8. Treasure Chests

Ann’s week began with a visit to the supermarket, where she bought an electric kettle and a large jar of instant coffee. Facing Ben the barista for her caffeine fix wasn’t something she relished quite so much now.

She priced the books Quint had brought her, noted the amounts on the list he had left, totaled them up, and put the money into an envelope. It would have been simpler to make a direct deposit into his bank account, but Quint didn’t work that way, and keeping him happy and productive paid dividends.

There were other bookscouts who came in with boxes of treasures, and people off the street would bring in boxes of what they hoped were treasures, but nobody had the touch for books that Quint had.

She was checking a box of so-called treasures now, in between sips of instant coffee. It wasn’t so bad, really, and she was saving four dollars with every mug. One or two reasonably good books in the box, but most of it was dross. People might pay thirty-five dollars for a hardcover copy of Dan Brown’s next thriller, but it halved in value the instant they bought it, and twenty years later it was worth nothing.

“It’s a first edition!” they would say, pointing this out, and yes, this was so, but when a first edition sold in the hundreds of thousands, it was never going to be rare and valuable. The firsts of authors who later became famous, whose first books had print runs in the hundreds, these were the ones to look out for and treasure.

As for paperback thrillers, known in the trade as airport books, the value was even less. Sure, she might have Tom Clancy or Ian Rankin lined up on her shelves, but they sold very poorly. In her back room she had a pile of these things taller than she was, from people clearing their own shelves of unwanted books. She’d pick out the few she really wanted, and then put the rest aside, to supply the box of fifty-cent specials outside her door.

Or she would register them on BookCrossing.com. In fact, she had a dozen or so that should really go on her OBCZ shelf, but she couldn’t bring herself to enter Heartbake just yet. Maybe when she finished her jar of instant coffee. It was a very big jar.

She’d tried contacting Tom. Looked for him on chat, hoping for a heart to heart that might lead into a satisfying chatsex session, but his name was greyed out.

So was Ann. She poured her heart and yearnings into a long, torrid email, poised her finger over the “Send” button for an instant and then deleted the whole thing.

If Tom had wanted to get together with her, he’d have found a way. The same could be said for herself, she supposed. Did she love Tom enough to move to New Zealand and spend her life bouncing around the ocean on tiny yachts?

Not likely, Ann considered. She liked her little bookshop, she liked Campbell with its tree-lined streets and comfortable middle-class residents, and she loved Canberra.

Nowhere else in the world was quite like Canberra. A planned city, laid out in broad avenues and calm circles, plentiful stretches of parkland with grand public buildings rising from gardens. Newcomers found it confusing, with roundabouts of all sizes, suburbs that all looked exactly the same, and amenities such as petrol stations, hotels and schools carefully hidden away out of the general gaze.

Heavy retail and light industry were tucked into districts away from residential suburbs. Fyshwick was located on the other side of the railway, and you’d find car yards, hardware shops, and brothels located in seedy harmony.

Campbell itself was a model suburb. Close to Civic, bounded by Lake Burley Griffin on one side and the bushland of Mount Ainslie on the other. The broad ceremonial axis of Anzac Parade made a clear division between Campbell and the adjoining heritage suburb of Reid.

Now, with the leaves gone from the trees, it might seem a little bleak, but it also meant that the prospects were longer. If she cared to walk along Monash Drive to the lookout at Legacy Park, she could see the suburb revealed to her gaze, looping streets and houses, tiny parks, schools and shops and flats in the centre. Beyond the lower streets the Parliamentary Triangle began, based on Constitution Avenue, the two bridges carrying Kings Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue across the lake converging on Parliament House on the summit of Capital Hill, the masts of the flagpole lifting the eye to the flag fluttering in the cold wind.

When she had first moved here, Ann had delighted in walking along the grand avenues, along the lake front, up to the War Memorial, where kangaroos grazed on the lawns.

But, like her life, she had grown too comfortable. Maybe it was time to shed a few kilos. Tight t-shirts were all very well, but to be honest, when the top came off and Ann regarded herself in a mirror, there was a lot more of her than there used to be. Bookselling wasn’t the most active occupation in the world.

Maybe it was time to take up walking after work, or before it. A couple of kilometres a day, a major cutback on the chocolates and cake. That’d do it. The cold air of morning and evening would help strip away the fat, her body burning up calories to heat the core.

On second thoughts, a gym might be better. A gym where she might see and meet men, sweat glistening their trim torsos and pumping legs.

Ann snorted to herself at the direction her thoughts were taking. She’d have to do something or surrender entirely to the triple comforts of chick-lit, Cadburys chocolate and her couch, curled up in company with her cat.

The German book of Olympic stills was close to hand on the rare and collectible shelf beside her, where she could keep a close eye on the more valuable books in the shop. She drew it out carefully, leafing through it for the images of the female athletes, comparing her own body with those on display. The athletes of the 1930s had been built along different lines. Not the super-lean bodies of today, every gram of fat stripped away. No, these were more rounded, more comfortable, more womanly shapes.

She’d begin tomorrow.

She traced the feminine contours on the images, imagining herself looking so good, looking fit and sexy, feeling someone’s fingers stroking her flanks, looking at her, loving her.

She looked up to see a man looking at her.

 

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay