possessions. Now the whole lot felt dead. Lifeless. Why had I kept all this stuff?
A menu for the Thai restaurant was stuck to the fridge door, with one from the pizzeria on the freezer. There were circles round the Calzone Special and Pompeii. My favorites. The two I could never choose between, before I always ended up ordering the Calzone. The same calendar I always bought, the one I felt comfortable with, was hanging from the inside of the open kitchen cupboard, completely blank. I felt like bursting into tears.
The next day it was my turn to be back in the shop. It was fairly quiet. The tape in the kitchen had come loose and the door of the cupboard under the sink was hanging half-open as usual. I fiddled with it for a while until I got it to stick again, even though I knew it wouldn’t last long. I made some coffee in the scorched jug as the peculiar events of the past few days buzzed round my head. It was difficult to make any sense of things. The astronomical amount of money, the strange way they talked at W.R.D., I wasn’t used to that sort of thing. I couldn’t help thinking that I really didn’t want anything to change at all. Then I found myself thinking about the Internet and changed my mind. Obviously there were some changes that were good and some bad. But I realized it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. Dynamite, for instance: Was that good or bad? I stood by the shelf of documentaries and reflected upon good and bad changes through the ages. As I thought about which ones had to be counted as the biggest changes over the years, I realized that I had a tendency to rank more recent changes above older ones. For instance, industrialization above the invention of the wheel, or the telegraph above the shift to fixed human settlements. I ranked my personal three favorite changes in the Western world during the past three centuries, and suddenly I was standing there with the BBC’s documentary about the suffragettes’ struggle for women’s votes in my hand. Then I came across a film called
Iron Jawed Angels
. It looked good. I must remember to watch it. And Tom Baker would soon be releasing a new film called
The Voice
, which had to be about Frank Sinatra, I thought. Unless it was about Ella Fitzgerald? Perhaps it was about that talent show? Then I came up with a new way of puffing out my cheeks and amused myself with that for a while.
After that I found the remains of an old sticker that someone had stuck to the side of the counter, now just fragments that it was quite fun to pick off with my thumb and forefinger. Twenty minutes or so later, I’d almost managed to get rid of it all.
I called and ordered Thai takeout, and just after lunch a red-haired girl came in with a whole bundle of films she was returning late. She was in a bad mood, and thought we should have sent a reminder. I said we usually did just that, but she shook her head and said she hadn’t received one.
“Well, that sort of thing happens sometimes,” I said. “There might be something wrong with the computer…”
We agreed to drop the fine for late return, seeing as there had obviously been a problem with the reminder, and she looked a bit happier when she left.
I wondered if she’d received a huge bill from W.R.D. as well. I reasoned that we should probably try to keep each other’s mood up as best we could. Set a good example to each other. Eventually things would slip back into some sort of everyday routine again. Somehow it felt slightly reassuring to know that we were all in the same boat. She was pretty when she smiled, I thought. Freckles can be very attractive.
A bit later that afternoon I stuck an old video into the little television with a built-in VHS player behind the counter, and had time to watch the first half of
Blade Runner
before finishing for the day. As I shut and locked the shop I remembered that I had been planning to change the background on my phone again, but hadn’t got round to it. Oh well, I
A menu for the Thai restaurant was stuck to the fridge door, with one from the pizzeria on the freezer. There were circles round the Calzone Special and Pompeii. My favorites. The two I could never choose between, before I always ended up ordering the Calzone. The same calendar I always bought, the one I felt comfortable with, was hanging from the inside of the open kitchen cupboard, completely blank. I felt like bursting into tears.
The next day it was my turn to be back in the shop. It was fairly quiet. The tape in the kitchen had come loose and the door of the cupboard under the sink was hanging half-open as usual. I fiddled with it for a while until I got it to stick again, even though I knew it wouldn’t last long. I made some coffee in the scorched jug as the peculiar events of the past few days buzzed round my head. It was difficult to make any sense of things. The astronomical amount of money, the strange way they talked at W.R.D., I wasn’t used to that sort of thing. I couldn’t help thinking that I really didn’t want anything to change at all. Then I found myself thinking about the Internet and changed my mind. Obviously there were some changes that were good and some bad. But I realized it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. Dynamite, for instance: Was that good or bad? I stood by the shelf of documentaries and reflected upon good and bad changes through the ages. As I thought about which ones had to be counted as the biggest changes over the years, I realized that I had a tendency to rank more recent changes above older ones. For instance, industrialization above the invention of the wheel, or the telegraph above the shift to fixed human settlements. I ranked my personal three favorite changes in the Western world during the past three centuries, and suddenly I was standing there with the BBC’s documentary about the suffragettes’ struggle for women’s votes in my hand. Then I came across a film called
Iron Jawed Angels
. It looked good. I must remember to watch it. And Tom Baker would soon be releasing a new film called
The Voice
, which had to be about Frank Sinatra, I thought. Unless it was about Ella Fitzgerald? Perhaps it was about that talent show? Then I came up with a new way of puffing out my cheeks and amused myself with that for a while.
After that I found the remains of an old sticker that someone had stuck to the side of the counter, now just fragments that it was quite fun to pick off with my thumb and forefinger. Twenty minutes or so later, I’d almost managed to get rid of it all.
I called and ordered Thai takeout, and just after lunch a red-haired girl came in with a whole bundle of films she was returning late. She was in a bad mood, and thought we should have sent a reminder. I said we usually did just that, but she shook her head and said she hadn’t received one.
“Well, that sort of thing happens sometimes,” I said. “There might be something wrong with the computer…”
We agreed to drop the fine for late return, seeing as there had obviously been a problem with the reminder, and she looked a bit happier when she left.
I wondered if she’d received a huge bill from W.R.D. as well. I reasoned that we should probably try to keep each other’s mood up as best we could. Set a good example to each other. Eventually things would slip back into some sort of everyday routine again. Somehow it felt slightly reassuring to know that we were all in the same boat. She was pretty when she smiled, I thought. Freckles can be very attractive.
A bit later that afternoon I stuck an old video into the little television with a built-in VHS player behind the counter, and had time to watch the first half of
Blade Runner
before finishing for the day. As I shut and locked the shop I remembered that I had been planning to change the background on my phone again, but hadn’t got round to it. Oh well, I
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