“The Bottle Imp”
Mark and Donny were camped out on the sidewalk. A large older woman in a wheelchair parked herself across from them. I'd met her before but forgotten her name,
I stopped to chat. The woman said my hair appeared as if I just woke up. She liked it. I told her I hadn't combed my hair in over 30 years. We all laughed at that, but it was true. I said, “I don't need no stinkin' combs and Mark guffawed because I knew he knew The Treasure of the Sierra Madre reference.
It was a Sunday afternoon and scorching again—90 degrees and above forecast for the next several days.
I noticed Mark had a new backpack, a real back country rig that was three times the size of his previous ones. He said a clerk at the liquor store gave it to him.
A soiled paperback rested near Mark. It wasn't a volume in the Dune Chronicles. I couldn't make out the title and asked Mark about it. It was a collection of supernatural tales by Robert Louis Stevenson. Mark listed some of the stories and I'd never read any of them, although I had read all of Stevenson's classic novels.
Mark broke into a rhapsody over one particular tale—“The Bottle Imp.” He ripped into a summary of the plot and I had difficulty following, but it dealt with a poor man who buys a magical bottle that contains an imp that grants wishes. But the imp imposes conditions of ownership with the bottle and if the possessor doesn't abide by them, then welcome to an eternity in hell.
I asked Mark where he'd discovered the book. He told me he'd rescued it from the bookstore's recycling bin, just as he had done with a hundred-year-old copy of Ivanhoe a year ago.
Mark asked me if I wanted to the read the book after he did. Yes!
I asked Donny and Mark if they needed anything for the heat. The were out of cigarettes and I inexcusably didn't have any pipe tobacco on me.
At the liquor store I forked over $24.50 for two packs of Lucky Strikes. Mark and Donny thanked me when I handed them over. Walking home, I considered the story of “The Bottle Imp” and what one wish I would make should the opportunity presents itself.
The next morning I was walking the neighborhood a little before seven. Passing the bookstore, I heard someone call my name from the deck of the bookstore, a deck crammed with shelves of weather beaten books that typically died on the $1 table or ended up truly dead in the recycling bin.
It was Mark! He was nestled in his sleeping bag on the deck. What a bizarre sight it was seeing a homeless man and bibliophile sleeping on the deck of a bookstore surrounded by books. It occurred to me that is was most likely the only scene of its kind in the history of American homelessness and American book reading and I had an editorial duty to document it in some fashion.
I said hello to Mark and he roused from his slumber and sat up in his sleeping bag. He then launched into another rhapsodic review of “The Bottle Imp” and said he was surprised how much he'd forgotten since his last reading decades ago. I had to read the tale and I told Mark as much and also to hurry up and finish the damn book!