Saudade

    Copious Gould had just finished reading his latest book. He felt accomplished but oddly vacant knowing that the book he had just finished was no longer part of his life.
 He and it had spent many fun times together, riding the train, going to the beach, bathing, etc. And now, after almost two weeks of constant reading, the dog eared and coffee stained volume had been spent. He considered re-reading it, in hopes of getting that rush he got the first time but knew that the thrill of reading that first page, for the first time, could never be felt again.
So, swallowing his pride and fear of the outdoors, Gould decided he must purchase a new book. Something to fill that empty spot in his heart for a printed companion. The thought made him feel warm and cozy inside. He tapped his feet on the subway floor in eager anticipation of walking into that musty bookstore and buying something new. After nearly an hour of staring dead-eyed into space had passed he perked up after hearing an announcer's voice telling passengers to grab all of their possessions before getting off at the Poseidon street stop and to be wary of pickpockets both on and off of the train.
As soon as you left the dank subway station the scent of urine and moisture in the air dissipated and you were surrounded by a street full of shops and vendors. A flautist stood on  the sidewalk in front of the florist, commanding the attention passers by with an interpretive spin on the compositions of Tchaikovsky. Across the street a cellist attempted to drown out his neighboring rival with renditions of pop classics of the nineteen nineties in a baroque style. The cobbler had turned on the X-mas lights that adorned his store front. It was dusk and the street was busy, but not nearly as busy as it would be during the midnight to dawn hours, when the constables and sensible folks had turned in for the night and all unsavory flavors of characters came out from the woodwork to peddle their own, very unique, variety of wares and trades.
    If, you didn't get bullied away from your destination by the crowd --inexplicably always going in the opposite direction, and you walked straight for a few blocks out of the exit/entrance of the city metro, you would find a storefront with New and Used, Rare and Abused, Books written on a wooden recreation of a crystal ball hanging from above the door, and a curtain on the streetside of the glass window, which, although invisible to the passerby, covered the words

~Psychic~
Tarot Cards, Palm and Tea Leave Reading
Traditional Medicine and Oriental-Style Massage
Relationship and Financial Advice
And More!
Inquire Within

