“I avoid bookstores. I’ve got books,” said the elderly gentleman of pleasant disposition but dubious cognitive capacity, on leaving my table’s display at the café. That began my week. It ended with the place so crowded I was sharing space with three others when a mother and daughter joined us. This gave me two options: (a) scrunch my stuff closer to me; (2) sell them all my books. I was offering them this choice when I knocked over my water glass, triggering many apologies and much swabbing with napkins.
In between, things went better.
At the café, I sold an “I Will Keep You Alive” to a woman who had previously bought one and wanted another as a gift for a friend with heart problems. Following a six-person reading at the café in which I participated, Adele sold one to a writer/real estate agent/lawyer/painter of long acquaintance, and I sold one to a poet we had just met. And another morning I sold a fourth to a woman who had come down from Davis on Amtrak with her family to eat at Chez Panisse, plus a “Cheesesteak” she wanted for a friend and a “Schiz” for her punky 23-year-old daughter.
Sold another IWKYA to a family practitioner (ret’d) at the health club and checks for it arrived in the mail from a director/screen writer/teacher friend in L.A., an 83-year-old Mended Hearts e-mail buddy in South Carolina, and a similarly aged MH member in Oakland. (Five copies for her.)
So lots of gratification.
And a few laughs.