The Reading Room
© 2004 by W.C Stoll
 

For Merton Dickson, Sunday was a special day set aside to wander the Iowan countryside with Sally.  It was a day especially well suited - in Merton's humble opinion - for discovery and exploration, particularly on sunny, cloudless days like this one.  Weekend relaxation was born of the stuff, a Dickson tradition he created four short months ago for the pair. In that time, they hadn't missed a Sunday.

From Sally's rear view mirror, he had suspended the game of LIFE's cardboard spinner.  It was a curious mirror trophy acquired at a flea market early into the Sunday drive tradition.  That was a June outing, his first with the new car. The tattered and frayed item had been carelessly thrown beneath the old lady's table in a dirty cardboard box, probably the consequence of a worn out game box sold earlier in the day.  There it was, sitting in solitude, separated from the game Merton loved as a boy.  LIFE was a teaching game, and he loved to learn, even then.  Priced at a nickel, it proved to be that first Sunday's best bargain.  Its trusty pointer declared their driving direction for the next fifteen afternoons, recommendations with which he to date did not disagree. 

He steadied the cardboard square on the flat of his palm, and flicked the metal arrow purposefully with his index finger, giving it a sustained ride.  The thin pointer quickly slowed and came to rest pointing off his right shoulder, in a generally South Southeasterly direction. 

"Excellent choice," he agreed aloud.  "South on Route 119." 

He released his decision maker with a snap, allowing it to bungee jump and flit about excitedly, seemingly as eager to explore as Merton himself.  He pushed Sally into first gear, and the Mustang pushed cleanly from the curb.

Their first hour was pleasantly uneventful.  It was, Merton reflected, the way life ought to be.  Dairy cows meandered through their pastures, chewing contentedly on their cud, expecting nothing save maybe (just maybe) a second milking sometime later in the day.  Perfect beasts, Merton thought.  Unaware of anything except that immediate moment in time.  They may have only had the brains to stand, and to chew, and to excrete.

The red Mustang crested a hill and circuitously descended into a shallow Iowan valley.  The countryside was lush with Summer's verdant splendor, resisting September's crisper air and the change in colors it would bring.  It was a sweater day, and Merton, dressed in his Northern Reflection 'scenic sites' sweatshirt, was properly prepared. 

He scanned the skies and grinned decisively.  It was in every respect a "Top Down Day".  Moments later, he was cruising with Tom Petty crooning something about his last dance with Mary Jane.  One of the few perfect days in life, he thought, turning up the volume and embellishing his mood with a broad faced grin.  Everyone ought to own a convertible for at least one day in their life, he thought.

Midway down the rise, a small cluster of buildings appeared beyond a grotto of trees.  Some of them were homes apparently, with possibly a small business somewhere in between.  With the trees out of his way, he counted five buildings.  Four straddled the road, two on either side.  And one, the smallest of the out of place group, set back off the road, 100 feet or so he guessed.  Merton was encouraged.  Perhaps one would be a 7-11, a place to gas up and reload with a bottle of pop.  It was perfect timing too.  There was that other tank that needed emptying, from his morning coffee.

Closer still, one turned out to be Gus's Gas with Gusto, Iowa's answer to Southland Corporation's original convenience store idea.

He pulled beside the first pump, filled to the brim with the generic Unleaded 87, and hustled into the ultra-mini convenience store to pay, to not miss a minute of this splendid day.

"You Gus?"

"The one and only," a voice devoid of emotion replied while the face remained fixed on the table before him.

Gus sat on a three legged stool, exorcising an itch from his beard with a practiced index finger.  The Enquirer was spread in front of him, decorated with blackened circles of various sized coffee cups lain to rest upon it as he reread its stories many, many times.  It was opened to an O. J. Simpson expose.  Gus apparently wanted to get his facts straight, once and for all from a competent source.

"Nice little town you got here," Merton remarked.  "Pretty small though."  Where do any customers live? he wanted to ask.

"Nice and quiet, just the way we like it."  Gus spoke slowly, deliberately.  Iowa-like.
 

"$13.36 for the gas," Merton said, "how much for the Juicy Fruit gum?"

"Fifty six," the man said.

"Good, here's fourteen . . . keep the change," Merton said, rapping the counter twice to conclude the brisk transaction.  He walked toward the front door.

"By the way," Merton said, hand reaching for the door knob, "Anything to do around here?  Any Tourist traps?" he asked, snickering.  He snorted, though he didn't mean to.

