Time Lapse at the Dusty Bookshelf

Out of the corner of her eye, as she stood sorting through countless books at the counter in the Dusty Bookshelf, she saw a heavyset man with ruddy cheeks and a white mustache sitting in Alice’s chair with a book open in his hands. He sat slumped in the blue chair where the old cat - the one who had finally never woken up - had usually slept.

The man was fully bundled on this unusually cold and blustery late March day. His coat was zipped up to his chin. His wool cap sparkled with beads of melted snow flakes.

It couldn’t have been but a half-minute later when she glanced up and over. He hadn’t moved. Not an inch. Yet his coat zipper was half way down.

Distracted again for almost no time at all by a customer, she looked again to see his coat zipper all the way down, his winter coat thrown wide open to reveal a very worn, dark sweater. And yet to all appearances, he hadn’t moved a whisker.

The phone rang and then when she turned back, the man’s hat was resting on one knee, which was propped, as if without thought, over his other leg, angled where she was sure it had always been angled. His hair was mussed but he seemed not to even blink.

She stared out of the window. The large, fat snowflakes seemed to fall in slow motion. And then time froze. She felt as if she couldn’t lift up her hand to brush away even a bit of hair that had fallen across her face. She wanted to turn her head to see if the man in the chair had moved, but her body refused to obey her mind.

And then in the stillness, but for the ticking of the clock behind her, she heard a page turn. She looked towards the chair. The man’s lips had curled upwards ever so slightly. And she realized that she had begun to breathe again.