Delicate yellow leaves dance past my nose. The particular scents of aged paper intoxicate me as I gently close the book and replace it on the sagging shelf, into the vacant niche. My hand traces worn cloth bindings and cracked gilt lettering. A deep brown volume pulls my fingers over to free it.
The cover is frayed, wisps of thread hanging from the edges, framing slanted cursive in a thin mane. As I lift it open, a relieved crackling accompanies the stretching of a spine not exercised for decades. Large darkened spots decorate many of the margins, illustrations of a useful life many years earlier. I run my index finger down a page, feeling the grain of the fibers, barely depressed when they once met rows of meticulously aligned symbols. The typeset is ornate, allowing the eyes to hop from word to word on curly-cues of black lace.
“Can I help you?” asks a bundle of hair attached to horn-rimmed glasses.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“We have other copies of that in better condition if you’d like.” A bushy eyebrow peeks over the top of the frames. “This one is perfect, thank you.” I put the volume under an arm and smile back at the man-glass hybrid. My feet carry me farther down the row. Dust catches beams of fluorescence as I look up to see a shelf of giants, great atlases, flanked by dwarfish almanacs and slim novellas. Faded titles hold testament to afternoons spent on sunny coffee tables, warmth burnt into the bindings.
The beauty of this bookstore is that that you buy two stories at once. There is whatever the title says, but also the narrative of the book’s life. Stamps stand to show library emblems, dog-eared pages mark passages where spindly pencil underlines someone’s favorite quotation.
Look past the words on the front, into the heart, found between the crinkled folios and scotch-tape repairs, sharing stories as alive as any written words, bound in bookstore bliss.