Free Old Farts by Vera Nazarian

 
    OLD FARTS
     
    by Vera Nazarian
     
    As usual we kidnapped him from the one spot in the back of the store that was just out of sight of the pesky security camera. Few would complain that our la méthode —pardon my French—wasn’t sufficient for the task at hand.
    We tied his wrists with a lethal braided combination of expensive dress shoe mulberry shoelaces and the elastic sports shoe kind, and wadded up his mouth with James’s knitted tie. It was that or Walter’s woolly vest, and frankly the vest was too big even for this one’s mouth.
    Next, we took him to the conveniently adjacent, poorly-lit, stuffy and malodorous facility that passed for the men’s lavatory in the back of the bookstore café. There we placed him on a tall borrowed barstool chair, precisely in the middle of the checkerboard tile floor, while he continued to fidget and pop out his eyes at us since that was all he could do, being all wadded up as he was.
    And in silent anticipation we crowded around him, hungry literary vultures.
    “I suggest he’s mine,” James said, breaking the momentous silence punctuated only by the mild waterfall tinkle of a running toilet in the background. “Seeing as he’s got my Finnegan tie, well, in there.” And he pointed to the squirming mouth, then touched his unbuttoned shirt with its messed up collar for reference.
    Walter granted him a thoughtful glance full of exponential wisdom and philosophical calculation.
    Sam—who, to make our existences even more confusing, claimed that his other moniker was Mark—just continued to slurp the bookstore mocha triple latteccino, an iced coffee drink confiscated from the kidnapped victim. There was a Cheshire cat expression on Sam’s face. Periodically he scratched behind his ear or patted down his wiry graying hair in an attempt to keep himself from using his restless index finger as a lady’s hair roller, or—what is it they say—that newfangled contraption, the curling iron. Ah, such antique bad habits we keep, such unique nervous ticks. . . .
    This, of course left me to be the proactive one.
    I cleared my throat. “Let’s consider,” I said. “The young fellow was in my section. Well enough? What does it matter that he was monologuing loudly—and inaccurately, I must add—about Civil War field maneuvers and laughable military tactics, as gleaned through MGM musicals on celluloid? Or that he is currently chewing your Irish-knitted tie, James? He is mine because he just stood for about ten minutes in front of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror stacks, doing absolutely nothing even remotely smacking of bibliophile consumerism. To the contrary, you might say he was blocking the shelves for that nice young lady in spectacles who was trying to access several Star-prefixed volumes of Trek and Wars there. And yes, he inconvenienced at least three other people who were trying to browse that particular area while meaning business. If I had a measuring rule handy, I’d say he was a good five inches away from my mass-market edition paperback. And if I had a chronometer, it might have been at least three solid minutes of puerile inaction in regard to my paperback. Granted, the volume itself was somewhat misfiled, since it really belongs in the literature section . . .”
    “So?” said Sam, tearing himself from the addictive spigot of the straw and the beckoning icy mocha. “He was next to my trade paperbacks five minutes ago, sucking up air in literature, and I didn’t grab him then.”
    “Too bad, Mark—I mean, Sam,” I said. “You really should have. He was running off the mouth with that underdressed, underage female far too long. This is a bookstore, not a coffee dating joint. At least not until you turn the corner near the magazine racks and begin hearing galloping sounds of that—what you call it—Lady Kah—”
    “Gaga.” Sam corrected me.
    “Next fellow’s mine,” said Walter. “I’ll take him even if he’s just passing by the