note: the original fiction series continues!

I saw a very attractive Asian girl today at my bookstore – the East Village one – and I regret not having approached her while she flipped through the latest issue of ID Magazine. She wore faded and slightly torn jeans with a white t-shirt and a white Adidas warm-up jacket with red stripes. She also wore a gray-colored beret over her ponytail, which I thought was very cute. She must’ve been in her early twenties, either a college student or just recently graduated.

As a shrewd businessman, I usually avoid checking out my customers, but occasionally, I’ll give in to my vanity and open dialogue with a stranger by mentioning that I am the owner of the store. The targets of this egotistical exercise are usually pretty young women who tend to browse through art, design, or literary publications. I once approached a girl who was reading Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies and asked if she had tried Brideshead Revisited. We ended up dating for a few weeks, and we might’ve had something serious if I hadn’t attended a conference for independent bookstore owners in San Francisco and met a foxy 26-year old who was trying to launch an online shop for rare first edition books. I stayed in San Francisco for five more days and had frequent (and amazing) sex followed by thoughtful conversations about rare collectibles. I haven’t talked to either of them since, and I doubt that anything more could’ve developed from trying.

I read this fiction piece by Jonathan Franzen in the New Yorker called “Breakup Stories,” which is an interesting take on the various ways that couples might part – a mix of infidelities, miscommunication, and angst that contribute to separation and divorces. Trying to get my creative juices flowing, I started writing a series of scenarios about how couples get together called “How They Met.” Nothing too original, but it’s been fun exploring the possibilities. A dog-walker who ends up dating his client, a wealthy Wall Street banker; a photo store clerk falling for a photographer with every new roll she drops off; a married man who spots a beauty half his age in Union Square and posts a Missed Connections entry on Craigslist only to have it answered, leading to a full-blown extra-marital affair and eventually, a second marriage; a hip bookstore owner – wink – who hosts a touring bestseller author and wins her heart over a cup of coffee after the Q&A session. Well, it was really just for a night, but in this piece, they get married. And so on. I felt like I couldn’t stop, but I got tired and decided to have a beer.

Which I’ve just about finished. Sam Adams goes down smooth in the summer. Time for forties noir on Turner Movies Classics!