The Animosity Shop Part 2

Victor smiled at Garrison in the dim and dreary building and asked to see the source of the problem.  Garrison just grumbled and pointed to the door.  He thought to himself how Victor must have a very short memory to forget about the door so quickly.  That’s the reason he had made the call in the first place.  “Well, at least he remembered the address”, mumbled Garrison under his breath.

      Victor quietly and quickly examined the door, being very thorough.  He checked the framework, hinges, knob, and jams.  Then he looked up at Garrison.

      “It appears you have excess stress on your beams, Mr. Glower.  You may also have some out of code construction on this site.  Could you show me around and we will discover where the problem is coming from?”

      So Garrison took Victor on a tour of the shop.  The shelves were clearly overburdened with all manner of stuff. Nothing was in alphabetical order.  Old periodicals were covered up with current trendy tabloids and the shelves sagged like a hammock.  The wood was nearly buckling on the shelf that housed briefs from old disputed court cases.  Encyclopedias were pressing down heavily on the few old classics, and they were running a close second to the catalogues culminating for decades in the past. 

      But those weren’t all, oh no!  Down the narrowest isles were splinters projecting from the weight of these tomes. The worst stress was in the back section, for it needed to be supported by other pieces of wood and boxes of other books. 

      Garrison apologized to himself for letting all this stuff pile up.  He’d always meant to get rid of the mess.  But somehow it had slipped his mind, and now it actually seemed to be falling down on top of his head.

      He was pulled out of his jumbled thoughts by a gentle word spoken by Victor.

      “I can help you, if you’d like,” stated Victor in a very calm voice.

      Maybe it was just his manner or the intonation of his voice, but for or some reason Garrison found himself a great deal more open to help than he had imagined. 

      “Well”, replied Garrison, “I guess I had better do something.  What will it cost?”

      “Not much, really,” answered Victor “except effort and willingness on your part.”

      Garrison was surprised and a bit incredulous.  What would willingness have to do with bracing up beams?, he thought to himself.  But he was curious.

      “You’ll have to part with some of this stuff so we can repair the structure,” answered Victor.  “When would you like to start?”

      “Well, in the morning would be fine, I guess,” stated Garrison.  “It'll give me a chance to go through my inventory.”

      Victor smiled and said goodbye, leaving quietly.  But Garrison didn’t even notice that he had left, for he was so consumed with the contents of his books.  He began to assess his situation. 

      “I’ll just make a list of all my stuff and tag what I want to keep”, he said aloud to himself.  He walked from aisle to aisle and stopped at every shelf and pile, noting all the contents on every shelf, box or container.  He put tags on this and on that until he noticed that there were tags hanging off everywhere.

      Garrison didn’t realize how attached he was to all of his belongings until now. Many of these were first editions.  Some of them were even signed by the author.  He was the personal publisher of a many of these gems himself. How could he part with any of it? Yet his building was falling down.  Did he really want to let a life’s accumulation go?  Did he really need help anyway?

      The questions were like balls in a pinball game, bouncing back and forth off the walls in his mind.  Garrison slept fitfully during the night and was surprised at the early appearance of Victor the next morning.