Mrs. Mosely
“How long has she been here?” Phil, the store manager asked jerking his thumb over his right shoulder and a row of books.
Anna looked over to where Phil was indicating. She saw the familiar form of an old lady. Today she was wearing a black dress with small white polka dots; the neck was flowered by a collar of lace fastened with a coral cameo, she wore earrings to match. Her long grey hair was swept up into the regular chiffon, showing off her slender feminine neck. Sitting primly at a table in the corner of the Starbucks coffee shop, she held a slim volume of prose in front of her. Upon the table before her was a cup of tea.
“Who? Mrs. Mosley? She comes and goes. I think she may be one of our best customers, she is always here at some point in the day.” Anna retreated to the stack of books she was working on shelving. Phil followed her.
“How old do you think she is?” Phil asked.
“I don’t know for certain, but I would say probably in her late seventies, early eighties. Why the curiosity?” Anna asked.
“Do you know when she started coming to the store?” Phil ignored her question with his own.
“I’m not sure…it seems as though she has always been here. Most of the staff knows her by name and she is never above helping some of the clientele if they need it.”
“I was afraid of that.” Phil said and ran a hand over his face.
“What do you mean?” Anna asked.
“I have been watching her over the last week and I have never seen her purchase anything other then the tea and occasional coffee that she drinks while reading. She comes here as though it is some kind of a library, only to read and then stores the volume back on the shelf and then begins another. I don’t know what I am going to do about this; it isn’t like she is stealing anything. She looks like she is a nice lady too. I wonder what her story is. Why would she not go to the library and enjoy the leisure of reading at home?” Phil mused.
“Perhaps she likes the human contact she gets here.” Anna suggested.
In all the years that Phil had been in the industry of selling books he had never been in such a puzzling situation as this. Mostly it was dealing with teens sporting Mohawks that liked to read via the five finger discount. It would be a call to the local police detachment and the problem would be solved. Another time it was to deal with some drunken kids who had come into the store only to break into a literature food fight of sorts that ended with books being thrown all over and many sustaining damage. Again the local officers were called and the offending parties were made to pay for the damage. Phil was aghast at the last incident. Such a lack of respect for the written word had badly shaken him. He had taken it personally not only because it had happened in his store, but because these books were like his children in a way, and he their guardian.
The problem with Mrs. Mosley was that she wasn’t hurting the books in any way. He had inspected the ones she had put back on the shelf expecting them to have broken spines from her reading them, but to his relief she had treated each volume with the utmost respect. Putting each back exactly as she had found it. He could not tell that anyone had opened the book let alone read it over a period of time. This was definitely a point in her favor, but still he could not let her go on as she had been. What if everyone was to come in to the store and only read the books without buying? He would be out of a job pronto, that’s what.
Still what was he going to do with the woman? Phil felt dread at the thought of what he would have to do. She would not be able to come back into the store if she would not purchase the books she read. He could not see another way around it. He envisioned his own long gone Mammie and began to feel even guiltier at the prospect of throwing this poor old lady out. He felt even more the louse even though he had not even engaged her in conversation yet. That’s it, he thought, I will talk to her, find out what the story is and then decide what to do from there. Taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, he crossed the aisles to the table she was sitting at.
“Mrs. Mosley?”
“Yes?” She smiled brightly at the sound of her name.
“I am Phil Hetterson, the store manager, I wonder if you would join me in my office for a minute.” He stuck out his right hand.
“Oh my, I hope everything is alright.” Her smile wavered slightly, and took his proffered right hand.
“Please follow me, Mrs. Mosley.” He escorted her to the back of the store and to the right where his office was located. Pushing the door open he held it for her and offered her the chair in front of his desk. He took the only other chair in the office located behind the same.
“Mrs. Mosley…” Phil started.
“Please call me Rose, my father did. He liked to tell me the story of how I got my name. He said he named me rose so that the men in my life would treat me with care. That if a foolish man decided to treat me any other way I would draw blood.” She paused waiting for Phil to say something and when he didn’t she said, “The thorns you see…it would be the thorns that bare my name that would draw blood, not me personally.”
“Ah I see how clever your father must have been.”
“Oh clever he was and always pushing us kids in school and to get the most from life whenever it offered. I guess this is why I have such a high regard for the written word. That too was advice from my father; he would say that only a foolish man would not pick up a book, a foolish man or one who could not read, and there was nothing foolish about that. In my day there were many who couldn’t read and I took every opportunity to teach others. It was too a precious gift not to pass on you see. I would teach those adults who had not had the same opportunities as I did to go to school and learn, only though if they too promised to teach someone else. Paying it forward as it were…have you read that book? Such a wonderful idea that child came up with. Although I suppose it was the author who came up with it originally.” Her gnarled hands smoothed the fabric of her black dress over her lap.