    Which had been painted on the pane of glass by the previous owners a good seventeen years ago, back when Poseidon street was far skeevier in the day time than its modern nights ever were. The bookstore was originally directly above the psychic, but moved into the storefront after its former owner was murdered; a crime which she, Madame Bouvier, Psychic Extraordinaire, probably could have seen coming if she did harbor any actual form of other-worldly fortune telling ability.
As it seemed, she did not. So now she was dead.
    Anyway
    After her (Madame Bouvier's) murder, the bookstore moved its stock downstairs and began to peddle used volumes, fiction and otherwise, to the slowly gentrifying populous of Poseidon Street.
    Gould had never actually gone to the shop, most of his book purchases had been online, but he’d heard great things from friends about the place and had this odd feeling deep in his bacterial gut that if he was looking for something new, some fictitious account of deep space adventures, the biography of some long lost presidential son, or maybe a narrative on obscene flower arrangements, then this must be the place.
    New and Used, Rare and Abused, Books had the same inviting quality as a crypt upon first entrance. There was a musk in the air that stung the nostril for the first few minutes, dust and its mites were in abundance and when the sun shined through the window you’d swear you were in a blizzard. Then there was the climate. Cold, cold and dry in fact. All of this was just the price you had to pay for what lay inside the shop, the rarity and price of which would give a particularly book savvy individual a nosebleed, if the dust, cold, and smell didn’t already.
Gould lit up at what he saw. The Anatomy of the Modern Chef: A Detailed Look Inside the Culinary Mind was the first thing he noticed. The Last Great Look at Things of Our Past, a novel written by an unknown nineteenth century, disgraced dignitary/philosopher, whose claimed, claim to fame was as the secret-eunuch/sex-slave to an unnamed royal family, and focused on the short life and long after life of a baby who died in childbirth, matured in limbo, and spent his days reflecting on a world that he is both present, and absent from during his afterlife. Truly an awful book, but rarer than a cicada shell on a windy day nonetheless.
And so, absorbing all smells and visual stimulants of that musty bookshop, Gould began searching for the next book he would read.
Oh what a glorious two and a half weeks that time with the book would be!
What adventures he and it would go on; time could only tell of the magic within a dust jacket. Of course there would be the inevitable sadness that came when he finished the book, but that’s a bridge better left to be crossed when he came upon it; rather than let that sad thought of yet another bounty of knowledge and characters joining that dusty bookshelf in his study after he was finished with it and the the crushing despair of everyday life sunk in once more.
    From behind a stack of obscure and obscene German poetry came a wrinkled, truly phallic looking, example of a man. Whose forehead was as large as a serving tray and had the wrinkled look of a foreskin.
    “Well helloooooo! How can I help you today?”
The personability of this ancient fellow startled Gould who stammered out the word ‘new book’, and just kind of stared at the owner for what felt like an eternity before he said he would help him find something interesting just as soon as his tea was ready.
    And so, after a silent five minutes, the diminutive old man stepped out, two London Fogs in hand. Gave one to Gould, slurped the other with absolute gusto, and asked him what kind of books he liked.
    You know when you’re a kid and everyone asks you what you want to be when you grow up? Some kids say firemen, police officers, movie stars. It’s great, because before you’re a teenager you really have shit somewhat figured out, but then, once you hit 14, maybe 15, you lose all that confidence in yourself and you either just say you don’t know or something really weird.  Artist is one you hear a lot, or rather not, not hear, since they’re way too shy to admit to it. Author, poet, and, occasionally, philosopher, are common dream jobs too, but you’d never be able to spot one in the making because they all say:
    Uhhhhh, I don’t know. Maybe something with animals
    Which, let's face it, never actually means that the kid’s going to get a job with animals. They’re just put on the spot.
    Which was exactly how Gould was feeling; uncomfortable and put on the spot. All he wanted was a book! He didn’t know what book. He didn’t even remember the last book he read. He was so god damn nervous the only thing he said was:
Walden, I mean, I like Walden, a lot. So do you have that book? Walden? That one.
Of all the books in the world for him to lie about liking, he had to pick Walden.
    “No.” flatly.
    “No, we don’t have Walden, sorry. We don’t have anything, anything like Walden either. Maybe you should check the Barnes & Noble a few blocks south.” Same disappointment and flatness of tone.
    “No! I don’t like Walden! I don’t know what I like! Please help me, Sir!”
Now this was uncomfortable.
    “I see. A naturalist in a little bookshop who doesn't know what he wants. Something tells me this has happened before. Why don’t you just stay right there and I’ll find you something to read.”
What washed over Gould now was dread and fear. Is it really safe to drink this London fog? What horrible things could the old man have for him to read?  What did he really mean by read?
Oh the dread, oh the panic brought on by a few syllables from an old man who looked more like Vladimir Nabokov than Mickey Finn. Gould was afraid still. He had seen the evil that the elderly are capable of, specifically evil based around beverages, in Arsenic and Old Lace just a few nights prior at the Gold Wing and knew that he did not want his final resting place to be in anywhere near the Panama canal, faux or otherwise.
    As gould embarked further into the paranoid fantasies of his nervous mind. The elderly literary custodian dug through mounds of old and useless books with a shovel. Tossing mass market paperbacks over his shoulder like spilled salt. He had a book in mind for this antsy young man who did not know what he wanted; both in terms of books, and his life.
What he, Thile Ghastly, looked for was a book published to small acclaim during the heyday of Hugo Ball, nonsense poetry, and various other self-proclaimed Abortions of visual, audial, and literary art works; written by a candy striper named Maddy Lamoreux,  during her downtime at a now defunct home for the criminal and physically ill (and ill-fated combination if ever there was one) and was so deeply complex --purposeful plot holes, spelling errors that are in fact deep, dark, puns, and enough characters to fill a small mansion, that it had never actually been read by any single person for fear of sudden bursts of violent insanity and stomach illness. It was, in some painfully abstract way, a recollection of Maddy’s time at the asylum/family practitioner.
    Thile flipped to a random passage.
    ...And yes I worked for the pennies that they gave me/Made a living with helpfulness towards people/the clinically insane/chronically ill ~yet perfectly sane~individuals with typhus, sore throats, and her-pies. What days I spent working were spent in that red and white uniform looking like a candy cane/sear sucker nightmare/How would I not wish to write this that I felt when I walked into that place in which I worked but not for pay/for mere satisfaction of the monetary variety...
    And he shuddered. To think of the things an author must endure to write such truly awful non-fiction in such mass.
A Thousand Curious Things I Learned In The War was a masterpiece of awful. The plotline incoherent and non-linear. You could, in theory, read it from cover to cover and annotate at every word and it would still make just as little sense as the connection between plot and and title. But had no had ever tried, no one was ever bold enough to try.
And so Thile brought the volume forth to Gould. Wrapped in a brown paper parcel, no markings.
“Do not open this until you arrive home, for the best of both of us.”
Now, to most people, being given a package, that you instructed not to open, by a stranger, who you believed to be about to murder you a few minutes ago, is a major red flag. but not Gould. Who grinned and nodded at these heedings, paid for the book, and tore off into the night.
As he walked to the subway he passed by sidewalk dice games and kids rolling cigarettes with newspaper as their mothers and brothers turned tricks all around them. In the subway terminal a man without legs who pushed himself around on a skateboard sang sad Irish ballads and played a violin like a miniature cello. A group of leatherbound youths pushed him down an escalator.
Gould boarded the last “A” train home, humming to himself that familiar Duke Ellington, with the sinister warning to hurry, hurry, hurry, and get to Sugar Hill as fast as possible.
He sat down across from a pair of college lovers who’d fallen asleep and missed their stop by a country mile. He stared at them and thought about his own attempts at love, a good five or six novels ago, with a girl who had these misty eyes and long flowing hair.
He needed to forget about that for a while,
 he needed to read,
and so he did,
forever.