Athena's Story

The weather app on her phone had lied again; it was in fact starting to rain as Athena stepped outside her office building for the first time that day. She was tired, and overwhelmed and wanted to scream into the city streets that she had had enough of her pointless job that she worked for years to get. The rain fit her mood perfectly.

She slung her beige trench coat over her head and was absorbed into the 5:30pm crowd where she was swept across the street and eventually fell into her favorite corner book shop four blocks down, drenched. At least it was Friday and she could shake off the week’s conversion reports in between the stacks of used books. This was her Friday routine. She would lose herself here, looking for a weekend companion. Not a man, or a woman, or a friend for that matter, but a book. By Friday, Athena was peopled out. She put on a good show during the week, pretending to be someone she never felt she truly was - capable, likable, dependable, organized. Athena felt like a fraud, but she knew how to dress the part. It was only here in the book shop where she truly felt like herself.

Robert Tinsley knew better than to approach Athena when she walked in the door. He knew, like a shy cat, Athena would come talk to him when she was ready. So he sat at the checkout desk researching what next week’s book haul would be, glancing up at her over the rim of his round spectacles only occasionally when he heard her talk to herself. She talked to herself a lot in the bookstore. She would ask herself questions like, do i want to spend the weekend with witches or dragons or both? Am I in the mood to find out what Matthew McConaghy has to say, or it probably doesn’t matter because he’s rich and famous and doesn’t need my money. I’d rather give it to someone else. Have I read this Jojo Moyes book, I can’t remember.

“Robert! Have I read Someone Else’s Shoes, or not? What’s it about again? Is it good? Would I like it? Is it turned into a movie yet? Maybe I’ll watch the movie tonight.”

This is how Athena communicated, a hundred questions at once, rarely waiting for an answer. Robert knew eventually she would jog her own memory before he got the chance to respond.

“Never mind, I remember this one now. It was good! But I don’t think it’s been made into a movie, but it should though, I would definitely watch it if it was.”

“Okay”, was Robert’s usual response to these ramblings.

The bookshop was relatively quiet this late afternoon due to the rain. Most people rushed to their bus stop vestibules or disappeared underground into the subway on days like this. Robert didn’t mind. He knew the weekend would be busy so he enjoyed the quiet, save for Athena’s random outbursts and the jingling of the door opening and closing every now and then when other regulars popped in for a moment of respite from the storm. He should start selling bookish umbrellas, those might fly right off the shelves on days like today.

The bell of the door jingled once more, and Robert looked up ready to greet whoever it was, as was his typical shop owner custom except with Athena, when a young boy entered dressed in a bright yellow rain jacket with different color dinosaurs, and matching rain boots. He looked at Robert and smiled.

“Well hello young man. Welcome to the Book Shop. How are you doing this fine rainy afternoon? I see you are well dressed for the occasion.”

The boy said nothing. He walked through the book stacks instead in search of something, until he found Athena.

“I’ve been looking all over for you”, he shouted at her.

Athena, startled, looked around the book shop wondering who this boy was talking to, but she was the only one standing there.

“Excuse me little boy, but you must have me mistaken for someone else. Who is it you are looking for?”

“You, mom! I’m looking for you! Why didn’t you pick me up today?”

“Umm, Robert!!! I think this little boy is lost. Can you look outside and see if there is a frantic parent searching for him? I mean, he’s in this outrageous getup I don’t know how anyone could have misplaced him.”

“Mom, what’s wrong, you don’t like my boots?”, the little boy started to cry.

Athena put her stack of books down on the worn wooden book shelf where it was dry and crouched down to look the boy in the eyes. Who was this child? Where did he just come from, and why in the world did he think she was his mother. Did Athena have a child out in the world she was unaware of? She was pretty sure she had never gotten pregnant before, or given birth for that matter. That seems like something she would definitely remember. Forgetting if she read a book was one thing, but forgetting having a child was something entirely different. And yet, this boy looked like her, if she was completely honest with herself.

He had olive skin and almond shaped brown eyes with eyelashes for days. His lips were somehow the perfect shape, as if someone drew them with a pink pencil underneath his little round nose. He still had some baby fat on his cheeks, so maybe he was 4 or 5yrs old, Athena was never good at guessing how old children were as she was not around them much and never showed any interest in them anyway. If this boy was in fact 5yrs old, that would mean he was born in 2021; the lost year. 2021 was the year Athena was sick in the hospital, along with half of the rest of the world. The only one who could visit was her mother, and that was through the glass. She had already broken up with her boyfriend Jared at that point. Quarantine did not suit them at all, and after they broke up she was shocked she had ever even dated, let alone slept with, someone named Jared. But she had an IUD since she was 19, so this little boy couldn’t be hers, could he? Could he!?

Robert came rushing over, his curly hair bopping on the top of his head and the ridiculous situation made Athena laugh out loud, which did not really seem to be an appropriate response, but definitely an Athena one.

“What’s going on”, Robert asked.

