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By Root 903 0

― had taken my suitcase (the one I'd taken with me to Cincinnati) out of my van and put it in my room. I unpacked the suitcase, got dressed, and went downstairs. The house was empty ― you can always tell when a house is empty, especially if you yell out several times, "Hello! Mom? Dad? Anyone here?" and then check each and every room for signs of life. They were both gone, all right. I had once again woken up late: it was just past noon. My mother had gone to work, no doubt, but where was my father? Had the university press kept him on out of pity so that he'd still feel somewhat normal? Oh, I missed Pioneer Packaging right then, missed the feeling of normality it gave me. Because isn't this what work is good for? Not so much a way to make your money, but a way you can feel normal, even (especially) when you know you are not? I had those hungover, jobless blues, all right, and maybe my father knew I would, because on the kitchen table there was a tall glass full of something dark, murky, and potent and next to it a note, in his handwriting, handwriting that was a little shaky but definitely still his ― I recognized it from those many postcards he'd sent me -that said, "Drink me." Like Alice, I did. For a second I felt much worse, and then the second after that I felt much better. Whatever the cure for drinking was, it was much like drinking itself, which I suddenly felt ready to do more of, right after I went to the Book Warehouse.

The Book Warehouse: I'd driven past it many times. It was maybe a mile from my house, right on Route 116. I knew that Anne Marie and the kids went there all the time: for story hour, story circle, story time, story share, and other story-related activities, all, apparently, with their own separate purpose and function. But I'd never been there, and how was that possible? This was the question I asked myself as I pulled into the enormous parking lot, next to a series of other enormous parking lots serving adjacent superstores. How had I, who'd lived near this place for years and years and whose life had been ruled by stories and books ― how had I not once entered its doors? I was like the ancient fisherman who'd never been swimming and who, on the verge of taking his invigorating first dip, wondered what had taken him so awfully long.

The Book Warehouse was big. That was the first thing I noticed. Plus bright. The bookstores my mother had taken me to when I was young smelled like the back of a damp storage closet and were dim and narrow and filled with towering, overflowing bookshelves that leaned over the aisles and obscured the flickering overhead lights. The Book Warehouse was nothing like that. No, when you walked into the Book Warehouse it was like walking into an operating room, with cheerful music piped in and purple banners hanging from the ceiling that told you to READ!!! Except there weren't any books, not that I could see, because when you entered the store, you walked right into a café. There isn't much to say about the café itself. I don't remember what it looked like, really, or whether they served food there, and if they did, whether there was anyone there to serve it to you. It was the sort of place where you entered and seemed to pass out for a second and suddenly you came to and were holding a cup of coffee. It was West African native dark bean coffee. I don't know what that meant, exactly, but the coffee was excellent and came in an attractive ceramic mug with good heft and balance to it. I remember that much.

It was three in the afternoon at this point, and the café was empty except for a group of women, mostly, sitting around in a circle in their comfortable chairs sipping their coffee with their books on their laps. These women looked like our female neighbors in Camelot, with their severe, sensible haircuts and expensive casual clothes that were baggy enough to hide how thin they either were or weren't and shoes that were somewhere between clogs and running sneakers and that in any case had very good traction. I'd never really thought about this kind of female Camelotian,