New Fiction by Linda Moore Spencer

FICTION

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New Fiction By Linda Moore Spencer

II we need to beg in again is our lives." I'm standing in abookstore, between lives. It's the sort of bookstore for people who read. I'm leafing through The Volcano Lover, A Ro-

mance, a hardcover, and these words pop off the page, sound down the narrow aisle in a voice .that sounds for all the world like Grace,mymother.I look around to seewho's heard,but thetwo young men, the one grey woman, go on browsing, reading,fighting, or conversing with the mothers in their heads. "All we need to begin again is our lives."

I slam the book shut. I wouldn't take it as a gift. I move to the children's section. I always end up there.Two six-year-old boysmaterialize from underneath achair, and the smaller of the two, singlehanded, hefts the swivel rack of picture books and makes it six or seven steps before it crashes. "In fifteen years, it won't make any difference,' I say to him (Grace's voice again) and step across the slippery books. His mother takes the time to scowl at me before she goes for him. And he turns on the tape recorder in his head to getthe words exact to pla¥ back fifty years from now in some bookstore that hasn't been d~signed yet.

An owner type and his assistant move to right the rack and gather up the books and set the coffin nails. A third clerk remains at the computer, punching in the twelveword titles for awoman in aleather cape. She'sreading from a printed list, and all the books she wants have something to do with peace and rage and rebirth and reforestation. (Try telling her all she needsto begin again is her life. Try telling hershecould flywithout the cape. Try telling her it takes two weeks to getthe books shewants.)

I'm in the fiction section now, where Ibelong.The manbeside me makes a noise that would be interesting if it were not intentional.

I can never think of anything I want to look for when I'm in the place that has it. Today the only thing I can remember to consider is a catalytic converter, maybe a new radiator. I'll know better in an hour. Car repairs were why, as I remember, marriage held so much appeal in the first place.

Paperbacks by authors I have never heard of are $11.95. How much do bookstore clerks get paid? My last job, I made $8,000a year, and paperbacks sold for $1.50, $1.95 for bestsellers. All things being equal, the young girl at the desk is down for $80,000.

Ipick up Staying OnAloneby Alice

B.Toklas. What's it doing in fiction.

There's a noiceloud crashing glass and metal sound out on the street. We, all of us, move to the front windows like so manywilling second graders in a fire drill. I like it when people do things all together asagroup. I'm feeling like I am the only person in the world who's fallen (or beenpushed) into a crevice in her life right now.

It's plate glass, large jagged pieces on the sidewalk and the

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bench and on the street. The splintering would have been worth seeing, but hardly anyone inside the store seems interested. They like to see things written down. turn around and there's a new Richard Jury. 1 love those books; they're all the same. I'll buy it. 1go to look for something else. As long as I'm opening my wallet, 1might· as well empty it.

A woman's coming by at one o'clock today to give me an asking price for the house. 1 don't want an asking price. 1don't want much .of what 1am being offered these days. 1 pick up a book of tear-out . postcards with photographs of running water, cascades, streams, waterfalls, kitchen taps. I'll buy that, too. 1think I'm coming up on the part of my life where I'll be sending a lot of postcards, and signing up for things, and baking. Well, maybe not baking. 1put the Richard Jury and the waterfalls down on the counter. The woman with the leather'cape is probably three bookstores away by now; the mother and her son, the rearranger, are somewhere eating something, if I don't miss my guess. The young man who makes noises has moved into the travel section.

The clerk follows my gaze. "He's there every day," she says. "That comes to $13.50." "I didn't know that you were open every ,day," 1say. h, yes." She smiles and hands me my change. 1 stuff the small bag in my purse. "We're open

every day." "But not on holidays," 1 say. "Not on Christmas, or Thanksgiving."

But she's turned away to face the small, blue-lighted screen. She's telling the computer something with her fingers. •

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