Short Stories

The Blue Dictionary

1
    Diana stacked the new shipment of books so high and in such a unique shape that it looked as if the world’s largest paper monster was sprouting out of the carpet.  She stood straight and tall with her fists clenched toward the ground, admiring her feat.  The design was fitting, she thought.  Every last book was a copy of The Tarantula, the bestseller by Milton Shepherd, and Diana’s handiwork might have been a giant book-spider wrapping its legs around the polished display table.
    Such was Diana’s craft.  The managers at The Bookend thought she was indispensable, and Diana thought so too.  With a mere glance at the cover, she could file any of the store’s twelve thousand books into its proper category, sub-genre, and alphabetical location.  Two years earlier she took over the Fiction, Biography, and Reference sections - nearly half the store.  Every so often Diana entertained a futile hope that the managers might put her in charge of cleaning and organizing the entire Bookend from wall to wall.
    “But that’s far too much for you to do,” the managers would say when she mentioned the idea.  Diana shifted an eyebrow and looked down, pretending that she wasn’t entirely serious.
    “Well I have Clarissa,” she grumbled, and went on shelving biographies.
    Whenever an employee was hired, he or she – by default – became Diana’s understudy.  Clarissa had held that uncompromising position for over a month, and though she still could never recreate the splendor of Diana’s displays or find the Technical Writing portion of Reference, Diana’s determination was forging a profound impression on her.
    One day Diana was sitting in the corner of the break room when Clarissa burst in crying.  She had been picking up books left on the floor by a frequent male customer.  As she cradled the pile of books to her chest, he flung a hardcover copy of The Loveliest Girl I Ever Knew in her direction.  A cocky smile decorated his face.
    “I think you forgot one, miss.”
    “They think they own the place!” Clarissa screamed.
    Diana looked her over calmly.  “Don’t get agitated,” she said. “The more books they leave lying around, the more they’ll feel at home and the more they’ll come back and buy.  You may not like them because they make a mess, but they also pay your salary!”  After several minutes of confused sobbing, Clarissa realized that Diana was right, and she went on learning from her.  Never again would she lose herself to her emotions while employed at the Bookend; even when it came to Stewart.
    Stewart was a young man who had been hired a few months earlier.  After only a week of serving as Diana’s apprentice, Clarissa exhibited a growing affection for him, and nothing frightened Diana more.  The two months when Stewart had served as her understudy comprised some of Diana’s most unpleasant memories at the Bookend.  He just flouted about, tapping his fingers on the book shelves as he passed by.  He chatted with the customers as Diana was in the middle of teaching him how to file various types of journals.  When she tried to show him the intricate way to dust in between each paperback, he laughed and said she reminded him of Howard Hughes.  Sometimes he even whistled!  Diana was infuriated by him.  She had never learned how to whistle, and if she had, she certainly would not create those offensive, ear-piercing sounds in an environment like that of the Bookend.
    Despite any and all sounds emanating from Stewart, the managers adored him.
    “He’s fantastic with the customers!” they exclaimed, but Diana couldn’t understand it.  She pictured in her mind the furry arachnid on the cover of Milton Shepherd’s book, equating Stewart’s toothy, misshapen smile to the spider’s poisonous fangs.  How could any customer trust that venomous creature with their books?
    Clarissa thought Stewart was funny.  She admired the way he kept a pencil behind his ear and never held his hands very close to his body.  It seemed as if he would make spare time for anyone.  With Stewart, Clarissa (who had always been remarkably shy) felt uninhibited by her awkwardness, sometimes building short conversations out of it.
    “It’s so difficult,” she once lamented about talking to the customers.  “Let’s say I come to you for a recommendation,” she imagined “how do you sell me a book?”
    Stewart played along expertly.  “Well ma’am,” he said, looking her up and down, “let me point you toward the guides on chess strategy.”
    Clarissa couldn’t help but laugh.  Excitement overwhelmed her as these innocent exchanges soon evolved into absorbing discussions.  Within two or three weeks she and Stewart were eating lunch together on a regular basis.  They shared their thoughts on work, people, books - they scoured the depths of each other, and Clarissa only smiled now when thinking about her job.
    One afternoon in the break room Clarissa raised the subject of Diana and urged Stewart for his opinion of her.
    “Eh, she’s a stubborn hag,” he shrugged, and he bit into his sandwich.
    The frankness of Stewart’s comment stunned Clarissa into awe.  It was revolutionary.  His opinion made her consider for the first time the possibility that everyone at the Bookend might feel this way about Diana.  She took a deep breath and opened her mouth wide as if anticipating her own response, but Clarissa could not speak.  The entrance of Gloria Somers made her sigh instead, and she allowed her tumultuous desire for knowing the mind of Stewart to dissipate like fog into the room.
    “This is it,” Gloria said firmly.  She was referring to a man she’d met the previous night.
    “This time, I’ve found him.”
    Three years ago the managers lauded Gloria’s ambition, and they provided her with the choice of heading any department.  It was then (fifteen years and forty-four sexual partners after moving out of her parents’ house) that she became the self-anointed empress of the Self-Improvement section.  Ironically, she never experienced a bad day after that.  When she burst into the break room she was thirty-three years old and still seeking that elusive knight who could sword fight with one hand and bear flowers with the other.  This time, though, she had found him.
    Gloria curled into the seat next to Stewart like a leopard, and he was swept in.
    “He’s 54 and still dashing like a young lion!” Gloria exclaimed.  She and Stewart began to explore the possibilities of Gloria’s impending romance, and Clarissa’s gaze grew cloudy, their effusions chasing away her final strains of security and attentiveness.
    “And you know what I found out today?  He’s a pharmacist.”
    —How can Stewart talk to her for such a long time?—
    “...a fake illness??  That’s outrageous!  What did he say?”
    —OK.  I know he likes having lunch with me—
    “Well, you would think he’d be surprised...”
    —Why does he hate Diana?  She just loves her job—
    “...but he said it just like that!  I swear to God.”
    —I don’t know what I’m doing here—
    “What do you think, Clarissa?” said a male voice.
    Clarissa turned her head mechanically toward Stewart. 
    “Oh, well...he sounds like the right guy for you, Gloria.”

