Who: Cass and Joss What: A chance bookstore encounter. Where: A rare bookstore close to the Aubade. When: Before the bank robbery. Warnings: None.
It had been something of a difficult week.
Cass had managed to break down in front of Wren and then hire her for the services she provided, two things he had never intended to or wanted to do - but there you were, that was life. The day after speaking to Wren, he made a rare sojourn out of the house. When all else failed, he could at least ensconce himself in the local rare bookstore, and that was what he intended to do.
He picked up a coffee from a hole in the wall cafe, a first for him in this town, and he chose the place mostly because it was close to the bookstore and small enough to be sure the line would be short. Then he took his coffee with him to the store next door. Beverages weren’t exactly allowed, but he still hadn’t managed to find anything like a regular sleep pattern, and he was going to need the caffeine if he intended to stay awake enough to pore over the shelves for the next few hours. The shop owner had seen him enough times by now to not bat an eyelash at him or his coffee cup - of the few places he left his apartment to visit, he spent the most time at this one, and he’d already more than paid the man’s rent for the rest of the year with his purchases.
He wasn’t looking for anything in particular today aside from distraction, so he walked through the stacks at a leisurely pace. Part of the appeal of the store was its chaos. There were books piled on tables for display, straining the support of bookshelves, and the aisles were really only wide enough for one person, maybe two if both turned sideways. Like any good labyrinthine forest, there were clearings, small areas bounded on all sides by bookshelves and lit by hanging lights of all periods and styles.
He picked up a few volumes, some rare, some not, and settled in a worn, plush armchair with them to look them over and debate their worth. Sitting in the quiet, dusty nook, he felt the closest thing to peace he’d felt in days, and opened one of the hardbacks to look at the inside of the cover.
In bookshops where the books had been bought and sold perhaps even years before, in bookshops where the books had been published long ago and their stories read and re-read and soothed, it was quieter. There was still a jangle of voices that came with the soft sound of the bell as the door opened, a rush of welcome and chiming in and over one another -- like a flock of birds returning to a familiar roost -- but they were warmer, happier-sounds. The owner smiled his welcome above his ledger and Joss followed the voices amidst the stacks, breadcrumbs and snippets and odds and ends, conversations that began and ended as soon as she passed, her fingers trailing as if through water.
They closed in like lovers, above her head, around her, the dark of the best kind of dreams and the bookshelves meandered like a maze -- a labyrinth -- with a new thing at its heart. Stories swelled themselves, puffed up and proudful, to relate themselves to this new visitor. They swayed and swished themselves, bright-colored like fans, like butterflies, like dancing-girls in front of a rajah intent upon his favourite. A soft touch, possessive like an old friend, a faithful -- Joss’s fingers caught against the rough worked leather of a story well-known and loved -- her face a glory of joy and she stopped, whispered back her soothings, a promise to read again and soon. Here, this bookshop was a cradle in which she was swung on familiar lullabies, and the love-light of being in one of the best of places was bright and happy in her face as the bookshelves receded and she stepped dainty-footed into the clearing, the thicket of books in which he sat. (King, or wolf? Or pierrot?)
Joss’s smile was shy but with the calm assurance of someone in the middle of where they ought to be. Her foot nudged against one of the stacks of books surrounding him; she leaned just enough to catch the title of the one in his hands.
“It’s really very good, despite the pricing. If you’re looking for a tale or a promise, not an investment.” It was a quiet, soft kind of speaking and it was addressed to the books and not to him but for Joss it was an offering - a small, hesitant one, held out to one who might take it up or rebuff it, but one all the same.
Cass didn’t actually look up until she spoke, and found himself face to face with a smiling woman and her outstretched foot. It took him a moment to register the interruption and summon up a reply. At his best, he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Once, but not anymore. “I’m just looking for a book,” he said, not following her down that whimsical road. What he was really looking for was an escape, something to bury himself in and not think about the things he’d agreed to the night before, to wind himself out of the bone-deep shake he’d had after the panic attack. “But I prefer to be sure they are what they claim to be before purchasing them.” His tone was a little defensive. He didn’t really know what to make of her, the same way he didn’t much know what to make of anyone who approached him out of the blue.
