tales from behind the books 3: son of tales from behind the books

This evening was really slow. I mostly re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for the third? fourth? time and remarked to myself on the refreshing lack of crazy people. There was a guy who came in at 6 with a box of books and told me that he'd pick them up at 8:45, which fired off the neurons that trigger the stab-customer-with-little-pointy-thing-that-we-stick-papers reaction, which was, as always, followed closely by the no-don't-do-it-you-fool neurons. There was a guy who stayed in the store for like, two hours though. He does not, however, take the staying in the store longest prize. Who does, you may ask? Well that one goes to a man I like to call David...
It's Christmastime, and a young couple is getting handfuls of children's books for their friends who recently had a child. They were brilliant enough to look up all the books they want on our website and to print out a list, most customers come in and ask if we have a book...it was...blue... and their papers are spread out on a section of my counter. I don't mind, it's pretty slow and they are nice people.
Rewind a couple of hours, when in walks one of the ugliest women I have ever seen. Whoops, sorry, my bad, it's a guy with droopy eyelids and long hair and one of those floppy rastafarian-type hats (only black and not as huge). He wanders back into the store for about two hours. After I have completely forgotten about him, he heads out the door. I, per custom, say something along the lines of "Have a nice day."
Why oh why did I say that?
He turns and comes up to me and sets his soda, his bag from RadioShack and his bag from Hallmark down on the couple's papers. He also smells pretty rank, like he's been smoking and boozing for a while. [Clint and I would later argue what he actually smelled like, but that's beside the point.] "I already did," he says, peeling the RadioShack bag from a pair of Sony headphones. "I got such a good deal on these. They were expensive, but they were on sale, man." After he goes over the finer points of why he chose them--
"My name's David," he says, putting out his hand, which I shake. "I'm staying with my mom for a while, she lives in the apartments across from here."
"Ah." What would you say? This guy is not young.
"Hey man," he says to me, opening his eyes wide, "Do you like Lord of the Rings?"
I eye the drink, a puddle of condensation is soaking into the papers. I just want this guy out, he obviously isn't going to buy anything. And he smells.
"Yeah," I tell him, figuring it's the easiest answer.
"Check this out man," he slowly pulls an ordament box out of the Hallmark bag. "It's Gandolf."
"That's cool." Oh God, he's opening it.
"Yeah," It's all the way out of the box now. "I know it's an ordament, but I'm going to treat him like a model or something, man. And like, they had a Sam and Frodo one, but the guy said they were out of it. Sam, Sam was the brains of that group, you know?"
I say I do. Please, make him leave.
"Well, Gandolf is still cool. He has his staff," He points to the staff. "He has his hat," He points to the hat. "That's an awesome hat, man." He starts putting the tiny wizard away and the male half of the couple quickly takes the papers from underneath the drink and relocates them to another part of my counter. I apologize quietly, he smiles.
David takes out a small glass thing with a clock set in it from the Hallmark bag. He proceeds to tell me all about it, why he chose it and then that the salesman reccomended it when he said he wanted something inexpensive for his mother and on and on.
"Can I leave my stuff here?" What? "I'm gonna go look around."
"Um, yeah, ok."

Little do I know, this has just begun...