Yesterday evening I drove down to Miami for a gathering of media folks at the Conrad Hotel and, finding few writers among the crowd, I headed down to Books & Books in Coral Gables.
My friend David was working the cash register. It was a slow night at the end of summer. We caught up on news, only occasionally interrupted by a customer. A white-haired man in suspenders handed David a slim children's book and asked the price. "I can afford that," he said, handing over seven carefully counted one dollar bills. David put the book in a brown Books & Books bag.
"Now it looks like you bought a girlie magazine," I said. The man turned to me and laughed. Heading out the door he said to his wife "a girlie magazine" and chuckled again.
A teenage girl with a Spanish accent asked if there were any Harry Potter books, and David went in search. While he was gone, I went outside and picked up a copy of The Oxford American - with my name on the cover - brought it inside and placed it prominently in the rack of more popular magazines. Tip for future bookstore employees: If someone asks for a big blockbuster, don't look where the computer says it should be; find the cardboard display case made specially for it.
A few late-night browsers wandered in. It was very pleasant standing there chewing the fat surrounded by books. I was transported back to my childhood in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, when I would spend happy afternoons sitting in my grandfather's liquor store on South Main Street. And I wondered: If he had had a bookshop, would I have become an alcoholic?
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