2
    Diana was passing through the Reference section when her eyes darted toward a bright blue dictionary.  After peeking around for managers and seeing that none were nearby, she delicately removed the book from the shelf and began to leaf through it.  This section was, without a doubt, Diana’s most beloved part of the store.  She simply could not fathom why anyone chose to read fiction when dictionaries contained every word a language has to offer.  Her skin tingled thinking about the precise order of this multitude of words, and she became entranced at how each origin hearkened back to some ancient time and place when a new, subtle shade of meaning was born.
    When Diana was only seven she received her first dictionary as a present for school.  She marveled at the authority of such a book.  The first entry she turned to was “ballet.”  She loved the sound of it.  Throughout her childhood she dreamed of being a dancer and practiced until the soles of her feet grew tender.  With beaming seven-year-old eyes pressed into a heavy dictionary, Diana would watch herself prancing and pirouetting under yellow lights, to the music of that exotic word chanted again and again and again: ballet.
    She blinked her eyes and distinguished a blurry figure rigidly approaching.
    “You won’t believe it, Diana: boxes and boxes!...” 
    Clarissa dropped a large box to the floor and Diana shuddered, closing the blue dictionary.  She cleared her throat and looked sternly at Clarissa.  Then she slid the book into its place on the shelf and - almost as if Clarissa had been the one to remove it - she warned,
    “Always make sure the spines are upright and sturdy when you put them back.  Keeps them from wearing faster,” and she smiled and shuffled away. 
    Clarissa stood speechless over the box just as Stewart happened to be walking by.  He noticed the box’s contents, pointing into it and asking, “Can you believe he’s coming here?”
    “Who?” Clarissa questioned, leaning over the box as if looking for a little man hiding inside.  For the first time she noticed that it was completely filled with copies of The Tarantula.
    “Who’s coming here....Milton Shepherd??” she asked.
    “Yep,” said Stewart, “first famous author we’ve ever had.”  And he steam-rolled away, tapping rhythms on the shelves.
    Milton Shepherd had agreed to appear at the store for a book signing.  Hundreds more copies of his book arrived that day, forcing Diana and Clarissa to work diligently finding places for them.  All of the employees - especially Diana - stammered about, excitedly preparing for an onslaught of customers.
    Diana racked her brain for new designs to create out of all the extra books.  She even took time out of her straightening to tell customers about the signing.  Her enthusiasm, however, morphed into outrage and dismay when the managers decided to place Gloria in charge of organizing the event.
    “I don’t see why she was given this responsibility when I’m in charge of Fiction,” Diana complained.  “I’ve been doing this for years!”
    Throughout those years, Diana and Gloria had kept up an unspoken rivalry with each other, stealthily competing for the affections of the managers.  Once they each commandeered their own regions of the store, their enmity quickly escalated into pettiness.  Diana would peruse and straighten the Self-Improvement section in disgust, thinking to herself that Gloria’s books were as disordered as her personal life.  Gloria’s resentment for Diana was not so internal.  She often mocked her in front of the customers.  “Oh, your problem, Diana,” Gloria announced, “is that you’re all book and no play.”
    Diana still remembered this and many other jibes.  They rattled in her head like crackling fire.  Every time she located a misplaced title or bred an invaluable employee, every time the managers praised her and asked her to conceive a new bestseller display, it was a victory over Gloria.  To Diana, Gloria’s existence was like an uncompleted task.
    Despite Diana’s convictions about her, Gloria conquered her book signing duties with a degree of control and effectiveness that no one - manager or otherwise - could have predicted.  The Tarantula books had been ordered and advertisements made weeks in advance.  She contacted and convinced the store’s reclusive owner, Harold Forringer, to provide appetizers for eager customers waiting in line during the event.  Fake spider-webs adorned the front entrance as well as various parts of the store, and in the days leading up to the author’s appearance, the Bookend employees wore plastic spider bracelets that Gloria had found at a local toy shop.
    Diana refused to wear Gloria’s bracelets.  She called them grotesque.  Regardless of Gloria’s many achievements, Diana railed against her involvement from the moment it was announced.  She protested by spending the days before the event organizing and reorganizing the Reference section, stopping continuously to flip through the blue dictionary and passing by to check on it often.  On a Friday she called in sick for the first time in years. 
    The managers would try to console her.  “You have a marvelous gift for books,” they told her, “but Gloria has a gift for people.”  Diana simply nodded and returned to her dusting.  Clarissa felt sorry for her.  She knew Diana would have been elated to take on the important role assigned to Gloria, and Clarissa would have enjoyed facing the challenge with her.
    One day Diana strolled toward Clarissa bearing a sheepish grin uncharacteristic of her since the news of Gloria’s successes.  “They made Stewart her assistant!” she proclaimed, barely containing herself.  “We’ll see where that gets them!”
    For Clarissa, Diana’s words fell on her like an acknowledgment of death.  They stung her chest and made her face red and warm.  They formed a brief lump at the back of her throat, because she knew that until the day of the signing, all of Stewart’s time at the Bookend would now be hoarded by Gloria Somers.  Clarissa already held Gloria suspect for the unambiguous flirting she exhibited with Stewart.
    As the book signing drew nearer, Gloria and Stewart’s activities became increasingly intertwined.  She worked closely with him on exclusive projects, often speaking with him privately.  Consequently, Clarissa’s little talks with Stewart were fleeting and restless.  Rumors circulated that he and Gloria were seeing each other outside of work.  Sometimes Clarissa would hear them laughing together, and each time the lump in her throat burned and grew heavier.
    Stewart seemed to relish the extra responsibilities bestowed upon him.  People said he was moving up in stature, and Gloria was content to fashion a little emperor out of him.  Soon the managers would grant him a choice of sections to control, she informed him - just as they’d granted to her in her day.  From behind the piles of Tarantula books, Clarissa overheard Gloria telling him all of this.  She stared into Stewart’s widening eyes wondering why she’d been so naive, understanding for the first time that, unlike him, she would never be given he own special portion of the Bookend.

