the long aisle of music books.
     She turned around and stiffly walked out of the aisle while staring straight ahead. She tried to blur her vision directly ahead as she walked by aisle after aisle of books, heading straight for the cashier.
     As she left, her heart skipped a beat when she caught a Bukowski book on the fiction table by the exit.
     She quickened her pace.

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Skye kickin’ it next to her beat up old band sticker covered car.
Cover art for this work done by Hellga Protiv

The Powell’s Books Website