"Tourist traps," the man repeated mechanically, dead panned. 

Disinterested.  He hadn't looked up from his paper since Merton walked in.
Five seconds passed.

"Got none of them, I guess," he finally replied in a unprovoked, disgusted drawl, as though describing the unwanted bird droppings on his store's window sill. His beard again demanded his finger's diligent attention. 

Merton pulled the door toward him to exit, shaking the bells that earlier announced his coming.  A pain-in-the-ass alert for Gus, Merton supposed. 

Then more words from Gus. 

"'Cept one, I suppose," he said, with less interest than before, an achievement Merton personally thought to be impossible.

Merton released the hand and let the slight door opening seep shut.  One of the bells released a single jingle, confused.

"Wail," Gus said with an annoying sustain, "we got the Reading Room just up yonder."  Scratch; scratch.  "It's set back from the road a piece."  The man snorted back snot as though summarizing the evolution of their brief, unsatisfying relationship from his perspective.  "A little dirt road'll get you there . . . if you want, that is."  He loosely waved a finger in the general direction of the road, then turned the page.

"A reading room," Merton repeated, incredulously. 

Gus looked up.  He looked at Merton as though hoping to make eye contact, but he seemed to look through him more than at him.

"Yes.  A reading room," he repeated with blatant disdain.  Old Gus had tired of the matter by now and wanted to move along with his O.J. story.

"You asked.  I'm telling ya."  It was all so slow, so matter of fact, so "get the hell out of here, kid, ya botherin' me"-ish.

"Well hey, thanks," Merton returned.  He maintained his hopeful, upbeat mood despite Gus's intentions to reroute it.  For a back wood town like this five-horse deal, the man owed him nothing but a tankful that didn't knock.  Nothing was going to spoil this Sunday.  Not a perfect day like today.  Nosirree-bub.

He grabbed the door handle, jostled it to provoke its bells into an extra cheery jingle then walked away with a friendly back-handed wave.  He was absolutely sure it fell squarely on the confection rack, and wasted completely on his odd, new friend.

The reading room, he mused in his mind.  Now what the heck could that be? 

Sundays were about discovery. That sounded to be about as discoverable a thing as a Lewis and Clark descendant could reasonably hope for.

He turned over Sally's engine and high tailed it from Gus's Gusto or whatever the hell he called the place. A slight patch of rubber rendered immortal the place Mustang Sally had been.  A little something by which Gus could forever remember him.  The horse's ass.

The Reading Room proprietor was likely to be the mayor of this little hamlet, at least of the two contenders Merton had now met.

"And you are . . .?"

" . . . Merton Dickson," he affirmed, extending his hand to the owner. "I was talking to old Gus back there, and he said this here was the local tourist trap."  Merton's smile was genuine. The owner warmed to him instantly.
"Well come in. Come in," the man invited.

"Thank you," Merton said, brushing his feet on the bristled welcome map on the Reading Room's porch.

The business was a converted, red brick, cape cod.  Once a home to a rural family, through Iowan evolution it became this man's business.  The kitchen was the kitchen and the visible bedroom was still a room for sleeping.  But the living room had been converted into a stylized reading room, offering no natural light and a leather, hi-back recliner chair dead center in the middle of the room.  There was a peculiar odor in the house, though nothing Merton could immediately diagnose - perhaps the aftermath of a meat or vegetable cooked mistakenly to overdone.

"Is my car alright where I've left it?  I won't be blocking anyone else, will I," he asked.  He was politely fishing to learn whether others were likely to come to the house on this day.

"It is fine just where it 'tis," the man delighted to Merton's surprise.  A tad over-eager to entertain your first customer? Merton thought.

"Come in; come in," he continued, guiding Merton into the reading room with a hospitable sweep of his hand.

They walked into the converted living room, where Merton was invited to sit in the center stage chair.  It was as comfortable a chair as Merton had ever been exposed.  Soft, calf's leather, tufted to a comfortably overstuffed state, with soft resilient arm rests to crown the experience.  It was either dark gray, very dark brown or a light black.  The light was insufficient to verify.  The owner pulled over a folding chair from around the adjacent kitchen wall. 

"You know, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," Merton asked, feigning a small measure of embarrassment for overlooking the protocol.

"No no.  I'm sorry.  It's Henry.  Henry Longstreth."  Henry extended his hand this time, "glad to know you."

