Booklover… Will Travel Excerpt #2

Two weeks later, as happenstance would have it, my fingers provoked the realms of Myspace, and I discovered an official page, which is not only maintained by the author, but also by someone called Tim, who loves Batman.  After deciphering a personal blog entry posted in October 2007, with a deadline long since expired, I communicated with Mr. Van Booy regarding his imminent Writing Workshop, held in May 2008 at the Land of Medicine Buddha.  A precarious inquiry tested the destiny of my aspiring vocation, but I leapt unreservedly to an air of opportunity and serious avidity to learn.  Suddenly, a compelling need to read his collection flooded as I hoisted the anchor of expectancy… completely innocent of the challenge ahead.  Somersaulting beyond credence, from Borders Bookstore to Barnes & Noble and back again, I attempted a return venture to the original bookshelf where I had last seen these illusive, waiting copies.  After this moronic escapade, I was affronted by a window display supremely verifying an obvious Blue Period in the world of book findings, as a daring glare of flagrant, crimson letters quantified my contempt…  Temporarily Closed Due To Water Main Break.  (To this day, the aforementioned remains a depressing carcass of orphaned literature.)  My mind marvels a series of Machiavellian tactics before frantically dialing another prominent bookstore.

“I’m looking for…,” I say evenly, having collected myself during the twenty-second stride of Murphy’s Law to the warmth of my car.

“Great, we have books!”  And I want to exile the anonymous salesperson. 

Briefly I explain, confiscating submerged particulars, she responds empathetically, “Borders has it, but it’s probably floating in water by now.”

“Yes…  thank you, I’m in the parking lot.”  I offer gently, before strangling my cell phone and ineffectual city navigator. 

The literary conversion of crisis and circumstance shed an air of Hitchcock to the universal declaration of booklovers… though when I share this turnabout during the untailored flow of conversation, the Secret Lives author responds wittily to the tale of idiosyncratic pangs of calamity and fate, “That’s funny…  I wonder if they were inside in rubber shoes with wrenches…”

Outwardly, I discern this technology driven amusement as it seeps from the realms of a luminous computer screen, bludgeoning me with cybershopping awareness, I wish I’d thought of first. 

Yes, Mr. Van Booy…  I’m convinced they were.   

Sara A. Harris

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