Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 9/25

Now that the weather has cooled I will be setting up shop occasionally outside the Dolphin Gym at 24th Avenue and 86th Street. It looked like a bad decision for the first two-and-a-half hours today, then Donna came along and bought A Hitch in Twilight. As soon as I said the stories were inspired by the work of Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling, she was hooked. This broke a 49 day drought in sales of my own books. It is copy 100 of Hitch, counting five web sales, two of which were Kindle. For some reason I almost always sell one of mine there, and few of any other books, the exact opposite of other spots. And to show what a fluke a street sale is, how it's a matter of the right person at the right time passing, Donna lives in Williamsburg, an hour-and-a-half train ride away. She was in the neighborhood to get her haircut. Her stylist, a Malaysian woman, lost her job when her shop closed. It used to cost Donna $150. Now the woman charges her only ten, and Donna tips her thirty. And it is well worth it - her hair looked great. The stylist and her husband work long hours, as their child has Spina Bifida.
Donna grew up dyslexic. When she was a sophomore in high school her dad took her to an Evelyn Wood speed reading clinic. I don't know if the business still exists. Ads for it used to run regularly on the radio. It worked like a charm for Donna. She earned a Masters and now reads five books a week! "You should see the looks I get from people who see me reading," she said. In the winter she goes to an independent bookstore near Broadway-Lafayette in Manhattan, buys coffee and sits there for hours, reading. And her taste is exquisite, when I offered her other books as a gift, she chose John Milton's Paradise Lost and Henry David Thoreau's On Walden Pond. Thank you, ma'am. It's so odd. I'm not religious, but every time I sell one of my books I'm so grateful I'm tempted to drop to my knees and make the sign of the cross.
I'm shocked the Giants beat the Eagles, who have had their number for a long time. I was expecting a blow out the other way. Given the free agent losses the team incurred and the season-ending injuries it has suffered, I doubted they would win more than six games this year. I thought: "So what?" After all, I've seen them win three championships since 1986. It's only three games into the season, and the NFL's power structure seems to change every few weeks, but right now it looks as if I over-rated the Eagles, who I expected to waltz to the division title and perhaps the Super Bowl. Michael Vick haters must be in heaven.
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