I SEE HER AGAIN at a bookstore that in high school was a good spot for putting on someone else's letter sweater and picking up faster Berkeley chicks. But this is a girl one look will tell you she is just here for the books. Glasses little and grannyish but she knows how to hide behind them.
I'm really not that interested when I go up and lean on the shelf, tell her she should read the lesser known stuff, which isn't even in most bookstores as far as I know. I just picture a shy, pretty protest girl getting wowed by The Lime Twig and not even knowing about Second Skin, just the sort of story that might, like a warm sun, make her bloom into a woman. I've broken an introverted rapture and she mutters something half to herself about just having finished this one, doesn't understand why they don't have any others. Suspicious of the familiar stranger, trying to get away and put the book back on the shelf at the same time, curious about the title named, wishing he hadn't happened, and then all of a sudden I produce the volume, emblazoned with the familiar name of the adored author, which in superstition she must have seen as a sign of kinship.