WordFeeder

Short Fiction for Guests of the WordFeeder
Saturday, January 2, 2010

Inspired by my favorite corner bookstore.

“Hey, babe,” Toby Cooper looked up to see his wife, Amanda, and their three year old son, Nathan, on their way in. “Close the door, will you?”

Toby was the third generation owner of “My Family’s Bookstore” that had been there on the corner for what seemed like forever. It was and had always been an ethnic neighborhood, a place where people from somewhere else came on their way to making something more of themselves. Amidst all this change, My Family’s Bookstore was one of the few constants.

Whatever their origins or reasons, just having made it this far was proof of their motivation, of character and commitment which, by and large, would serve them well. Toby’s great-grandfather was no exception. He began waiting tables and eventually managed a prominent local restaurant until he retired. It was his son, Toby’s grandfather, the first of his family to go to college in a time when not everyone did, who started the bookstore. When he retired, his son, Toby’s father, took over, expanding the store into their building’s second floor, growing the business for Toby who came to work there full-time after he graduated. And now, with the untimely death of his father a few years ago, the store was Toby’s. He was young, but ready. It was a bookstore he had been born to run.

“Hi, Daddy!” Nathan was so excited, his dark brown curly hair bouncing as he trotted around the big old desk in his father’s office to give Toby a hug. Climbing up on Toby’s lap, he would pay attention, shaking his head up and down, left and right sometimes, touching the papers on his father’s desk as if he understood what was happening. The three of them lived in the loft apartment on the fourth and top story of the building. The bookstore was on the first two floors, and kept its supplies and extra inventory in the basement. The third floor was divided into two apartments that were rented. It was a good, sturdy building, the kind about which people like to say, “They don’t make them like that anymore.”
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Short Fiction for Guests of the WordFeeder
Sunday, December 27, 2009

This is a little story about my father, Thomas Barnard, who encouraged me
to write and who will always be my biggest fan. “You’ll be better soon, Daddy.”

“Hi,” he said to the two female graduate students who had been staying with the patient, doing their best to communicate with him. Women, his years of experience had taught him, were better at making patients – without gender specific disorders – feel comfortable. “Give us 30 minutes, and then wait outside until we’re done.” Saying nothing, the two left the room, the door locking shut behind them. Once closed, a security code was required to exit without assistance from the outside. The windows for this third story apartment looked ordinary enough, but didn’t open and were made of unbreakable glass – as were the lens covers for the surveillance cameras. There were no curtains or blinds. The glass in the windows could be darkened electronically with the turn of a dial.

“How are you today, Mr. Barnard?” Dr. Brian Cummings was the Chairman of the Institute for Psychological Studies where Thomas Barnard had been admitted a few days earlier. Notwithstanding his administrative responsibilities, Cummings continued to handle patients, deferring his more mundane management tasks to others he’d hired. With him that morning was Dr. Elisha Mercer, a junior colleague on the faculty. Together, they were in the studio apartment that was, for patients of the institute, the style of the room to which they were assigned. Thomas was standing, staring out of the bay window that looked out over the woods at the edge of the campus. It didn’t seem as if he’d heard them come in, so Dr. Cummings tried again. “Mr. Bernard?”
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