Off the Rack

by Paperback Rack

were talking about several hundred dollars worth of free books—most of them by authors we would sell quickly.

  In the bottom of one of the boxes was what looked to be a two-inch-thick manual. It had white comb binding with a clear plastic cover. There was a yellow sticky note on the front with the single word—Grimsley—written in what looked to be a shaky hand. Curious, I opened it and found a letter written in the same hand, followed by several hundred pages of computer-generated text with a few embedded photos.

  Dearest Grim (went the letter),

  A couple of years ago, my physician told me that I was in the early stages of dementia, but even before he told me I knew something was wrong. I was forgetting the names of people I had just met and sometimes having to settle for the second or third best word to describe something because the more precise word would be gone from my vocabulary. I thought these things were just effects of growing older, but in my case, it is more than that. In the last year, I have lost almost all my short-term memory and I’m preparing to spend my last days in a nursing home. I have done well in business since we last saw each other, so I will be well taken care of. My son will check on me from time to time, but after a while, I probably will not know him nor will I be aware if he visits me—or doesn’t visit me. No matter. I have lived my life—he has most of his ahead of him.

  My physician suggested that I write an autobiography, and I have been doing just that for the last year, writing down my memories while I still have them. It was an interesting experience. I went through all my old records, check stubs, journals, and letters—anything that would give me a clue as to what I was doing during a certain time. It took me the whole year to write down the things that seemed most important—at least all the things I could remember, ha ha. There have been a lot of people in my life, but most of them have made no impact on me and I have not mentioned them in my biography. For those who seemed more important, I have printed out a copy. This is yours.

  Holly

  By the time I was finished reading this letter, it was time to close up. The small amount of sales that day was depressing, but I went through my routine mechanically, from counting the money to rinsing out the cappuccino machine, all the time thinking of the tawny-haired, red-bearded giant who would soon be on an airplane with his son to the far, far East.

  So it was Grim Hosford that Holly had left the books to, not Lisa. I should have known. Still, they were for the bookstore no matter who the owner was, and they would do their tiny bit to keep us afloat for another few days or weeks.

  I took the biography home.

  In my tiny apartment I made a cup of cocoa, put on my nightclothes, and got into bed. I didn’t feel like eating or doing dishes or washing clothes—all of which I probably needed to do. What I wanted to do was to go through the life of this woman named Holly who knew Grim Hosford sometime before I was born. I guess we get into our own little extended families whether we want to or not, and Grim was part of mine, although I would probably never meet him. My own family was in Chugwater, Wyoming, seemingly as far away from me as Mongolia.

  I flipped through the pages. Although the book had probably been put together at Office Depot or Kinko’s, the pages looked professionally done, with a no-nonsense font and an occasional embedded photo to illustrate a place or a person. I learned later that Holly had been both a typographer and a word processor. I turned back to the beginning and began to learn about a stranger’s life.

  I learned that Holly had been born in Sarasota, on the west coast of Florida. She had been a music prodigy even before she had reached school age. When it was discovered that she had a high I.Q. her parents got her accepted into Mensa—an organization for geniuses (I had to look that up; we didn’t have geniuses in Chugwater). She won a full music scholarship to Florida State University by winning a contest—she played a piano concerto that she had written herself. In the book, she spends twenty-six pages on her first semester—pretty technical stuff about her classes and other musicians she was hanging around with, how much she hated her parents, that kind of thing. She also talked freely about her sex life, sometimes going into disturbing detail. I had to skip much of what she had to say about size and frequency and number of partners, which made my own, single experience seem tame and unimportant. But still, I must admit that I soon became interested in her far more than in anyone that I actually knew. It was in her chapter about the second semester that she mentioned Grim Hosford for the first time, so I read on, even though my eyes were drooping.

  I also signed up for a course in Symbolic Logic—it was a senior-level course so I was the youngest one in the class. Here, finally, was a course that I could use my whole mind in and I went to the first few classes feeling like it was my birthday. Unfortunately, you can’t stay up all night playing music and smoking dope and fucking and still have enough time or brain cells left to perform mathematical reasoning, so I fell behind—way behind. It must have shown, because, after the second or third class the guy sitting next to me asked if I wanted to have a study session. Naturally, I assumed that what he was actually asking was if I wanted to have sex, and as I’ve already mentioned, I had all the sexual outlets I needed. But there was something in his face—an innocence, I think—that made me stop and reflect. He was pretty tall—about six-one—and kind of thin. His hair was over-the-ears long, but not lead-guitar-player long, as if he had just discovered that the Sixties were the Sixties. Long hands and greenish eyes and just a hint of an overbite. I opened my mouth to refuse, but “Sure” came out instead.

  His name was Grimsley Hosford, and as I got to know him, I found him to be a shy, sweet boy. He was in his senior year, majoring in English, and without a clue as to what he was going to do when he graduated. For our first session we met in a coffee shop near campus called The Sweet Shoppe.

  “How can you not know what you want to do with your life?” I asked him.

  He just shrugged. “I really don’t want to teach,” he said. “And I’m not much of a writer. I just like to read.”

  I found out that he was taking the logic course as a lark and that he, too, was having trouble keeping up. We met a couple of times and went over the day’s lessons, but I had trouble concentrating. Throughout our sessions I had so much music running through my head that there was no room for theorems and greater-than signs. When we met for our third session, he looked at me with concern. “Where’s your textbook?” he asked.

  “I’m quitting school,” I told him.

  “What?” The poor boy looked totally shocked.

  “School’s no good for me,” I said. “I need to get on with my life and my music.”

  “Where will you go?” he asked.

  “New York.”

  I cashed in some of my scholarship money, took out my little bit of savings from the bank and headed out on the next plane. I didn’t have much to take—a few records and some clothes. My friend Jim Bohannon had once lived in New York and he had given me directions to The Albert Hotel on 10th Street, where I was lucky enough to get a room on the fifth floor.