If Joss heard the defensiveness, if it registered as anything other than a faint and distant thing, a thing of people and not of stories, she didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she sat down amid the books, like a child might settle comfortably anywhere, and looked perfectly comfortable with her back very straight against a bookcase, and her soft white skirt pooling about her knees. She sat the way of storyteller and she curled her hand around her cheek and her elbow leaned against her knee as if listening -- not to him at all, but the book in his hands.
“Do many books claim to be something they’re not before you buy them?” Her voice again, was small and interested and quiet -- she didn’t sound as though she was mocking him, but, “I wouldn’t think they would want to. Books want to be loved for what they are.”
She sat down just a few feet away, to his dismay. He’d come here for quiet, not to make conversation with the first dreamy woman to pass by, and he considered getting up and leaving before he was dragged into a conversation. He didn’t just yet, but he closed the book. He wasn’t going to get the chance to read it now, so why bother?
“They are like people in that way, I’m sure.” He straightened a little. “Sometimes they masquerade as earlier editions, sometimes they are clever reproductions in disguise. It’s always worthwhile to check.” He didn’t run with the tone of her comment, interpreting it literally instead, and purposefully so. What exactly did she want? If she’d recognized him, she was in for a surprise. Being rich and being lauded in the paper as a ‘famous recluse’ did not exactly make him friendly to the people who picked him out as such and talked to him to get a thrill out of an encounter with a freak or in the hopes of befriending someone famous.
The nearest book was familiar; its pages a map of a landscape she knew almost as well as one of her own, thin pages as fragile as moth’s wings that fanned like silk beneath her fingertips, whispering its story with a frail but still beautiful voice, something like a once world-renowned singer might have. Joss laid it in her lap, opened it with the ritual of being at prayer -- what looked almost like a private communion -- and she didn’t answer for a long moment, tracing the whorls of gold (like a fingerprint) on the title page that made the book this story’s home.
“Do you read them for their casings, or do you read the stories for their own sake?” Joss said, her fingers smoothing against the page, as if soothing a ruffled dignity, a pricked pride. Her head was bowed over the one in her lap, but she looked up with her question, with grave eyes -- as if it might matter what his answer was. He sat the centre, the master of so many stories trying to catch his attention, like birds jostling to sing most sweetly and all he was interested in was the gilting of the cage.
When she went silent, he started to think that he might finally be able to have the quiet he had been looking for. Then she started up again. “I read them for the stories,” he said flatly. His tone had officially gone curt, in part because of the implication he didn’t care what was between the covers, and in part because of her continuing insistence on being in this little corner of the bookstore that he had claimed as His Space as soon as he settled in it. She was trespassing. He had been comfortable, and ready to carve away a clearing to be alone in, and here was the only other person in the bookstore.
“Did you actually come to look at books?” he asked. “You seem more interested in conversation.” An invitation for her to leave, if there ever was one. It was always more difficult for him to wield cruelty in person than it was online, where he conducted a majority of his discussions with other people, but she had officially pushed him one step too far - namely, by loitering around when he had already had a terrible 24 hours and wanted nothing more than to be by himself. People. Why did they insist on causing so much trouble? He was better off staying at home, where they couldn’t mix with him and tempt him to lash out to get them to leave him alone.
Joss looked at him with wide, soft eyes that didn’t appear to register the quick cruelty of dismissal, just that it was dismissal. He didn’t seem happy, that much was so, and the stories that rustled and whispered and fidgeted around him were fretful, anxious -- there was little chance of being taken home and loved in a book if the man sifting through them looked as though displeasure were an expression he wore often and wore easily. But he wasn’t simply looking at the paper and the glue and the gilt on the bindings and that made her a little bit happier.
“I’m glad,” she said, quite simply (and quietly, because it was clear she was an intrusion, although she didn’t know how) to the pages of the book in her lap and the black lines of print across the page seemed almost to shiver and settle under her eyes. It didn’t have to tempt her, this story, but it tried anyway in a weak sort of way. His book, the one that lay in his hands like a lover lying in bed awaiting attention -- could anything manage to capture so very sad a master of pages? He was sadder and crosser looking than anyone Joss had seen -- perhaps these stories were ones too well known to him? In a fit of pity for the poor, rejected stories, quietly, Joss began neatly unstacking the nearest untidy pile and sorting through them, one by one. She wasn’t here for conversation with anyone without a paper jacket and a cracked spine -- but it would be nice.
