Anodyne
Friday, February 09, 2007
 

To a book sale in a local suburb, after dark. Across a bridge, the city spilled below. Grouse Mountain's lights burning white above the clouds. Flecks of rain on the Legacy's windshield. Deserted suburban streets, a few pedestrians out in the warm night with umbrellas and dogs. Blinky green LEDs everywhere: on a dog's collar; on a toddler's rain hat; on a baby buggy; on a jogger's shoes. I don't know if dressing up like a 70s coin-op character is such a great idea. The part of me that learned to drive by watching Atari's LeMans on the Mayne Island ferry c. 1976 still thinks that clipping you with my bumper should award me bonus points and an extra life.

Big echoey gymnasium. Trays of baking: homemade pies wrapped in freezer bags whose ends are closed with bread ties. Blueberry muffins, coffee cakes, and wee butter tartlets, six to a package. Mass market paperbacks, trade paperbacks and hardcovers. My competitors running round, frantic as usual, missing all the good stuff in favor of squabbling over the printing history of some manky old P.C. Wren UK HC/DJ. 'Bye guys!

Driving home, banana boxes full of books creaking companionably in time with the wheel with the burned-out bearings. Through East Vancouver, familiar neighborhoods slipping by in the dark. The Skytrain station, lit up from within like a Nascanti spaceship. Seb's blue neon. And the Lee Building, and a parking space right in front of the shop.

Dragging boxes into the store, rain more insistent now, Grouse's lights veiled by the spray.

Something like happiness.
- posted by cjb @ 10:13 PM


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