Bargain Brautigan

She had ambitions and he had a wooden leg - a cheap one he found in a surplus store. On uneven pavements he keened like a warped record.

They met, as people sometimes do in stories like these, across a counter in a shop.

He passed a book down from the shelf.
'You're wasting your money. You'll never finish it. Nobody does.'
'I'll still try' she said, tearful.
A single drop fell from her eye, beaded its way down her face and came to rest on the collar of her shirt where it blossomed, darkly.

She looked as you might expect: chewed up and crumpled, sat upon by life.

As the door had rattled open she had come through scratching at a pad with an empty biro. In recent weeks she had started to plan each day in a series of bullets, etching them fresh onto a single page and crossing them through one by one.
No hour was wasted. No minute squandered. Each breath accounted for.

'Not to say that it's bad' he continued, hobbling down the ladder and pressing his weight on the wooden leg. It could take the strain. He could not.
'I hear it's the best we have on the subject'
He turned to offer her a smile: a cheap one, rumpled and stale from under use.

This was one of those harum-scarum shops you find, lonely and unloved on the far corner of the street. They stand there only to fill space or to block out the wind.
He wasn't used to the company, as you may have guessed.

In the afternoon light his face was a lattice work of wrinkles. Along the top, ginger hair beat a hasty retreat. Under his lips lurked teeth stained yellow as cowslips.
'We get a lot of returns is all.'
'Not from me', she said, clutching the book to her chest, 'not from me'.
She was certain.
'May I borrow your pen?' she asked, taking one which lay furled in a half-read newspaper.

She held it to her pad and struck another line through with a single gesture.

----

She passed him the money and fled from the shop, out into a waiting taxi.
Late Thursday and the sky was heavy like a hand grenade. The sun was a soft, departing smudge on the horizon. Darkness pushed its way out into the world, cutting roads and gathering in empty windows.

He drew his curtains and pulled the door shut, twisting the lock. The ghost of bones curled and flex. The old ache was returning. At the flick of a switch, lights turned out with a soft pop. He made his way upstairs.

Moving slowly out of town she pressed herself back into her seat, opening the book and leafing through to the first chapter.
YOUR CANCER AND YOU.
She began to read.