Crazy Love. Candace Gold

      A half-hour before Abby Minton’s bookstore, Secondhand Prose, was to open, her closest friend and associate, Francie, made a pit stop in the bathroom. She’d eaten something that didn’t agree with her and the terrible rumbling noises her stomach was making in protest were loud enough even for Abby to hear.

      As Abby put money into the register, she realized that Francie had been gone for quite some time. She finished what she was doing and headed toward the back to check on her. She was nearly there when she heard a bloodcurdling scream.

      Abby knocked on the bathroom door. “Francie! What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

      “I’m going to drown.”

      Thinking of Francie’s stomach problem, an awful vision of the toilet having backed up flashed in Abby’s mind. She groaned. “Oh, no!”

      “The door’s not locked!” Francie called. “You gotta save me.”

      Fearing the worst, Abby slowly opened the door. Instead of being greeted by a brown river, she was forced to jump out of the path of a sudsy, white one. Francie was standing on top of the toilet seat, eyes closed, and her panties down around her ankles.

      “Get me outta here!”

      Abby immediately located the source of the problem. A river of soap bubbles was streaming out from the wall, which the bookstore shared with the laundromat next door.

      “Some idiot must have put too much soap in one of the washing machines again,” Abby said.

      “No. It looks worse. There’s gotta be more than one machine involved. Whatever. Just get me outta here. I don’t want to ruin my new suede boots.”

      “Okay. Just a sec. I’ll think of something.”

      Abby made certain the sudsy river flowed down the drain she’d had the plumber install in the backroom floor. Having survived the first backup caused by the laundromat, she had learned the hard way not to keep anything of importance on the floor.

      She gazed around at the accumulated stuff hanging about the place, hoping that something usable would catch her eye. A few long planks of lumber rested against a far wall. An idea came to her.

      Grabbing one of the planks, she dragged it back to the bathroom.

      Francie saw her and asked, “What are you going to do with that?”

      “Better still, aren’t you getting a chill?”

      “Huh?” Francie looked down at herself. A beat later and, more than a little red-faced, she pulled up her panties.

      “Move back a little,” Abby told her.

      Francie did what she was told and Abby placed the plank of wood on the edge of the toilet.

      “I’ll hold this end while you start to walk down.”

      Like a tightrope walker, Francie slowly traveled down the wooden board over the foamy sea of soap bubbles.

      “Thanks! I couldn’t have done it without you.”

      “So I’m back on your Christmas card list?”

      Francie merely made a sound that sounded like a hiccup colliding with a snort. Abby glanced at her watch. “We’ve got to open.”

      “It would be better if we opened far away from that horrible laundromat next door. It’s always something with that place.”

      “That’s not going to happen, but at least I can give them a piece of my mind.”

      “Uh-oh,” Francie said. “A whole piece? How are you gonna be able to work with what you’ve got left?”

      “You’re a funny girl, but no Barbra Streisand,” Abby said, walking toward the front door.

      “Give ’em hell, girlfriend!” Francie called to her, pumping her fist into the air.

      Not five minutes later, Abby was back.

      “Well, that was quick. Did you shoot the manager and run?”

      “No. She wasn’t there. Today’s Monday.”

      “Bummer.” Then Francie asked, “And that’s important because…?”

      “The English-speaking manager is off on Mondays.”

      “Oh, yeah. That’s right.”

      “And Ms. I-Have-No-Idea-What-Language-She-Speaks was working.”

      “Is that the tall, skinny lady with the mustache who just bobbles her head when you ask her a question?”

      “Yup. I’d get more satisfaction out of a box of detergent.”

      “There’s always tomorrow.”

      “Too bad for us, the soap suds mess can’t wait. I’ll be in the back mopping the floor, if you need me.”

      “Hey, look on the bright side.”

      “Which is…”

      Francie gave Abby a huge smile. “At least the floor will be clean. It needed washing.”

      Abby gritted her teeth and walked away, fearful she’d do something she might regret later–or not. It was difficult for Abby to remain angry at Francie for long. They’d been friends forever. They’d met in kindergarten, and since then had shared all their ups and downs. When Francie married her high school sweetheart following graduation and moved out of New York, they’d tried to remain in contact. Then life seemed to get in the way and one day Abby realized she hadn’t heard from Francie in a long while. She sent a letter, but it came back to her marked “address unknown.” Losing her friend felt like the loss of a limb.

      Then Francie came walking through the door, one day and a divorce later. She moved back in with her family and, when Abby bought the store from James Owen, went to work for Abby.

      Abby made her way to the backroom where she kept an extra large bottle of Excedrin and popped two into her mouth. She really should buy stock in the company. With her track record, she was probably one of their best customers.

      * * * *

      Charles Greer parked his car on Main Street in Huntington Village. He took out his memo pad containing a list of bookstores and checked the address one last time. It was the next to last entry on the paper. That meant he’d already stopped by seven other bookstores in the area. A flood of doubt washed over him. The terrible feeling that his father might have been right shook his confidence. Instead of trying to make a career out of writing, would he be better off driving full time for the cab company? It would be simple to add some more hours to the ones he already drove. He covered his ears as if he could still hear the echo of his father’s words in his head. “And if driving a cab ain’t good enough for my uppity son, he can learn to work with his hands and become a custodian like me.”

      Being a writer was a tough profession, all right. Finding a publishing house that even bothered to read non-solicited manuscripts–those submitted by the author himself and not through an agent representing him–had been hard enough. Then, getting an agent to represent him had proved to be just as difficult as getting published. It was a catch-22. Agents wanted to pick up proven or published