3
    Gloria and Stewart were the first to greet Milton Shepherd on the day of his book signing, shaking hands with him as he entered the building.  The mass of customers had not yet arrived, so they obliged him to settle in and enjoy the temporary solitude, pulling up a large, comfy chair to the signing table.
    From half-way across the store, Diana and Clarissa looked on at the three of them – Milton, Gloria, and Stewart – who began to strike up a conversation surrounded by a thousand copies of The Tarantula.  Clarissa leaned against a barren wall with her hands in her pockets, thinking of the pencil behind Stewart’s ear, distant as ever.
    Diana was trying to read their lips.  Her mouth convulsed at a manic rate, as if she could channel their words telepathically and mold them into a language only she would comprehend.  She began to focus in on Stewart and her mouth ceased its horrifying movements.  There was silence.  She glanced behind her at Clarissa, who was slumped over, clutching her stomach and unable to move...then returned her glare to Stewart...then back to the suffering Clarissa.  She looked back and forth and back again, landing at last with resolution on Stewart’s grinning mug, when suddenly her expression turned to granite, and she whispered aloud.
    “Look at those fangs...!”
    Clarissa remained frozen as Diana began to march into Milton Shepherd’s field of vision, approaching him like a righteous fan.  He was a dreadfully thin, jittery man with receding hair and large, brown-rimmed glasses.  Diana waltzed directly into the middle of his conversation with Gloria and Stewart, having grabbed a copy of The Tarantula from one of the many stacks along the way.
    “Sir,” she said to Milton Shepherd, handing him his book.  “I wondered if you wouldn’t mind signing this for my associate, Clarissa.”  Diana fixed a hollow gaze at Stewart.  “She’d love to ask you herself, but she’s taken ill.”
    Milton Shepherd gladly accommodated and signed the novel, twitching his eyes as his illustrious pen scratched Clarissa’s name into a dedication behind the cover.  Diana wasn’t sure if Clarissa even wanted the book, but she was determined to claim this moment as Clarissa’s retribution over all of Stewart’s treachery: Milton Shepherd’s pen unknowingly slaying its own creation.
    Diana thanked him and trekked back across the store to present her gift, but her associate no longer languished in the corner or anywhere else.  Clarissa had punched out and left the Bookend for the day.

