The Driver's Guide to Hitting Pedestrians by Andersen Prunty Read Free Book Online

pair of empty, weighted shoes behind the back door of his abandoned shop.

Reading Manko
     
    Entering a bookstore, I discovered all the books had been replaced with authors. Angered, I nearly left but decided to stay and have a look around. The store no longer smelled like books. It smelled aged—liquor and old cigarette smoke hanging around the authors. For the greater part, the authors—mostly white, mostly male, mostly older—wandered aimlessly throughout the store. Some of them sat in the cafe, sipping overpriced coffee and engaging in inane babble. Some of them played board games. Some played with stuffed animals and other things the bookstore still sold. Others spoke on their cell phones. I wondered if authors were especially good at text messaging. Or did they find it too confining? These people who had let their brains dribble out over countless pages.
    Disheartened, I found myself in the fiction section. It was virtually empty except for one old man sitting in a comfortable-looking armchair. His faded blue eyes, below his wisp of thin white hair, stared vacantly into the distance. His suit was mostly brown. He twisted his gnarled hands in his lap. I noticed his withered-looking legs and it finally hit me who he was. This was Gregory Manko, an obscure writer from Otlatl, a small European island. I had read a book of his short stories a number of years ago. Only a handful of his books were still in print.
    “ Excuse me,” I said. “Are you Gregory Manko?”
    “ Yes.”
    He looked resigned.
    “ Are you for sale?” I asked, not really intending to. Sometimes I just blurted things out.
    “ Yes,” he said with the same resignation.
    I wondered how much an author like this would cost.
    No matter. I had a credit card.
    I looked around to see if he had a wheelchair nearby. I hadn’t known he was crippled. Had he been crippled when he wrote those beautiful stories? I’d have to go back and read them.
    “ I don’t have one,” he said.
    “ Sorry?”
    “ A wheelchair. That’s what you were looking for, wasn’t it? I don’t have one. You’ll have to carry me.”
    “ Oh. Sure.”
    I bent down over the chair. I didn’t want to hurt him. He seemed so old and fragile.
    “ How do you ...?”
    “ Probably easier if you just get down on your knees and I’ll scoot off onto your back.”
    “ Yeah. Okay. Right.” I figured he’d probably done this kind of thing before.
    Turning so my back was to the chair, I crouched down in front of him. Grunting, he maneuvered himself onto my back, grabbing my shoulders with his gnarled hands. Getting a firm grip on the underside of each of his knees, I stood up.
    “ Easy,” he said.
    “ Sure. Right.”
    I walked slowly to the front registers. A cute, intellectual-looking girl leaned against the counter, leafing through a magazine. Once I reached the counter, Manko on my back, the girl huffed and dropped her magazine on the floor. She had a nametag but whatever name had been printed on it was crossed out.
    “ Hi,” I said.
    She gave me a look as if to say, “Please, spare me,” and held up the laser scanning gun. She opened Manko’s blazer and scanned a barcode on the inside of it. Turning her attention to the register, a look of surprise crossed her face and she said, “That’s way too much. Someone’s wandered out of the bargain section again.”
    I didn’t know how Manko could wander anywhere but I wasn’t going to argue if it meant getting him on the cheap. Besides, I figured maybe he’d gotten one of the other authors to carry him there. She gave me the new total, which was nearly half the original price. I handed over my card, signed the receipt, and left the store to load Gregory Manko into my car, not really knowing what I was going to do with him once we got back to my apartment.
    Things didn’t go very well. I was exhausted after the first day. I had to carry him to the restroom each time he had to go, which was a lot. Mainly because he ate and drank