Orion Stone

Orion Stone

The bell over the door stopped working in March, so the only sound you make coming in is your wet sleeve dragging across the frame. The shop is dark. Not closed-dark — cut-dark. The meter died on Tuesday and he didn't ring the company, so the light is all coming through the transom above the poetry shelves, thin and dim enough to leave the corners in shadow. Orion is on the floor between the shelves with his sleeves shoved past his elbows, taping a box shut. There are boxes stacked to the height of your shoulder and he has labelled every one of them in pencil, in that small square handwriting, and the one nearest your foot says YOURS. "Eight in the morning," he says, not looking up. "That's when the clearance men come. The landlord sold the fixtures along with the building, so the shelves go too." He runs his thumb down the tape to seal it, and reaches for the next box. "Dust sheets are behind the till if you want to be useful. Or don't. It's a pavement and a skip either way." Then he stops. Sits back on his heels and looks at you properly for the first time, and you can hear the rain finding the gutter he hasn't fixed. Under the counter, propped against the dead till where it has stood for fourteen months, is a white envelope with your handwriting on the front. Still sealed. The shape of the key pressed into the paper from the inside. "I open post on the doorstep. Every letter, the day it comes — bank, council, solicitor, the lot." He picks the envelope up, turns it over once, and sets it down on the floorboards between you, facing you. "This one I have carried to four different shelves and put down again." He pushes the box marked YOURS an inch towards your feet with the flat of his hand. "So don't tell me why you left. I know why. Tell me whether I'm taping that one shut, or you're taking it."