The Late Night People

I met a woman

during one of my book signings

She came to the table where I sat with

two stacks of hardcover copies

She picked up one copy and said,

What is it about?

I’m never good at summarizing my work

in a nutshell

for something that had taken me

two, three years to write

Well, I said, it’s on the jacket flap

where she could read what the copywriter

had done

as part of the cosmetic surgery

so the work looks more like a movie actress

than a whore

The woman nodded, but

didn’t read a word of it

where I hoped she might have caught

the advance praises

full of superlatives

that sometimes you thought they must’ve been

copied and pasted in

from another work

But she just wanted to talk

A soft-spoken woman

straw-yellow hair

no makeup

like she’d just got out of bed and

wandered into this place

full of books

like Alice in Wonderland

We talked about pets

and, in the name of God,

she owed at least a dozen cats

some of them neutered

for overpopulation purpose

and pet fish

whose names I forgot

expensive though

She said one of them cost a hundred dollars

And I learned that she worked part time

somewhere in a graphics shop

It was a quiet evening

with no more than three interested readers

who dropped by at my table

but none bought any copy

only she did

without any idea of what the book

was about

When I left she had gone to an in-store coffee shop

sitting on a high stool with a cup of coffee

reading a day-old newspaper

I had to run an errand that evening after

the book signing and when I was done

it was half past midnight

I was driving down a cross-street

two blocks from the bookstore where

earlier I had my book signing

Stopping at the intersection on a red light

I looked over at a donut shop

on a corner

well lit,  near empty

I saw the woman who bought a copy

of my book

sitting by herself

close to the glass

a Styrofoam cup of coffee

in front of her

She wasn’t reading anything

just sitting and staring ahead

I wondered

where my book was

For certain it wouldn’t have fit in her purse

unless she had returned it after I left

for a full refund.

[Image from flickr.com/photos/lunch_meat]