Page 82 of The Tattered Gloves
“Well, if you have a window full of people talking and engaging in some sort of activity, others passing by will notice and file it away as a possible place for their next social gathering.”
“That’s… actually kind of smart,” I said before adding, “But how will we arrange it? This area is stuffed full of shelves.”
“Sam’s already done it for you.”
I turned around, giving him a perplexed look.
“It’s something I’ve been doing for a while now — tracking sales to see what needs to go and what should stay.”
“So, you want to downsize the inventory?”
He shook his head. “No, more like streamline it — put books that will actually sell on the shelves. Like take this one,” he said, holding up a fictional novel that, based on the cover, had been written several decades before either of us had been born. “This book has been sitting on the shelf for well over three years. Why continue to stock it when we could replace it with something more appealing?”
“But what if someone comes in, wanting that book, down the road?” I argued, hating the idea of getting rid of any book.
“Well, this specific copy will go into storage, so we can always pull it out. But, if there is a book a customer wants that we don’t have, we order it. That’s always been a policy, just not one we’ve publicized.”
“Until now,” I said, catching on.
“Exactly.”
“So, what do we keep?” I asked, feeling excited and nervous all at the same time.
He motioned me back to the counter where his notebook rested.
We spent the rest of the afternoon going over the inventory, figuring out what to keep and what to put away. Addy left us to it, knowing we were fully capable of handling the details ourselves, but after a while, I was starting to doubt her confidence in us. The storage room wasn’t big enough to hold everything, so after several cuts, I came up with the brilliant plan to hold a sale.
“Call it an after-Christmas sale,” I said.
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? It is already after Christmas.”
“Okay, what about a New Year’s sale? It will give us a few days to set up. We can put all the books on sale in front here,” I said, pointing to the space by the counter usually reserved for new releases. “Slash the price by fifty percent or more, anything to get them out of here. It’s better than storing them in the back.”
He stared at me for a moment as I leaned against the counter across from him. I could almost see the wheels in his head moving around.
Then, he made his decision. “All right. Let’s do it.”
“Great. When do we start?” I asked.
Looking at his watch, he got up from the stool he’d been seated on for the last few hours and walked over to the front entrance, flipping the lock, and at the same time, the lights dimmed.
His hard boots hit the wood floor as he returned. “Well, since we’ve been technically closed for about thirty minutes, how about now?”
If it had just been the sound of the door locking, I would have been fine. If the sound of his boots hadn’t been so loud or the room so dark, I could have kept the rational side of me in charge.
But it was too much.
Too much all at once.
And I immediately began to sink into the darkness.
My mind went reeling backward.
“Willow?” His timid voice called out.
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “Please don’t come near me right now.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go sit on the floor, way over here.”
