Book Worms

Used bookstores were a rare sight these days. Hell, they were almost extinct. The fact that Randall even found this one was a matter of dumb luck. His ability to get lost while trying to follow his phone's GPS might be considered skillful by some. But today, he had turned down an alley instead of a street, a hazard of an over-eager GPS voice telling him to turn now, when really it meant turn in a second. Randall, ever the obedient instruction follower, turned when told. Thus, landing him in the alley.

As he continued to walk down the alley, following the GPS that was now trying a new route to bring him to the bank, he found Book Worms, an almost literal hole in the wall that didn't even have a storefront facing the main road on the other side of the building. Randall was so tickled to have found a used bookstore – cash only, no less – that he silenced the GPS, slipped his phone in his pocket, and got lost in the overcrowded shelves of the store.

The old woman behind the counter explained that they got the occasional walk-in, mostly through word of mouth, but they actually did most business online, shipping across the country for people perusing used books online. Gertrude, a now-retired high school English teacher, spent most of her days at the store, taking pride in the authentic smell of old pages, and the way the shelves seemed to cave in, not dangerously, but almost friendly, as you walked between them.

Randall had enjoyed chatting with her, and taken a card from the front counter with their website, promising to leave a good review. He had been having an otherwise shitty day, his trip to the bank a glum one, but this detour was a welcome relief. It had been years since he'd been in a used bookstore, most of them shut down due to big box store competition.

As he made his way towards the back of the store, Randall thumbed some of the spines of the books, his heart set on just enjoying the atmosphere, with no real plans to buy. Despite the mere dollar or two that most books were priced at, he had no wiggle room for extravagant purchases such as a used book. This stop on his trip to the bank felt more like a delay on the way to the guillotine, this charming used bookstore a serene interruption.

There were sections in the store, but they seemed more like suggestions than rigid boundaries. Randall found a worn comic anthology in the American History section, and a celebrity's autobiography in Cooking. He glanced around for an LGBTQ section, but didn't see one. He wouldn't hold it against Gertrude, he just looked out of curiosity. Old copies of queer books were practically gold, at least in Randall's humble queer opinion.

On the very back shelf, there were some used notebooks, ranging from fifty cents to a dollar each. Randall was amused to find bent spiral notebooks, half filled legal pads, and even some completely filled journals. He wondered how they ended up here, and if Gertrude had ever sold one. While the concept of buying someone's old journal sounded fun, it had the nagging feeling of an idea that sounds good in the store but fizzles out by the time you get home, only to realize you've added one more item of junk to your already large collection.

He realized the notebook section took up the entire back wall of the store, save for the doorway that led to a room marked “Employees Only”, the use of the plural making him smile since it appeared Gertrude was the sole employee of Book Worms. He strolled across the section, picking up a notebook here and there to admire the penmanship of someone's chemistry notes, or to sympathize with the pining of a young girl over her crush, surrounded by doodled hearts.

As he placed a diary back on the shelf, a simple, little black notebook, caught his eye. It stood out between two well worn spiral notebooks, seemingly out of place. Randall pulled it off the shelf and was surprised to find it felt like new. There was no plastic over it, but there may as well have been. He flipped through the creamy white, unlined pages and there wasn't a dot of ink on them. He turned it over and found the little sticker with the price on the back – one dollar.

A piece of paper fluttered to the floor from inside the back cover of the notebook as he turned it over. He stooped down to pick it up and upon examination realized it was a check. Randall's eyes instinctively darted to the front of the store, but Gertrude was busy, humming to herself as she sorted some books at the counter. Randall investigated the check, still holding the little black notebook in his other hand. His eyes widened. It had been a long time since he'd written or even seen a paper check, let alone for the dollar amount in the place following the dollar sign.

Twenty thousand dollars. He kept counting the zeroes. One, two, three, four zeroes. Twenty thousand dollars written in numbers and also written out on the line under “Pay to the order of”. Even more absurd than the dollar amount was the blank space where a name should have been, and where a date should have been. There was a signature where the check needed to be signed for but it was illegible, and in the “Memo” section someone had neatly written “Hope this helps!”. Randall looked for the hidden camera, which Gertrude obviously had set up for this hilarious prank. He wondered if he was on that candid camera show where they set people up in moral quandaries to see how they would react.

He looked at the back of the check, to see if someone had endorsed it already, but it was unsigned. Randall's mind raced, looking for logical explanations. It had to be a joke. Some jackass who would take the 25 dollar bounce back fee when their check didn't clear, just for the fun of knowing someone tried to deposit their bogus check. He placed the check back between the last page and the back cover and closed the notebook. He opened the cover up again, glancing at the check, then closed it.

“Anything jumping out at ya?” Gertrude startled the hell out of him with her cheery question. He almost dropped the notebook, which made her smile.

“Sorry, didn't mean to surprise you. That's a nice notebook, yeah? Doesn't look like it's even been used.” There was a twinkle in her eye as she spoke. Had she leafed through the notebook when she first acquired it? Had the check already been in it or did someone slip it in there after it had been put on the shelf? Gertrude couldn't have written it, could she? A retired high school English teacher running a used bookstore was an unlikely candidate to have twenty grand to burn, in Randall's estimation.

“Well, happy to let you keep browsing, but I have to step out soon, so if you'd like to purchase it I can ring you up now.” The elderly woman prattled on, undeterred by Randall's silence.

“Sure, that'd be great,” He finally managed, and followed Gertrude up to the register. She punched in some numbers into the ancient register at the counter, before stating his purchase was a dollar even. Randall fished the only dollar bill from his wallet and gave it to her.

“Thank you, and have a great day,” Gertrude smiled and waved as Randall left the store, black notebook tucked under his arm. He peeked inside it again to make sure the check was still there. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and cursed, realizing he had spent way more time in Book Worms than he had planned. The bank would close in fifteen minutes.

He pulled up the GPS again and followed it like a man in the desert follows directions to an oasis. Randall's body buzzed with new energy. What had been a death march to financial hardship, strapping himself with loans to afford his gender-affirming top surgery had turned into a hail Mary pass. Was this check for real? Was he about to cover his surgery and recovery time off work with the dumb luck of finding a blank check in a notebook?

With five minutes to spare, Randall burst through the doors of the bank, apologetically asking the irritated teller for a deposit slip. At the counter, Randall pulled the check from his new notebook, wrote the date and his name, and passed it to the teller.