Henry positioned his folding chair in front of the bricked up window that once adorned the Eastern wall of the home.  He sat in front of but slightly to Merton's left, for no particular reason, Merton assumed.  The other natural living room window was obscured with a dark fabric curtain, whose color was indiscernible without better lighting.

"So what'll it be," Henry asked anxiously.

"What'll it be?" Merton repeated.  A split second later, "Oh, to 'read' you're asking."

"Coy . . . Mr. Dickson," Henry asked, wagging his finger as though Merton was making a mockery of his patronage to his reading room.  Palms opened and spread to question his question, Henry then asked, "Why else would you be here?"

"Sorry.  I'm 43.  You know how it is . . .?  The mind lapses."  He gestured his hand in a rolling swirl to indicate some measure of confusion.

"At 56, I should have your mental faculties."

"Alright, then.Tell me about how this works."

Henry eyes sprang to life, eyebrows bobbing to give them the full range.  He stood from his chair, inkling he would need access to complete body language to properly describe his product, or service, or whatever it was to turn out to be.

He locked full eye contact with Merton, making certain he had his undivided attention.  That stare. Hypnotic.

"You heard about my little shop. How?" he finally asked. 

"Your neighborhood gas and grocer, Gus."

"Oh Jesus," he effeminately scoffed, "the man's blind as a bat.  Probably never read a book in his life.  His daughter owns that little place.  She lives in the house to the right of it.  Opened it just to keep Daddy busy."

"What does she do?"

"She's what they call an Imagineer . . . for Disney."

"An imagineer," Merton repeated, sensing he was doing that a little too often today, perhaps just discovering something about himself.  Discovery on Sundays, he thought.  "An odd occupation."

"She likes it.  And to tell you the truth, she helped me put this place together."

"That so."

"Couldn't have done it without her," Henry said.  He walked over the Reading Room reader's chair, and absent-mindedly plumped and fluffed the enticing pillow sitting beside the chair, then offered it to Merton.  He was comfortable enough in this delightful chair and politely refused the offer with a wave of his hand. 

"So what DO you do, Mr. Dickson?"

"I'm a writer," Merton said.  "Not for Disney though, damn it," he added after a moment's delay. 

"You write books?" Henry asked skeptically.

"Well, no.  Not books exactly.  I'm a technical writer for an engineering firm.  I write about how things work."

"Things?"

"Things my firm invents."

"Your firm.  You own it," the owner echoed, to clarify the apparent abuse of the term.

"No.  Sorry.  That's just a figure of speech . . . I guess."

"I see," Henry said, suddenly deep in thought.  Several seconds passed. 

"Well then, let me ask you. . .  Do you read much?  Much fiction, that is?"

"I read maybe two or three books a year," Merton lied.  Truth be known, he started maybe two and finished maybe one.  He preyed upon what was popular, whatever the lunchroom buzz happened to be about.

"Well good.  Two or three is enough to season you for the experience I provide here."

"Season me?"  He asked.  There you go again, Merton said of himself, summoning his best recollection of Ronald Reagan's debating persona.

"It's the imagery aspect of reading that I sell here.  It helps if you're already good at that."

"How much?"

"How much is what, m'boy?"

"Your rate.  To read at The Reading Room?"

He was told.

"Twenty bucks an hour," Merton exclaimed, squirming out of the chair that had admittedly been the most comfortable one in which he'd ever rested his forty three year old butt, "I'll go broke here today.  Forget about it."  He was out of the chair by the time he delivered the last sentence, Brooklyn accent rising.

"Tell ya what," the man encouraged, eyes dancing, eyelids up and in the locked position, his impish face guiding the inviting provocation to minimize the threat of denial.

"Experience it, and if you are not 100% satisfied - no ... 100% thrilled with the time invested - it's free.  I can do no better than that."

" . . . without me paying you," Henry convincingly trailed after a moment's thought.

Merton scanned his watch, remembered his Sunday mission, and said "what the hell".  He nodded his consent, reluctantly agreeing.

"Let's do it." 

"Good . . . good," the owner asserted, assuring him his decision was a wise one.  His behavior had become markedly more animated since first meeting him several minutes ago.  Merton was reminded of another such character from the Superman series of the 50s.  Professor Pepperwinkle was his name, if memory served.

"Now what'll it be," the professor asked, "Horror, Science Fiction, or a simple thriller?"