“Yes I suppose you are right.” Phil said.
“So what is it you wished to speak with me about Mr. Hetterson?” Rose asked.
“Well I have noticed that you have been coming in the store and reading books that you have not purchased. I have asked the front girls, the ones that run the registers, and they have said that they cannot remember you coming through one of their lines a single time. Is this true?” Phil asked.
“Yes it is true Mr. Hetterson. Although it is with some regret that I must say so, not that I have been reading the books, I can’t say I regret that. I do however regret not being able to pay for them. I have been the utmost careful with them. I hope that you know that this is so.” She paused taking a deep breath and went on. “I started to come to your store about a year ago, when Ralph, god rest his soul, passed. We were not well off by any means and when he died I am afraid that my pension did not leave much to go to such luxuries as books.”
“I can relate to how hard it can be when someone we love passes.” Phil said thinking of his beloved Mammie. Wondering what she would say to him as she heard this woman and her story. It wasn’t hard; she would have cuffed him about the ears for being so heartless he was sure.
“I love to read you see. Sometimes I think it is the stories that are the only thing that keep me going. I can take a break from missing the only man in my life that I loved and who loved me back, besides my father of course. I can be free of the endless wait until I too will join them on the long trek into the unknown.” She absently played with a section of black nylon. “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have the story to take me away into another world. I wonder if authors know how miraculous they really are, how much some of them can touch their readers hearts.”
“I suppose some of them do, the great ones, they care about the reader as much as the story I’m sure.” Phil fiddled with a pen turning it over and over as he puzzled out what to do with this woman he was rapidly becoming to admire. “Why did you not just go to the library if you like books so much? They have an amazing collection of any author you could think of.”
“Yes this is true Mr. Hetterson.”
“Please call me Phil; if I am to call you by first name it is right that you should do the same.”
“Alright, Phil, it is true that I could have gone to the library. It is true that they have a dazzling array of books, of which any could fulfill my needs. However do you know what people do with those books? Do you know where they read them? Who’s read them? I do. They read them when they are sick and some when they are dying. Some read in their beds, which is not a bad thing. Some read in the bathroom when they are doing their daily constitutional, this is a very bad thing. I can’t go to the library because I know that these books are crawling with the foulest bacteria known to man. They have been on bathroom floors, they have been sneezed on, coughed on, and they have been festering in the darkness of backpacks and on the shelves for who knows how long. I could not bring myself to touch the living things these stories have turned into.” She squished her face into a contortion as though at the mere thought of these books one had really touched her hand. Bending forward she dug into her purse for a small bottle of Purell, the hand cleansing gel that had become a fad in the last two years, and squeezed a small portion into her hand then massaged it over her hands until it finally evaporated.
Great Phil thought, a little old lady who could not afford to by her own literature, and now one who was a bit of a germ a phobe, this just got better by the minute. Well he could see her point a little…especially after her speech about the toilet readers. Phil shivered despite himself.
“So that is why I came here, to your store. It has such a pleasant atmosphere, made ever more so now that the coffee bar is here and you can enjoy a cup of pleasure as you read your pleasure.” She smiled
“That has a nice ring to it.” Suddenly the pen twisting in his fingers stopped in mid twirl. Phil’s heart began to race as the idea ran up and down the synapses of his brain. “Can you write Rose? I mean if I were to ask you to write a review of a book you read, do you think you could?”
“I suppose I could sure. Would you want just what the story was about? Or my take on it?” She asked puzzled as to where he was going with his question.
“I would want your take on it of course, something that is just you. I think we have just solved out our little problem, your reading and not having the funds to pay for them. What if there was a way that you could read to your hearts content? You could stay here and read, everyday if you wanted to. All you would have to do is write a review about the book you have read. We would post it in the store and it would be called Enjoy a cup of pleasure as you read your pleasure you came up with the name yourself. What do you think?”
“Wow, I am amazed to say the least. When you asked me to your office I thought that the jig was up as you might say. I thought you were going to tell me to go and to never come back unless I was paying, and now you are offering me a job of sorts. Wonders never cease.” Her eyes were big, but there was a smile playing upon her lips. “What makes you think that anyone would want to know what I have to say about a book?”
“I have been sitting here with you not even a half an hour and you have charmed me in many ways. I love getting to know you and I know you value a good story. You were willing to go great lengths just to read in this store. I know anyone who loves to read as much as you will have the reading audience captive, as I have been.”
Rose was quiet for a moment as she thought it over, then she stuck out her hand towards Phil, “You sir, have a deal.”
© 2009 Tigra