Fig Leaves and Cappuccino

by Jas Faulkner

plain brown cover“How are things?” I asked Sam as I flipped through pictures of Dore engravings.

“Things are great,” said Sam, “Could not be better.  Have I told you my wife is a marketing genius?”

“Do tell.  I take it there’s a good story about to happen.”

Of course there was. And as many of them begin, this one starts with a visit from Taylor Slow.  For whatever reason, she wandered from her usual shelves of choice to the “literature” section, where she found copies of Lolita, The Canterbury Tales, and For Colored Girls… “right out there in the open where any impressionable young person could get hold of ’em!”

“I’m expressing my concern to you directly because I want to give you the chance to address this yourselves.”

“Really?”  Sam, who is one half of the ownership group of the tiny independent book store that not only could but did defy the odds and stay open in their small Mississippi home town glanced up.  She nodded sympathetically and then got back to work because that was what one does when Miss Taylor Slow gets a bee in her bonnet about something.

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