She took the jab lying down, which never made him feel good about himself. It was so much easier when people got angry back, made it all feel justified in the first place, but all she did was start putting books away. He pretended that didn’t make him feel the least bit guilty, frowning at the book in his hands, unable to focus enough now to do anything that wasn’t read the first line over and over. He’d claimed this space, and it was his, so he wasn’t willing to move from it. Still, with her sitting there radiating confusion and fragility, he felt suddenly like he ought to apologize. He resisted the urge.
After a few minutes of silence, however, he still hadn’t made it past the second sentence, and he looked up, staring ahead at the bookshelf. “What did you come here for?” he asked, finally acquiescing to the need to say something, particularly since she wasn’t leaving.
Joss didn’t raise her head from the pile of books, sorting through them as primly as a librarian, but she smiled softly as her fingers sifted pages and it was only when she was done (checking pages, checking everything was in order, giving the story a sense of love even if it hadn’t any) that she lifted her head and the dark hair fell back from her face once more. She looked at him, curious and very much intent. He said one thing a certain way, all bite and bother and snap, like a dog curled up or a dragon on a treasure trove, but the words themselves weren’t slicing at all. An ill-fitting sword, appropriated rather than just.
“To see the books.” The of course was implied in the air of faint surprise, the smile coming and going from her cheek. “I always come here. I like that they jumble everything. A and B don’t always like standing next to one another,” she confided, and she opened the next book, making a small, pleased sound. It was an old book, very valuable and rare indeed and in excellent condition but the story contained within was old and rare too and hadn’t been read in a long time.
This woman was officially very strange. There was something sort of off and distant about her, and he wondered if there might not be something truly wrong with her. Maybe she was just eccentric. She could hold down a conversation, obviously, but what did she mean by ‘A and B’ not liking being next to one another? She was personifying letters, and it didn’t sound so much like a joke as it should. “Just to see them, not to read them?” he asked, looking more to hear her talk a little more than to really get an answer.
Her fingers were gentle on the pages: most people treated rare and old books with reverence but there was something about the way Joss held it that was more tender than that -- respect paid not because of its age, or fragility, but something quite else. But quite patiently, she slid her finger in to mark her place and closed the book to set aside. He didn’t wish to talk, but he did anyhow and that was surprising and odd -- did everyone behave this way, outside of the publishers’ who said nice things with pleased faces and sometimes hadn’t read her books at all before they began discussing book jackets and reviews, or her apartment in a building full of quiet people who kept themselves quite to themselves? The rustle of voices was gentle, soothing the way a stream might be with its constant trickle of sound, and Joss frowned over the conundrum and then her face smoothed once again. He was talking, and he was real -- and even if he was all sharp edges and the kind of voice that was edged with glass, he liked the books and the stories seemingly liked him.
“Sometimes I find a new one. And then I read that,” Joss explained, quite patient, as though it made sense to everyone and he simply wasn’t catching up as quickly as the rest. “But once I know the stories, I just come back to visit. And they put them back wrong.” It sounded a little fretful, a worry over old friends possibly falling out with one another. “But I would never just look at them.” It would be cruel, to have the stories put themselves on display, shake off dust and age and crumbling pages to make themselves shine and to disregard their content with idle disinterest.
Visit? What an odd sentiment. He had a love for books, for reading, for escape from...this, whatever it was. Reality, his life, himself. But he didn’t visit books, though he understood having a certain affection for them, and he frowned while he listened to her speak. “How do you know they’re put back wrong?” he asked. It didn’t sound like a figure of speech, she sounded truly worried about the state of the books. He was starting to think there might be a very good reason for her wandering up and starting a conversation out of the blue.
