Tales From The Bookstore - The Returned Thought

The universe, in its infinite and occasionally spiteful wisdom, had seen fit to create Tuesday mornings specifically to test the resolve of sentient beings across all known galaxies. Philosophers on Dergeman VII had spent fourteen centuries attempting to determine why this should be so, eventually concluding that Tuesdays simply enjoyed it.

It was on precisely such a morning—the 4,783rd most dispiriting Tuesday since records began in this particular postal district—that the gentleman entered my establishment.

Ted Page, proprietor. That’s me. Behind the counter, engaged in the ancient and noble art of stacking paperbacks, which is rather like playing Tetris except the pieces judge you.

The gentleman in question had positioned a straw hat upon his head in the manner of someone who had recently lost an argument with a scarecrow and decided to claim the moral victory through theft. His face wore an expression suggesting intimate and unwelcome familiarity with citrus fruit.

The shop bell announced his arrival with the weary resignation of a bell that had long since abandoned any hope of heralding good news.

—Morning, mate. What you after?

He leaned upon the counter with the gravity of a man about to impart information of tremendous cosmic significance, then pulled a face that suggested the cosmos had rather let him down.

—Yeah, wanna return this thought, like. Tried it out, didn’t like it one bit.

I blinked at him. The blink, I felt, was eloquent.

—Say what?

—This thought here.

He tapped his temple with one finger, in the manner of someone indicating the location of a particularly troublesome tenant.

—Bought it off you lot. Shite, innit? Want me money back.

I gave the matter a proper think, scratching my chin in a manner I hoped conveyed deep philosophical engagement. It conveyed, I suspect, mostly confusion.

The laws of thermodynamics, which had been loitering near the biography section looking smug, offered no assistance whatsoever. They never do. They simply stand about being immutable and feeling rather pleased with themselves.

—Mate, this is a bookshop. You can’t return a thought. It’s stuck in your noggin, ain’t it? No take-backs on that.

He jutted his chin out in the manner of someone who felt the fundamental nature of reality ought to be more accommodating.

—Got it from here, didn’t I?

—We don’t flog thoughts, pal. Books, yeah. Thoughts? Nah.

Then it struck me—the idea, not a physical object, though in the bookshop trade one must occasionally clarify—like a brick to the cranium, if the brick had been manufactured by a committee and arrived slightly late.

—Hang on. You mean you had this thought while you was in here last time? Browsing the shelves or summat?

—Spot on, that. Exactly it.

I experienced what theologians call an epiphany and what shopkeepers call “a way out of this conversation.”

—Right then. Thought returned, accepted, done and dusted. Cheers, have a good ’un!

I watched him, thoroughly chuffed with myself. Sorted. Quick as you like. The sort of elegant solution that lesser men would write home about, had they anyone at home remotely interested in receiving such correspondence.

But no.

He wasn’t done.

The universe, which had been watching proceedings with the malevolent interest of a cat observing a mouse attempting to file a complaint, leaned in closer.

—Refund? Gimme me ten quid back.

I consulted my mental filing system—specifically the drawer labelled “Muttering Nutters,” Chapter Three, Subsection 7(b): “Customers Who Have Fundamentally Misunderstood the Nature of Commerce, Cognition, or Both.” The drawer was, I noted, getting rather full.

Deep breath.

—Thought was free, weren’t it? Gift with purchase, like. Remember?

He squinted at me with the expression of a man attempting to retrieve information from a brain that had been filing things according to its own unique and deeply unhelpful system.

—Did I? Can’t recall.

—Yeah! ’Course we did! Freebie, mate. No charge.

—Well, it were crap anyway. Turned me stomach.

Nutters everywhere, thoughts bouncing around their skulls like dodgy ping-pong balls in a lottery machine that had given up on statistical probability and simply started making things up.

Me? I just flog books. Keeps life simple. Or as simple as life can be kept, which according to the latest measurements is “not very.”

But that one? He’ll be back, mark my words, with a whole trolley of cognitive returns next time. Probably wanting store credit for an existential crisis.

World’s full of ’em, isn’t it? Blokes wandering about trying to offload their daft notions like yesterday’s pies, convinced that somewhere, somehow, there’s a returns desk for the inconvenient contents of their heads.

[Such a desk does, in fact, exist. It is located in a small office on the forty-seventh floor of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Customer Complaints Division, is staffed by a single increasingly bitter robot named Kevin, and has a queue time currently estimated at six hundred and forty-three years. Kevin has processed exactly zero returns in his entire operational existence, but continues to show up for work every day out of what he describes as “professional spite.”]

I stacked another shelf, whistling. Keeps the madness at bay. Or at least, keeps it filed alphabetically by author surname.

The gentleman—and I use the term in its broadest and most charitable possible application—spun on his heel.

It wasn’t, I should note, a proper heel. Someone had wedged a shopping trolley wheel onto his trainer, presumably during some earlier incident that I felt certain I did not wish to know more about. The wheel spun lazily, making a sound rather like a small mechanical creature sighing at the futility of all motion.

He clacked off to the right, out the door, and into the rain, which had been waiting with the patient enthusiasm of British weather that has finally found someone to inconvenience.

I shook my head, chuckling to myself.

Another day in the madhouse.

Another Tuesday survived.

Forty-seven million more to go, according to current actuarial estimates, though frankly even the actuaries had stopped counting and were just making encouraging noises at this point.