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It was almost Christmas, and the heat wasn’t working in A. Z. Fell’s bookshop.
Most people would have considered this reason enough to close up shop and go home. It wasn’t an unseasonably warm day, after all, far from it, and few customers would be willing to tolerate the frigid temperatures for long enough to pick out a book from the many to be found within the store. It wasn’t likely to be fixed any time soon, either; one call to a repairman had led to a call to another, more specialized repairman, who apparently wouldn’t be able to come out until some time Monday morning, and it was currently the middle of the day on Saturday.
A. Z. Fell, however, was staying in the shop, even leaving it open to customers, cold or no cold.
Why?
Well, the cold wasn’t affecting the books any, at least, and all the tinsel and ribbons that he’d set up earlier in the month left the shop looking very cheery indeed, and his outfit was a bit on the warm side, and it didn’t feel that cold to him, really, and if he was shivering a bit, well, his father always did say that he could stand to lose a few pounds, and while shivering wasn’t the best exercise out there, it would do in a pinch...
It definitely wasn’t just because he didn’t want to go sit around at home with his parents, definitely wasn’t because he knew his mother would call somebody he’d never heard of and get a repairman into the shop that day if not that hour, definitely wasn’t because his father would spend the whole time condescendingly telling him about how he couldn’t keep running home to them every time he had an issue and how someday he’d have to settle things like that by himself like a big boy, especially if he ever wanted to be taken seriously as a shopkeeper and businessman...
...it was, admittedly, at least partially because it was mid-December, which meant that both the holidays and the end of the fiscal year were fast approaching, which meant that sooner rather than later he was in for a series of uncomfortable talks with his parents (his father, really; his mother couldn’t care less, it seemed, which might well be a problem of its own kind) about how his bookshop wasn’t making enough money to be worth keeping open, even though they all knew that the money involved was far from the main reason he looked after the old place.
It also meant that his father was likely to threaten to close the place up, only to eventually relent, but make a number of conditions required for the bookshop’s continued operation.
A. Z. Fell knew from experience that his father would never bother to check that half those conditions were fulfilled in the first place, and that he’d have forgotten about the other half by Valentine’s Day if not sooner, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that his father was messing with his bookshop, and he didn’t want to deal with that, regardless of whose name was technically on the store’s deed...
...and the best way to avoid dealing with that was actually getting enough sales in to make his father shut up for once.
All of which meant that, while A. Z. Fell spent most of the year wishing that customers would go away so he could enjoy the bookshop in peace, this time of year, A. Z. Fell was willing to stay shivering in the cold in the hopes that one more customer might walk into the store and magically turn a year’s worth of rotten numbers around in one fell swoop.
The lights were all working just fine, at least. The store looked open, because it was open, heat or no heat. Hopefully some customers would realize as much sooner or later and make his time spent there worthwhile.
After a few minutes of standing near the doorway, hoping that his presence there would miraculously draw customers inside somehow, A. Z. Fell decided to make the most of the situation and do a bit of light dusting while he waited. It was a chore he tried to avoid doing whenever possible, but if any last-minute customers did make their way inside the shop, he had better have it looking presentable for them, after all.
(And if his hands were shaking slightly from the cold, perhaps accompanied by a touch of nervousness, well, that would just make the dusting easier, wouldn’t it?)
What made the shop look presentable didn’t do much to make him look presentable, though. It seemed like the dust was drawn towards A. Z. Fell’s suit, getting all over his outfit in the blink of an eye; he did hope that the dust would come off of the suit as easily as it had come off the bookshelves, wouldn’t leave any unpleasant stains that would draw eyebrows or even lead to nasty remarks back at home.
When he had started, A. Z. Fell had thought that the dusting would take some time--there were rather a lot of bookshelves to tidy in the place, after all--but once he had finished, it seemed as if no time at all had passed, and the day was no closer to being over...
...and, of course, no customers had entered his bookshop in the meantime.
Admittedly, customers were few and far between for him, and usually he preferred it that way, but... but today was different. Today he actually wanted them. Shouldn’t the universe know that he wanted customers and just... draw them in somehow?
(If so, the universe clearly wasn’t working as it should, but that would be far from the first time A. Z. Fell had thought as much.)
After dusting he went with sweeping for the next task that would occupy his time, and his hands were definitely shaking now, too much to pretend he didn’t notice anymore, shaking enough that he nearly dropped the broom on his feet more than once. Not that his feet were doing terribly well anyway, mind you. All sorts of dirt and debris were covering his shoes now, making them look absolutely horrendous.
For a moment, A. Z. Fell considered hiring somebody to help take care of such unpleasant tasks on a regular basis, but then remembered that that would mean having somebody else hanging around in his bookshop day in and day out, and he certainly couldn’t have that. He would just have to keep doing things himself if that was the only alternative.
At one point, A. Z. Fell saw his hands letting go of the broom yet again and just let it fall onto his feet, mostly because he wondered if that would help clean his shoes up a bit somehow. It did a little bit, but it also left a small but definite mark on them, a crease that might or might not still be there by the time he got home. The broom hitting his feet hadn’t hurt as much as he’d expected, though; in fact, he had barely felt it at all, though he wasn’t entirely sure whether that was a good thing or not, given the circumstances.
The sweeping took longer than the dusting did, but still not long enough. The day was still dragging by, and there was still not a soul in the shop besides himself.
After the sweeping was done, A. Z. Fell stood in place for a moment, his whole body shivering from the cold now, before going to the shop’s front door and double-checking that the sign said it was open. That would be embarrassing, spending all this time waiting for customers when passersby thought the place was closed for business-
-except the sign was flipped to open for all the customers to see.
Just bad luck, then, he supposed.
He let out a long sigh and started to walk away, sure that he could think of some little task that needed doing in the place, before heading right back to the front door, his nearly-numb fingers flipping the sign from open to closed as he headed outside.
Perhaps his father was right when he said that too much time cooped up in that bookstore by himself wasn’t good for him. There were plenty of places nearby he could go to warm up a bit and relax before trying to attract customers once more...
...come to think of it, he’d never tried the coffee at that convenience store down the road, and coffee sounded like just the thing for him right about now. A little heat, a little energy... yes, that would do the trick quite nicely.
And perhaps he’d bump into that one clerk there--Anthony J. Crowley was the name, if he remembered correctly. With the J being “just a J,” supposedly, though he didn’t know whether that meant it was literally just the letter J, like with Harry S Truman, or whether it stood for the word J, or if Anthony J. Crowley just didn’t feel like giving out his full middle name. A. Z. Fell could sympathize with that last bit well enough--when people used his full name instead of his initials, it never seemed to fit quite right, for some reason he couldn’t quite put a finger on.
He definitely wasn’t going there just because of that Anthony J. Crowley, no, of course not, that would be preposterous!
But a friendly face certainly did sweeten the deal, so to speak.
Though he was still shivering from head to toe, a few snowflakes landing on his suit and sinking into the fabric below, a smile appeared on A. Z. Fell’s face as he headed towards the convenience store, content with the destination and plans he had in mind.