“Because they are.” Wide, wide eyes and a grave little face -- Joss could not contemplate the not-knowing. They cried out and they grumbled, like children playing sardines in too dark and small a hiding place, so much so that often she looked for bent pages and broken spines on neat shelves as well as jumbled -- but not everyone heard their croaky shouts, the whispers in pages sliding over one another. Joss’s book lay abandoned. “They say so.” He was listening to her, in a way no one had, not for a long time (she couldn’t remember the last and even that memory was thin and blue and soft, possibly not even a memory at all) and in the soft plush of an armchair she was quite certain no one sat in aside from her, with a coffee cup that no one brought in -- a hesitation, a quick-sharp breath and her lip caught between her teeth.
“Are you...” Real. A breath, a thought, a sigh rather than a word, please not again, please not again.
He was watching her move, watching her breathe, and it was like trying to interpret hieroglyphics without a Rosetta Stone to link it to a language he understood. He still didn’t know what she was talking about, and found himself a little concerned about how deeply she seemed to believe the things she was saying. “Am I what?” he asked, watching her hesitate. Something had made her stop. He had set aside the book he’d been holding, resting it on his lap.
“Real.” The word tumbled like a stone into a too-still pool, with ripples yet to come in the silence and dust and solemnity of a bookstore all but abandoned -- nothing but the very small scratch of pen against the ledger-book to be heard at all of the man at the desk. She couldn’t see anything of him that said story, in the way most of them breathed it, most of them walked with a secret in their skin that hummed and when they looked at her she knew -- but they hadn’t, back then, they’d worn faces as easily forgotten as other people, sly and shrewd and darting in between the people that were like a gone-away game of Grandmother’s Footsteps where she had to chase forever and it was never her turn.
She stretched out a hand this time, touched the tips of cold fingers to the nearest point of him -- no smoke, no mirrors, nothing but the firm assuredness of someone not born of words, given breath by tales. “I...” Joss’s voice faltered, and her hand dropped to the book resting against her knees, she looked acutely miserable and embarrassed. “I thought you were something else.”
Cass didn’t take very well to being touched by strangers, and he tensed but didn’t pull back. He turned over what she’d just said, and watched her closely, brows knitting in concern. This woman needed help if she wasn’t already getting it, and it wasn’t his job, shouldn’t be his job, because he’d only met her a few minutes ago, but he had to ask. “Do you need me to get you some help?” he asked. “Are you on your own?” He hoped that she would say no, that she had someone taking care of her or that she was seeing someone, because he could barely take responsibility for himself - let alone some other lost person.
Help. They’d called it that: kind-faces, kind-eyes, hands against her elbows, leading her along when the world was too bruised-confused-lost to make sense enough to whisper warning at her back, danger. The lady bent above her, blue eyed with crumpled face like too many sheets of paper the night before, ‘I think she’s waking’, sidewalk beneath her, not a mattress. Then hush, bang doors and white cotton nightgowns and walking and sitting and sleeping, lost in a nothing where no one was friendly and the stories weren’t allowed to play. Joss was still, carved from ice and terror, eyes like ink and mute of mouth -- if she gave him words, he’d use them against her, count them, one, two, three, like tablets. Cut them off and box them up, toss them into rooms for people to finger through and pay for, not interested in new ones, little ones, the ones who hadn’t a chance yet, who needed loving into being. In ‘help’, the bad ones fled in fear, all Joss heard was a myriad voices pleading for mercy, for respite, and if the books themselves lay silent she heard their stories bright inside her head.
“I thought you liked them,” betrayer of books, purveyor of help, sitting in his armchair like a quiet-voiced king, she left him -- Joss fled as though at her heels were hell-dogs and the bell at the door jangled a fierce dance as it slammed behind her -- a flurry of small sounds as the owner sat back up in his chair, all astonishment.
He wasn’t even sure what she was referring to when she said them, and before he could ask her she was already running out the door. He’d watched her freeze up, pull back, grow frightened and still before fleeing, and he realized she must have read something into what he’d said that he hadn’t meant only after she ran. This had to be a first. He’d send many people away from him with all due haste, but never by what was intended to be an offer of help. Proof that there were always new avenues of rejection to explore, and he sighed, getting up and putting the book back on the shelf. Clearly, he’d find no peace here today.