When he walked into the shop I could tell he was foreign. As he moved he looked around at the bookshelves and the bottles in the racks and the signs above the aisles, but he was doing it so fast that it was obvious he wasn’t really reading what he was seeing. It was a quiet afternoon, mid-week is always the same, so I thought I’d go and ask him if he needed help.
He looked at me the instant I moved from behind the desk and stared with widening eyes as I crossed the shop floor towards him.
“Can I help you, sir?”
He flared his nostrils and opened his mouth and I could see his teeth, tiny little teeth, stained brown and curving around his tongue as he made a theatrical gesture to dismiss me, shaking his head in slow arcs and waving his hands back and forth.
“No, no, no.”
I backed away and returned to the cash desk, the freak. Those teeth! He vanished into the back of the shop and I watched him slowly pacing through the Travel Section on the little security camera for a while until I served someone. Let me tell you, people are shameless - that girl bought a photographic Kama Sutra, and a couple of bottles of Beaujolais. Like people don’t care if you know what they’re up to. By the time I’d finished with the Kama Sutra girl something was up with the weird guy at the back of the shop. When I looked at the camera he was kneeling in the aisle of the travel section with his head in his hands, so I locked the front door before going back, because it’s just me and Mike on weekday afternoons and he was upstairs in the office and I didn’t want anyone taking advantage. As I walked back he started moaning, a loud wailing sort of crying and I heard the thump of books being thrown. I buzzed up to Mike and slowly peered around the middle bookcase.
“It’s not here!” he shouted and heaved a row of Rough Guides onto the floor. I heard Mike come down the stairs out the back.
“Clarissa!” Mike shouted as he came out onto the shop floor.
“It’s okay, I’m fine, over here,” I called.
Mike was already in his bouncer mode when he reached us and the guy on the floor started sobbing.
“Sir, I have to ask you to leave.”
“Not here!” said the crazy guy.
“Sir.” Mike put his hand on the guy’s arm.
“No!” shouted the guy and lay down on the floor, crying, with something in his hand.
Mike picked him up by his shoulders and heaved him into a sitting position, and the guy didn’t resist. He just went limp, and Mike had ot pick him up properly, and dragged him towards the door.
“Not there!” said the guy, only whining this time, and I ran ahead and unlocked it. Mike stood the guy up by the door.
“Come back again and we'll have to call the police,” said Mike, but they guy didn’t react, just stood there. “Go on, go,” and Mike pushed him, just a bit, mind, and the guy tottered off down the pavement, crying all the time, real tears and everything.
“Are you okay?” asked Mike.
“I’m fine, really,” I said. “He was only here for like five minutes.”
Mike manned the front desk while I put the travel section back together, and when he went back upstairs to the office I noticed something on the floor near the Bestseller Racks. It was a photo, of white mountains and muddy plains and stuff, the sort of view you always try to catch with a camera but never comes out. I mean, I figure it belonged to the weird guy, but it's not like he's coming back, and it was nice, so I pinned it to the message board in the break room.