    The following morning, signed copies of The Tarantula lay scattered all throughout the Bookend, including Diana’s copy for Clarissa, which she was saving next to the blue dictionary in Reference.  Milton Shepherd’s appearance had been a success, and Stewart and Gloria were applauded by the entire staff after closing.  According to the managers, Harold Forringer - the owner - was very pleased.
    Diana returned to work comforted by the thought of Milton Shepherd’s absence and the restoration of normalcy to the store.  She started to pick through the day’s shipment when Gloria stood forming a slender shadow over her.
    “Looks like we’ll have to find you a replacement,” Gloria said with just a hint of a smile. Diana was perplexed.
    “What?” she asked with her brow curled up.
    “Clarissa just called to inform us that she doesn’t want to work here anymore.  She quit.”
    Diana shifted her eyes toward the ground for a moment, only to lift them up again revealing a quixotic expression, like a child.
    “Just like that?” she asked.
    “Just like that,” Gloria echoed.  “Strange, isn’t it?”
    Diana set down her books and bolted toward Reference, overtaken by an uncontrollable urge to straighten the section.  No understudy had ever quit on her before.  She knelt down, feeling a burdensome pressure on her neck and chest, and began sifting through the bottom row of almanacs.  Her shaky fingers abruptly paused when a cold shiver manifested in her gut.  It shot straight up into her forehead, sketching a terrible realization in her brain right next to that dreadful memory of the managers telling her that Gloria would be in charge of the book signing event.  As she slowly lifted her head to peer at the shelf above, her fear materialized through her senses into a gaping, wooden emptiness: Clarissa’s book was gone.
    Diana turned her head around and beheld the unending stacks of Milton Shepherd’s novel.  Only one contained an inscription for Clarissa. 
    Diana jolted to her feet, igniting a frantic search that seemed to last for days.  She flew from department to department, toppling displays that she and Clarissa had spent weeks setting up.  When every cover of The Tarantula in every crevice of the Bookend had been flipped open to reveal either a blank page or merely a signature, she flipped through them all again, and only then did Diana accept that there was nothing she could do.  Clarissa’s book was gone.
    Diana was overcome by grief, and she dragged herself through the store, following a straight line as if under the spell of a hypnotist.  Her pathway led her back into the Reference section, where she was slowly mesmerized by the eternal glow of the blue dictionary, submitting once more to the clutches of the heavy book and peering inside.  Once again she laid her eyes to rest upon that one enchanted word.....ballet....

    Familiar yellow lights shone toward her from high above the ceiling.  The rows of books streamed alongside her like a maze of colored ribbon.  She leaped and fluttered and dipped and danced....until she stood in the middle of Fiction, cowering at the mercy of Milton Shepherd’s enormous Tarantula.  It had been borne from the fur in a panorama of glossy dust covers.



