Bookstore People

My first bookstore job was in a Waldenbooks in Dadeland Mall, Miami, FL. In subsequent years whenever I mentioned it, book snobs would respond, often in a snooty voice, "Oh, a chain. In a mall." Although it wasn't a City Lights, Powell's or even a Waterstones, it did have two things in common with those stores: books and book people. The staff was a small, eclectic group of old and young, book lovers all. There were even a few patrons that stood out: the hippie chick from Coral Gables High perusing the Janis Joplin bios and the sublime girlfriend of a frustrated writer who sobbed in the children's section as he read his rejected manuscript that had been published under another name. The girlfriend had a very large purple birthmark, shaped like an inverted arrowhead, that started at the base of her throat and spread to her breastbone.  I hitchhiked to Ohio a few months later.