Ginevra kept saying it to me as she sat next to me on the park bench, her legs draped over my lap as she munched on a sandwich.
"It's the end of an era."
I nodded to her that it was. I had been pretty silent, half because I was exausted from a busy lunch shift, and half because the news had come so suddenly.
That morning while racing, nearly late, to the cafe' I had hurredly checked my phone for the time.
One Voicemail, Scribbles.
"What the hell do they want? Is there an issue with the Martinau wedding invites? I'm already late as it is."
I mashed the speed-dial to get to voicemail and held the phone to my ear as I trucked down Church Street, hoping that I wouldn't have to stop into the shop on my break between lunch and dinner shifts. The robotic voice came over the speaker, inexorably slow.
"You have one new message. Press one for your messages."
What followed the beep however was not Scribbles manager Jenny's chai-latte fueled, rapid-fire speak but the sound of crying.
"Scribbles is closing."
I stopped walking for a moment.
But only for a moment.
The message went on, but the first sentence was the most important. I don't really even think I heard the rest of the voicemail at all. Fiscally I wasn't too worried. I had just landed a full time job waiting tables at a local asian cafe, and though I had been considering working there as well as my part-time job at the venerable stationery store with the silly name I knew that I wouldn't be able to work seven days a week for more than a few months before I burnt out. Yet as I rushed around waiting tables that afternoon the phrase kept repeating in my head.
"Scribbles is closing."
Thus my break between shifts found me sitting in the park next to the chick I called Nev. Inhumanly petite, with a massive amount of red hair, Ginevra looks more like a pixie than a woman, and one can imagine a timid voice coming from her bespectacled person.
One COULD imagine that...and one would be wrong.
"What the fuck happened!?"
I leaned back on the bench and pushed some hair out of my eyes.
"The recession happened."
A homeless hippy, hair dreded down the back of his dirty tie-dye t-shirt, walked by the bench,
"You got a smoke?"
I shook my head no wondering if he'd ever smoked one of his dreds. I've heard that marijuanna residue can get stored in your hair follicles. I was particularly enjoying this train of thought half giggling to myself when Ginevra snapped me back to attention.
"I mean, it's not like we didn't see it coming."
It was true I supposed, the store had been carrying less and less stock but it never seemed like we'd actually close. Alot of small businessses were forced to reduce stock due to the economic downturn and we were no exception. Thing seemed to be getting better at the end of that summer. Burlington's beloved kitch, card, and wedding stationery store, with it's Franz Kafka finger puppets, off beat cards (my favourite being a romantic one one that read "I want to have text with you") and other odds and ends seemed to be coming back from the finacial dip. Vermont passed Gay Marriage and there was an increase in the number of invites we were printing as a direct result of that. All in all, the feeling among the girls was that things were looking up. But looks were decieving.
It wasn't just the sudden nature of Scribbles closing that unsettled me so, nor the loss of the wages, since I already had another job, but the loss of an important peice of my personal history. This was the place I had worked for 2 1/2 years, a long time in my young life and over half the time that i'd lived in vermont. Starting as a sales girl and ending as weekend manager and a custom stationery consultant, it was where I met Ginevra, learned to really sell, became a typography snob, and even learned design, something that opened up a world of possibilities to me creatively. A small family business, I became close with the Mom and Pop owners, and called Joe on more than one occation to ask for directions. That's not to say that it was idyllic all the time, like any workplace there were ups and downs and occational conflicts of personality. (Even Ginevra and I, who are close of friends went through a period of three months where I wouldn't speak to her.) But shit happens, and we'd all weathered it together.
I pushed my pad thai around with a chopstick and then closed the box I was eating it from.
"Let's go look at the store."
Hiking back up Church Street I found myself doing exactly what I hadn't wanted to earlier in the day, going to the shop on my break. We stood side by side in front of the plate glass window, and I looked in. My paper lanterns hung from the ceeling, un-moving. Usually they would sway and bob as people came in and out of the store but now they hung, heavy on their strings.
"I want my paycheck man."
Ginevra said, cupping her hands around her eyes and peering into the dark store.
"They don't owe me any money, I took last weekend off to go camping."
"How'd that go?"
"I discovered something about myself."
"Oh yeah."
"I'm a city person."
Sighing, Ginevra pulled her face away from the glass, leaving a smudge on the window pane. The bright light streaming through the glass made the outline of a sticker that had been removed a long time ago visible.
"Book? Is that what it says? Do you see that?"
I pointed to the window.
Nev squinted her eyes,
"I guess this place was a bookstore or something before it was Scribbles."
"It will be something else after Scribbles too."
I stepped back and silently prayed it wouldn't be another chain store. As the recession closed down small businesses the storefronts were being bought by what we called "box stores." Those corporate franchises that could weather the slow times in a way that the grassroots places couldn't. Ginevra kicked the brick below the window.
"C'mon let's grab a beer before your second shift."
I followed her up to the dive bar with the free popcorn. Not because I wanted a beer especially, but because it seemed like the best thing to do. End of an era my ass, it was just the end of Scribbles.