Old Quest

    Sal had moved to a new ranch about four hours from the city.  I was on my way to the capitol, so I called him up figuring I could spend the night there.  On the phone I asked him “Sal, you got any cows, or any chickens up there on the ranch?” 
    “Nah,” he said in a real drawn out breath.  “We got some horses....and a donkey.”
    “A donkey?” I repeated.
    “Yeah,” he said.  “Keeps the coyotes away.”
    I drove up to Sal’s ranch a couple hours later and passed by more than a dozen farms – cows grazing in every pasture.  Sal met me at his door with half a grin on his face.  “How’s that drive?” he asked me.
    “Long,” I replied.  “Lots of cows.”
    “Yeah,” said Sal.  “Lotta farms up this way.”
    We ate supper on a wooden dining table.  I looked at Sal as we picked through the potatoes and beans, saying “You probably get your water from a well, huh, Sal?”
    He looked up with some beans in his mouth and said, “Nah – grocery store about three miles up the road.”
    At eight o’clock, he took me around the back to see the horses.  I stood behind the wooden gate and listened to them huffing and puffing.  “They always jump around this much?” I asked him.
    “Sometimes,” Sal replied.  “They get excited when there’s somebody they don’t know.”
    The youngest of the four horses had a stint wrapped around his ankle.
    “Why’s that one got his leg all wound up, Sal?”
    Sal’s face became stern.  “Coyote got to him while he was sleepin’.  Damn near bit through his leg.”
    “Jesus, Sal.”
    “Yeah, he was a mean one,” Sal admitted.  “That was before we got the donkey.”
    Sal showed me the donkey.
    “Here’s old Quest,” said Sal.
    “He’s got strong legs,” I told him.  “You have him pullin’ any carts?”
    “Nah,” Sal replied.  “We got a tractor does that.”
    Sal and I went back inside and turned in for the night in our separate rooms.  My bed was pushed up under a low window, which I didn’t mind at all.  I pulled the window open a bit, figuring to let in some of the fresh country air while I was sleeping.
    Around one in the morning, I could hear an angry snarling, along with this high-pitched squealing noise, directly outside the window.  I sat up with a jolt and met nose to nose with the most fearsome-looking coyote I ever saw drooling at me through the glass.  I looked a little higher on the window and noticed he’d been scratching it, trying to get at me. 
    That’s when the fear struck, and I fell to the ground.
    I sat there in shock for a good five minutes watching him scratch and snarl, scratch and snarl.  I thought the window might crack open any second, so I started to crawl backwards, but I was trembling too much to make it to the door.  A feeling of nausea crept up in my throat, and then I started to hear the sound of dull, thumping hooves just floating around in the distance.  I realized it was old Quest off in the field, wandering closer and closer to my window.  The nausea was replaced by adrenaline. 
    “Here, Quest!” I shouted.  I could hear the donkey’s footsteps getting louder, and more frequent.
    The coyote turned his head and watched old Quest for a minute, keeping his muddy paws on the window sill, until at last he relented and fell back down to all fours.  He looked over at me through the window one more time, then galloped off into the night, leaving me shaking in the middle of the hard wood floor.  After a minute or two, I was able to stand.  I looked out the scratched-up window to see the old donkey, just lazily gnawing at the grass outside my room.

    Next morning, my bags and I were stowed away in the car by sunrise.  I told Sal about the coyote and he said: “Jesus, no kiddin’?  I don’t believe I slept through a thing like that.  The coyote, though – he remembers what old Quest done to him last time he came by.  That’s what got him runnin’.”
    “I’ll bet,” I replied.
    Just as I shook Sal’s hand through the car window to say goodbye, old Quest wandered up the dirt road and started gnawing at the grass again.
    “Sweet Jesus,” Sal complained.  “All that donkey does is nose through the dirt all day long!”
    “Yeah.  He needs something to occupy his time,” I said as I watched old Quest bury his head in the grass.  I looked up at Sal, who was squinting from the rising sunlight.  “You should get him a cart to pull,” I said.  “...let him feel a little pride.”
    Sal looked over at old Quest, then gave me the same half a grin he’d greeted me with the day before.  “Yeah...” said Sal.  “Maybe.”
    “So long, then, Sal,” I said, revving the engine of my car.
    Sal waved his hand in the air.  “So long.”