“I honestly have no idea. This little boy seems lost but he thinks I’m his mother? I’m very confused. Are you playing a joke on me, little boy, because it’s not really funny to run up to strangers and call them your mother. I don’t like it. Not at all. So please stop. But we can help you find her, I’m sure, right Robert?” Athena looked at him with big eyes, emphasizing to him much more than the words coming out of her mouth.

Robert crouched down beside Athena, and decided his knees were too old at 35 to be in such a position, so stood back up but put on his sweetest singsong voice and asked, “What’s your name little buddy?”

The boy carefully took the hood down from his raincoat and unsnapped the buttons. He was visibly upset, trying to calm himself down by getting a little more comfortable. Very quietly he replied, “I’m Erich Thonias. My mother’s name is Athena. Is your name Athena?”

The two looked at each other, and looked back at the boy, and looked back at each other, and back at the boy.

“Athena, is this your son,” Robert whispered behind his cupped hand.

Athena stood up, and put her mouth as closely to Robert’s ear as she possibly could, and said so quietly and quickly that Robert strained to hear, “I don’t think so. Do you think he’s my son? Do I have a son, Robert? Is it possible that he’s mine? And if he is, where the hell did he just come from? Did he just drop out of the sky? I don’t think little boys just drop out of the sky, do they?”

Robert did not know how to answer these questions, or wondered if they should be having this conversation in front of this little lost boy in his adorable rain suit. So Robert instead of answering his friend, he ushered Erich over to the children’s section of the shop in the back corner under the old staircase, took the boy’s coat, hung it up on a unicorn shaped hook, and told him he could get comfy in the blue and red plaid bean bag chair and read any book he chose. The boy seemed content to be left alone to his imagination and books, so Robert turned to return to Athena at the front of the shop, but she was gone. Robert ran up and down the aisles hoping she was sitting in one of the few rocking chairs throughout the store, but she was nowhere to be found.

Just then, the door bell jingled again, and Robert raced to the front in hopes that Athena had returned. Instead it was a young woman dressed in a yellow raincoat and matching boots. She pulled down the hood and revealed her long curly red hair, which stopped Robert in his tracks. She took one look at Robert’s face and immediately called out, “Erich!! If you’re in here I’m going to kill you!!!”

Relief rushed through Robert’s entire body. He let out a huge sigh, rubbed his hand through his curly black hair, cleaned his glasses on the rim of his navy blue tshirt, and gestured towards the back of the store with his thumb.

There, she found Erich lounging on his back on a beanbag chair, his legs crossed, reading a graphic novel about Underpants, as if he hadn’t just raced up the subway terminal steps ahead of her and disappeared onto the city street. She was, in fact, going to murder him. He looked up at her from the book and smiled, and she decided it would make a much better evening if she just plopped on the sofa seat next to him, closed her eyes for a moment, and then asked, “Whatchya reading, kid?”

Robert listened to their quiet murmured conversation from the comfort of his favorite chair located safely behind the front desk once again. Thank goodness the red haired woman had entered when she did. Robert could always get himself into a good story, but found it very difficult to get himself out of one. Problems were around every corner of his life, it was the solutions that eluded him. That’s why he hid among his books. He always thought fiction was a safer place to be, where the good guy (or girl) always won, where the quiet bookshop owner got the girl. That was not the case in Robert’s real life. In Robert’s real life he never got the girl, not the way he’d wanted anyway. He was always a good friend to the women he fell in love with, while they always fell for guys named Jared, or Kent, with last names like Vanderbilt or Bloomberg.

And it was pure luck that Robert had inherited this book shop. That’s the only possible way anyone Robert’s age could afford real estate in NYC, through old money. New money didn’t cut it these days in the Big Apple, and Robert’s salary as a librarian in suburban New Jersey certainly was not going to supply the fortune he would have needed to open this shop. So as the tale as old as time went, he inherited the corner store from an uncle he barely knew who used to run it as a shoe repair store in the 80s, back when businessmen had the soles of their shoes repaired regularly. It had been shut down for a period of time, then rented to a coffee shop, of course, and then given to Robert upon his uncle’s passing. Robert could not believe his luck the day he went to the reading of the will. Finally something big in his small life had happened.

So there he sat in his favorite chair considering himself lucky when the fair red haired woman approached his desk.

“Ready to check out, find everything you need,” Robert asked as if the earlier events hadn’t happened.

“Was there a woman in here earlier that looks like that little boy? He insists that he saw his mother. I’m sorry, he does this all the time, he runs off and has no problem stalking random women that look like him. Do you know who he’s talking about? I didn’t see anyone else in here when I got here, and I told him no one was here, but he’s insisting he met a woman.”

Robert didn’t know what to say. The boy asked if his friend’s name is Athena, which to his knowledge of the past three years it is, and then she ran off and disappeared into the rain like she had seen a ghost.

“Yes, there was someone in here shopping before you arrived. But then she was gone and you were here, so all is well in the world again, right?” Short and sweet. Crisis averted.

“If I told you an unbelievable story, would you believe it, or think I was crazy?”

“Well, my favorite thing in the world is believing in unbelievable stories, so

shoot.”

The red haired woman smiled and looked into Robert’s eyes and began with, “Once upon a time…”