Maybe They're Both Antiquated
The afternoon sky was blue and virtually cloudless, the wind strong enough to steer everything but a few cirrus clouds away from the island. Hayden started out the Saturday in his driveway, washing sea salt and dust off his Jeep. Since it was mid-November, he wore jeans and a short-sleeved, plaid shirt over his tee. At least the sun didn't bake the suds on the paint before he could grab the hose. Afterwards, the legs of his pants were wet but clean, as opposed to the laundry towering in a corner of his bedroom. Yeah, he'd get on that... As soon as he was done with every other chore he could dream up. He grabbed an armload of books, his keys, and his wallet, then he headed out.
Hayden was an outdoorsy guy; Exercising and working with his hands kept him in a good mood. He also liked to read on his back porch, a dilapidated square only wide enough to cram a rusty chair on, if he propped his feet on the rail. Out there, he spent the early afternoons devouring books before his shifts at the bar. He read historical perspectives and biographies, finding most fiction too fluffy to keep his attention. He liked stories he could sink his teeth into, stories that helped him wrap his brain around the world.
At the used shop, he held open the door for a customer and ducked inside. The odor of old paper hung thick and dust motes floated by the window. He unloaded his trade-ins on the counter.
"Be with you in a second."
Mallory had heard the thump of book spines hitting the counter, but she was currently preoccupied with re-arranging the mystery section. Kids from the beach would drop in and pick out a few selections, and the ones that went back on the shelves usually ended up out of order. The redhead had been working at The Next Chapter for eight months, and she'd learned to spend down times making sure everything was well-ordered. It was why she was still going to have a job come Christmas time and that gum-snapping idiot Tanya wouldn't.
Once she'd tucked the last of the misplaced books into their correctly alphabetized places, she started to make her way to the front of the store. She was going to start showing soon, and when she did she wanted to have built up lots of good will with the owner/manager. Her mother hadn't gotten an obvious belly until she was four months along while carrying her brother, and Mallory was hoping for that same kindness from the genetic gods. Thank God she'd kept up with her insurance.
"Hi, Hayden." She was passingly acquainted with the man since he was a regular customer, and she eyed the stack of books he'd set down with an amused expression. "I see you've been busy."
"Yeah." He rubbed the side of his head and squinted at the books. The end of his shirt lifted, exposing a ragged end. The topmost volume was a biography of John Tyler, which it took about a week to get through. He read it on breaks at the bar and whenever he had scheduled more servers than customers to help. The corner of a makeshift bookmark stuck out, a business card bearing the logo Abandon Ship!. He didn't like dog-earing pages. Besides, leaving an advertisement in there for his business wasn't a bad idea. Many of the store's customers were vacationers looking for light reading and maybe a drink, if he was lucky.
"Things have been kinda quiet. Not enough business. Nobody's taking vacations before the holiday, I guess." The faltering economy kept things tight around the tourism-driven city. Everybody depended on the influx of cash for their livelihood, and when the cruise ship passengers stopped opening their purses and wallets, things got rough. "Has it been slow in here?" He looked around. A display of historical romances with red, embossed letters caught his eye and his brow furrowed.
"Slow enough. I'm hoping things pick up around Thanksgiving, but if not December's just around the corner. Everyone needs books, right?" Mallory started checking over the books to see what the shop could use, examining the spines for wear before stacking the acceptable items off to one side. "You're probably getting more traffic than we are, though, even if it's only the usual suspects."
The comic books and graphic novels had been set up near the front entrance of the store, and two teenagers picked through the selections under Mallory's watchful eye. "Has that old Jeep of yours fallen apart yet?" she asked Hayden. "Every time you pull into the lot, I expect to hear the muffler fall off or something."
Hayden, who had shoved his hands in his threadbare pockets, looked up. "You're talking to me?" He pretended to be surprised. "C'mon!" He pivoted to the window and spotted the red vehicle in the parking lot. "It's only... eleven years old. That's nothing!" He bought it used in college after the four-door sedan he inherited from his parents died a sad, smoky death sophomore year. The Jeep held up pretty well, although the ocean air was doing a number on his paint.
"I like old cars and trucks. I look under the hood and I can actually see what's going on. I dunno what the hell's what in a Nissan, especially if it's new." The days of fixing cars in the back yard were numbered, he thought. Everything needed to be towed to a dealership now, so some shifty guy could run expensive diagnostic tests and charge an arm and a leg to fix a twenty-dollar part. "Besides, I know you're not about to tell me new is better. Otherwise, I might have to buy a Kindle and start downloading books."
Smothering the grin, Mallory said, "Shush! They'll hear you," while pointing at the post-adolescents who were thumbing through a shared copy of Preacher. And really, like she had room to talk about the condition of someone's car, since the Ford she drove had been making ugly-sounding noises beneath the hood for the last few miles. Still, it was a sturdy vehicle, and it'd probably last several more years if given the right maintenance. Maybe she should ask Hayden to take a peek at it later.
"Seriously, though, are you feeling the crunch too? Ian is talking about shortening business hours if things don't get better, and that's after we took out an ad in the weekly arts paper." Ian was the bookstore manager, a portly type with a topknot. "I suggested we could have an open mike type thing, but I don't know if he heard me. He's too busy fretting and making me nervous."
