Independence & Zombies

I go to the neighborhood indie.  

Somebody weird will pounce on me. Just watch. Just listen.  Will it be that person in the preppy tweeds?  Or the one in the cashmere and pearls?

Sure, they look normal. 

So I was in the middle of a thee-mile run, hovering over Kate Morton's The Distant Hours.  I had slung a small leather bag over my shoulders so I could stop and shop at the strip mall. I walked up to the cash register.  

I was handing over money when Woman # 2 appeared, very tweedy-chic like the cashier (this is the look here).  

The cashier said to # 2, "You've read this, haven't you?"

# 2 explained she didn't like it. "It went on and on and I wanted to say, 'Listen to your mother.'"

Oh dear, I never want to say that to fictional characters.

The book cost me $27.  I would have paid $10 less at B&N or Amazon.  I wasn't sure I wanted to buy the book from the indie anymore.

But then I cheered up.  I'm preppy-looking myself, always have been, but I do avoid tweeds.  I wondered, Why don't they wear jeans like other bookstore people?  Haute prep sends out a message I don't care for.  What are they saying by their clothes?  It kind of screams, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."  And a kind of, "We're rich but oh so incompetent as booksellers."


The cashier did look as though she wanted to kill Woman # 2, though.


I've hung onto the receipt and if I don't like it I'm taking it back.