By Diane Plumley
One would think no one. Apparently, however, two men didn’t get the memo– bookstores do not make money–because back in the early 1980s armed gunmen held up Lorry’s Book Company, not once, but twice.
I arrived in New York City as so many current inhabitants did–hoping to ignite a theatrical career the likes no one’s seen since Eleanora Duse. An income, however, is helpful, and I needed a job to support the never ending acting lessons and always looming rent.
I’d already learned my waitressing skills were slim, and recently left managing the handbag department of a chain of ‘hip’ clothing stores whose repetitive playing of a disco “Bridge Over Troubled Water” had scarred the area of my brain that once loved Paul Simon’s music.
The next step–interviewing for a university bookstore cashier position. They offered me the job. I misunderstood their salary quote, and accidently bargained my way into more money than originally offered. I love books, always thought it would be sublime to work in a place that had nothing but magnificent tomes.
The merchandise I was ringing up on the cash register–yes, youngsters, one had to ‘ring’ numbers by hand back in the dark ages–were not the gems I’d imagined. Textbooks somehow lack the atmosphere of pulpy pages or conversely, the crisp paper cuts of recent releases.
And there was the terror of the register’s bank not balancing when my shift was over. One could be accused of stealing, or worse, being incompetent.
Also, I wasn’t working with books, but tallying up armloads of mathematical monstrosities and scientific theories the weight of a medium dog. Not the dreamy picture of stuffed
chairs surrounded by teetering piles filled with Chandler and Helen McCloy or Cornell Woolrich. With me blithely pointing out which title the customer *must* read or forever lack a soul. Remember, dramatics were my metaphorical bread and butter.
A few months inched by until I was suddenly promoted to cashier in the ‘real’ bookstore, the one around the corner across from City Hall. The one jumbled from front to back with all categories, forms, and condition of books. The Promised Land.
Now I would experience the thrill of conveying the written word to the public at large.
And I did, after months still ding dinging the cash register. What a splendiferous array of titles sped past me at lunch hour–the latest thrillers, a used book on toilet plumbing, an oversized Matisse art book, Dr. Seuss, lurid Gothics.
The store wasn’t large, although crammed full, and had a secret spiral stairway under the counter where an employee haunted mysterious tunnels overflowing with book laden shelves. Oh yes, this was a bookshop.
I worked the afternoon shift– 1p.m. to 9 p.m. Go ahead, ask it, ‘why on earth would a bookstore all the way down town near Wall Street and across from a by-then closed City Hall et al, need to stay open that late?’
We asked and asked the same question, since by 7p.m. you were pretty much rearranging the alphabet for something to occupy the meandering hours.
Having no clear response, we just worked and were happy for the pay check.
One of the colder, more deserted evenings, I was speaking on the phone to a then boyfriend who also worked for Lorry’s Book Company–down the street at what was loosely called The Annex. He was home, that store closed at a normal hour.