Riddled with Arrows Issue 5.1: Candy Hearts & Little Literary Love Notes ~ Day 3

Affordable Shakespeare

Guy Biederman

 

He worked at the Book Depot & Cafe. She cleaned houses on the hill. They were in love and not yet married, not even talking about it. After closing they cleaned the store. He ate muffins from the café side and they read all the books they wanted, careful not to leave crumbs on the pages.

He loved tiny stories. She loved Dickens. At home, he wrote about the war he’d left behind in Guatemala. She studied for nursing school. They fell asleep listening to the typewriters of well-known writers upstairs.

He opened The Depot at dawn. By mid-morning Don Carpenter held court at his table. ‘Sure,’ the old author would kindly say, ‘send your work to my agent.’ It was Paris for him, young love for them. On Sundays they drank coffee in iron chairs atop the barbershop and watched the crowds walking the leafy streets.

They were 22 and they owned that town.


Riddled with Arrows 5.1: “Candy Hearts & Little Literary Love Notes”
Foreword | Contributors
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“Discount Shakespere” by TR & SC Winward