The only places that comforted me were the thrifts. Seconds, second hand, second thoughts. The store hours were hand-posted and usually wrong. Doors problematic, too sticky or didn’t close properly. You had to push hard or pull soft.

I’d walk into them, mostly empty. Something rustling in the back. Shop keeper parts a bead curtain and peers out. Behind them, dishes piled by the sink, an open bag of old treats. We’d both come forward to stand behind the glass case that held whatever the market had called collectible. Look down, hands hovering, not touching the glass. Jewelry for unfashionable clothes, stiff dolls, florid cards. A teapot. Tea comes efficiently in a bag now. But some still want to see leaves crumple in hot water.

Barely audible music in the background The music is like the goods, no longer popular. But still, a powerful memory. Often there was a dog, one of those breeds with soft, short hair. A thick body of longing. The little face without answers. Pat the warm head, feel the short life pulse, unknowing.

Once I went into one while traveling. Tiny, depressed town. The shop woman stood watching me, bright eyes under severe graying bangs. Chin like a button on upholstery. She said just so you know all the romance paperbacks are on special. I hold one up. A man in a cowboy hat leans on a fence, girl in a flowered dress behind him. On the cover of another a woman, even further back, claps her hands while a buff hottie, stands, hands to hips. Camera snaps the take, closes. They grab their things and leave.

The sale of romance novels help fund the school, she said. Four for a quarter. What kind of school needs, at most, fifteen dollars? Local high school she says. I imagine the students in crooked rows like these paperbacks. She says two will graduate for sure. In this speck of a town between wheat fields. Well, maybe two. One, definitely. I conjure her. A girl. I put her picture in the paper. The imaginary town paper. She ordered a tasseled cap and the gown was an old choir gown. Her hair is the color of a can of Pledge. Her face smooth, beautiful, bright. She won a sonnet contest while her mother fried up tinned meat and called her a waste of breath. Hard to get the count right. She uses her fingers. What will happen when she leaves her home, where she is miserable but also first.

The woman leans back, considers me. She’s a judge of character. My outfit says not a romance reader. But maybe a supporter of lost causes. I go to the window and what I thought was a ceramic dog suddenly lunges at me in shrieking, furious rage. Skin back from its teeth and the roar like a siren. Jesus Christ. I twist backward, fall between the two aisles, tables of dress patterns, Disney ornaments, ice trays, plastic picks for olives and molars. Oh, don’t mind him, that’s just my Jack, says the woman. Seems kinda of mean, I say. My heart nearly exploded. I saw my life flash before my eyes and it was discarded objects. I loved that dog, she says. That dog? No, my other one. We had to put the good one down, or my husband did. I hear the shot. I mean my ex-husband.  I leave with a bag of books. I’m sure they’ll end up in the recycling, pulp to pulp. Sitting in the driver’s seat I open a page. In the first sentence a woman’s eyes flash. In the next she heavily sighs. There are no ex’s. Nothing dies.