Cup of Yup, All Foam No Content

As much as I love Barnes & Nobles and love the thought of spending my entire paycheck on a stack of towering books, rationality sometimes wins out and instead I opt to find an empty arm chair where I can sit down and thumb through the pages of a book without being forced to buy it.

Now there's nothing I like better than walking into my favorite bookstore as I greedily inhale the scent of fresh ink on paper combined with the lingering smells of every kind of coffee known to man at the in-house Starbucks, though it should be said that I don't even attempt to show my ignorance by ordering anything there. Grande mocha chocolata ya ya, if you get my drift here. How about just giving me a damn coffee without all the yuppie drama? It's all too much for me.

But the problem with having something so decidedly trendy encapsulated in my favorite place, is that it attracts the wrong crowd, packing the place with expensive coffee lovers rather than those that are there for the purpose of reading the written word. Which makes finding an empty arm chair extremely difficult at times.

After circling the store like a pacing tiger for thirty minutes - if not longer - I finally found an empty spot to cuddle up and call home, setting my plethora of books on the small circular table before me as I leaned back into the chair, tucking my legs up beneath me as if I were sitting in my own living room.

And it was like heaven. Mere minutes into the first few pages of the book I was completely absorbed, no longer hearing the music playing in the background, ignoring the smell of coffee wafting across the room, and completely oblivious to all around me. It was perfect bliss for exactly ten minutes.

With a brief flash of my eyes upward, I took silent note of a tall guy with shaggy brown hair eyeing one of the empty chairs that surrounded mine, all the while hoping he wasn't planning on sitting down.

Have you ever smelled anything that if you had to guess what it was made from, the answers might be something along the lines of dead tree, rotting plant, mushroom fungus or sickly fern? It's called Patchouli and from one who once wore it frequently in college, I can attest to the fact that the slightest little dab will more than do you for days. Something that Shaggy had evidently not been clued in on.

Unable to return to reading my book, I simply sat there trying my best not to breathe - well, at least not as often as my lungs would have preferred. Meanwhile my brain was silently shouting insults at the guy beside me. "It's perfume, not deodorant you idiot!" it raged, wishing there was a tub of soapy water it could douse him in before sending him on his way.

The good Lord however was looking over me, presenting me with his equally Patchouli loving girlfriend who in the loudest voice possible informed the entire store that she was feeling like a fish fry. Feeling? Try smelling, I thought. You smell like a dead fish left in the back-seat of a car for nine days. I coughed to hide my chuckle, and quickly made like I was scanning the pages of my book rather than listening in on their conversation.

With the worst fake French accent I have ever heard - and trust me, it was fake - she continued to whine for a solid ten minutes, as she went on and on about how hungry she was and how fish taste better if you eat it in house rather than take it home. I for one did not care where the hell she ate it, as long as she was leaving to do it. By this time, my nostrils felt like they were on fire and were sending direct commentary to my brain attempting to trigger my flight or fight response.

Checking my cell phone for the time, I was actually relieved to see that the checkout was in my immediate future and immediately set about gathering my books, both the ones I wanted and the ones I had decided to put back, as Cruella continued to rail on Shaggy, making me almost feel bad ... For a really short moment, until my nostrils took one last whiff good-bye. Forget that.

But I'm back to the city this morning with a lunch date at noon with an old friend that I haven't seen in over two years. I'm still trying to figure out if this is a good idea, but I am uncertain enough water has passed under that particular bridge to make it possible. I will leave however with an open mind.