"Yeah, one more month of this and I'll be eating saltines," he predicted. A copy of The Bridges of Madison County sat unattended on the counter. A small ring stained the cover, like a previous owner had set a mug on it. "See..." He tapped it. "If I owned a coffee shop instead of a bar, we could do some kind of thing where every weekend, I brought the caffeine and you supplied the books. I don't think it works with beer."
He looked around. "Come to think of it, I don't think coffee works in Key West." Hayden stared at the teenagers with the comic book. They looked like locals.
"Not enough college types around." She had come down to Key West precisely because it was so small, but that didn't necessarily mean good things for a business like this. With the University of Florida three hundred miles away, it didn't exactly mean the students poured in over the weekends, but on spring break they had done a fair amount of trade. She would have liked to see some of those crowds now. Still, the holidays always boded well for retail.
"Glad the weather's been really nice," she added, checking over some more of the books. "Probably no snow to fit the season, but being able to hit the beach in December is a plus."
He leaned his elbows on the counter. "Why, you working on your tan?" He gave her a friendly smirk, like he doubted the redhead was capable of anything except freckles or a burn. Of course, he might be wrong and Mallory just chose to stay indoors. For a minute, he tried to imagine the kind of books she read. She seemed no-nonsense. Maybe mysteries or crime dramas. He couldn't see her kicking back with one of the paperbacks vacationing women picked up. Something with pastel cover art, a sketch of high-heeled shoes and shopping bags.
"By the way, when I moved here, I asked my landlord when's the last time they had snow in Key West. She said never. I looked online and the lowest temperature ever recorded here was like... forty degrees and that was in 1981." He picked up a flyer and read it. Having grown up in New York state, he had mixed feelings about snow. Hayden figured he'd had enough of it to last a lifetime, but sometimes it didn't seem like Winter when there wasn't a sidewalk to shovel.
She raised an eyebrow at him, poked his shoulder lightly. It was true she did go down to the beach to read and sometimes to think, but she was a true redhead which meant she had to be careful. No horrible sunburns for her, please and thank you.
"It's at least reasonably cheap to live down here," she continued. She'd taken a garage apartment just three blocks over from the store once she'd landed the job, and the rent was well within her price range. What would happen later, when the Little Stranger started to be more obvious, was something she was trying not to think about right now. "Even with as tight as things have gotten, a bigger city would be a lot more expensive to manage."
"You must be a renter, too," Hayden said, lightly drumming his fingers on the countertop. Paying a monthly fee to some landlord wasn't too bad, but the price tag on prime real estate was insane, especially considering the limited career opportunities. "I've got part of a house. The downstairs. The couple that used to live upstairs was cool, they kept similar hours, but the new ones?" He grimaced. "There are all these... I don't know, bouncing noises. I think she's doing aerobics in stiletto shoes."
He pushed off the counter and went to the non-fiction section, which was nearby and much smaller than the rest. A history of pirating off the keys captured his interest. He read the sleeve, then put it back. While he was looking, he squeezed the back of his neck.
"Sounds like something for the vice squad to handle," Mallory suggested with a snicker. "Fortunately I don't have neighbors, unless you count the ones next door. There have been a few conversations over the fence we share, but not much else." She looked up from her current task, saw the book Hayden had examined, then said, "And that's half-price today. All nonfiction is on sale this week. Ian wants to try and attract some customers by lowering some of the prices, and nonfiction won the coin toss."
She finished checking over the books that had been laid on the counter, saying, "I can give you fifteen cash or seventeen-fifty store credit for these, take your pick."
"Store credit," he answered from behind a shelf.
"Y'know, he might have more luck peddling young adult lit. There's gotta be a few depressed kids who got dragged on vacation kicking and screaming." Hayden squatted and tilted his head to read the bottom shelf titles. One fingertip trailed across the spines. Beside him on the floor, a stack of books began to accumulate as things caught his eye. A book about the Dry Tortugas. A political commentary on Cuba. Another pirating book.
He stood up and meandered back to Mallory, where he unloaded his finds and put his palms on the counter. "All you need is a life-size, cardboard cut-out of that kid from the vampire movies."
The redhead had pulled out the box of file cards where customer credit was recorded, and she jotted down Hayden's total on the white card with his name on it. "I'll suggest that," she said. "I don't think I can wait until the holidays for things to pick up."
The calculator on the counter made clicking noises as Mallory pressed buttons, and she subtracted the amount on the card, capping the black pen when she was finished. "Will you be behind the bar this week? I might drop in and say hi later."
Hayden nodded. "Yeah. Behind it." His thumb tapped the counter as he speculated. "Or on a stool in front of it. One way or the other, I'll be around. The only bad thing about supervising, they expect me to show up." A smile made his eyes crinkle at the corners. Most people figured out that he only kidded about being a slacker.
"Definitely stop by. Drinks on me." He picked up his books, inspected the covers one by one, as if he already forgot what he selected. He swore to himself he wouldn't crack one before work, or he really might be late, especially if it was any good. Cuba looked kind of promising.
"Yeah, I'll see you later." Mallory watched Hayden leave, thinking he seemed like a really nice, well-grounded guy. Maybe she could go to him for advice later, or at least as someone to talk to. She hadn't told anyone yet, not even her Ma. The redhead dropped a hand to her stomach, touching the slight swelling of her stomach. She was going to have a baby bump.
The kids looking over the comic books finally made their selections and trundled over to the counter, and she brought herself back to reality to ring up their purchases. She could worry later. Service with a smile, that was the phrase of the day.