By Travis Jensen

I started browsing the titles from the beginning.  The books weren’t arranged in any particular order, a major pet peeve of mine.

I made my way through about a tenth of the fiction section before feeling a headache coming on and decided to call it quits.  I managed to find one book of interest, a biography on Babe Ruth, examining his wild life off the field.  What this title was doing in the fiction section, I don’t know.   

I then walked up and down the aisles to find my wife.  She was in the biography/memoir section.

“You ready?”  I asked as I approached.

“Yeah, I’m ready.  I think I’m gonna get this book,” she said, flashing me the cover of The Shameful life of Salvador Dali.  

“I’m getting this,” I said, showing her the Babe Ruth biography.

“Thought you were looking at fiction?”

“I was.  This was mixed in.”

The two of us then made our way towards the register, walking alongside the great wall of clearance fiction to get there.  I was leading the way, somewhat skimming the eye level titles on the shelf as I walked.  Somewhere in the middle of the wall, my eyes locked onto the spine of a book that looked very familiar, almost too familiar.  I came to an abrupt halt and squinted my eyes for a better look, causing my wife to ram into the back of me.  “Shit!”  She exclaimed.  “What are you doing?”

“Whaaat…” I said, pulling the book off the shelf.

It was a copy of my first book, Love, Hate, Destroy, released in ’04.

“That’s cool,” my wife said grinning.

“No, it’s not.”

The book was still crisp, looking as if it had only been flipped through once or twice at most.  I sniffed the inside pages.  It still smelled new and reminded me of the day I held the book in my hands for the very first time.  What a day.  How happy I was.  How proud I was.  A real published author! 

Granted the title is over five-years-old, as a writer, seeing your book on a clearance rack, especially at a store where many people you know will go to shop for books, is a disturbing and embarrassing feeling.  I don’t know why, but the first comparison that comes to mind is the feeling you get when you have one of those dreams where you show up to school or work in your underwear.

For a minute, I thought about buying the book just to get it off the rack, but my wife persuaded me against it.

“That’s lame,” she said.  “You can’t just buy your own book.”

She was right.  Buying my own book was lame.

“F*ck it, let’s go,” I said.

As we walked towards the register, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other copies of my book were scattered about on that great wall and in the adjoining room.  It would have taken me hours to go through all of them. 

One of the two clerks, a wannabe Jack Kerouac looking cat wearing a lumberjack flannel and black beanie, rang me up for the two books.  Not even joking, the total with tax came to $6.66.  Kerouac thought that was pretty funny.  I didn’t have any cash on me, so I pulled out my bank card.  But before I could hand over the card, Kerouac waved his hands and said, “Sorry, bro, but we got a $10 minimum for all ATM purchases here.”  He then pointed to a small handwritten sign attached to the edge of the table verifying said policy.  “There’s an ATM two blocks down,” he said.  “I can hold the books behind the counter for you until you get back.”

“Okay,” I said putting my card back into my wallet.  “I’ll be back.”

He nodded his head and set the books on a metal folding chair behind him.

My wife and I left the store.

I haven’t been back since.