Fiction by Arya F. Jenkins

“Favorite Things”
         By Arya F. Jenkins

One of my favorite jobs in the early 90s was working parttime in the used book section of The Bookroom in Ithaca. The store’s wide front window overlooked the inside of a food court – which was entertaining, or distracting, depending on how you looked at it. The colorful view sometimes included that of the woman I was seeing, an electronic composer whose day job was as chef-owner of a little vegetarian stall in the food court and who, during breaks, would sashay past my window in some sleek, sexy outfit just to turn my head. If I had the wherewithal to knock on the window to let her know I’d glimpsed her curvy form – in a tight, black, sleeveless evening number with a naked back, a particularly stunning look she repeated, usually while I was listening to Coltrane’s soprano sax playing My Favorite Things, on an album I was as fixated on at the time as I was her – she would turn around and wink unabashedly at me over her shoulder before continuing her runway walk.

Surprise glimpses of the girlfriend were a top reason I loved my job. Another was that few people came into the used bookstore with its old but valuable cache over which I lorded, so I could listen to my heart’s content to my treasure trove of music, Miles Davis and Coltrane mostly, on the tape deck set on the corner of the big desk I sat behind. The tape deck belonged to The Bookroom owner, also a jazz lover, who supported my hard bop habit wholeheartedly and contributed his own stash to my collection.

When I got physically restless, I went to investigate the surrounding shelves of books and stacks. We had mostly nonfiction – books on art and dance, everything from 19^th century Farmer’s Almanacs to rare comic books; old sets of encyclopedias; works by Plato, Socrates, the whole Greek lot; as well as modern works by Hume, Sartre, Camus, and so on. The place was an intellectual field day so rich you could get up to stretch and find yourself riveted in a tiny corner over a cache of books it might take you all day to pore through – even if all you wanted was to run your fingers over their ancient, ornery covers and test their physical reliability.

Near the 6 PM closing time, as the food court started to empty, I walked through the store listening to music, wondering at the voices of long dead muses, philosophers and collectors commingling with Coltrane’s notes in the air, informing me in spite of myself of the magic of the legacies we leave behind that are always more intricate, lasting and permeable than we realize, and feeling awhirl in a mystical blend.

After getting out of college 10 years before, I’d worked as a journalist, examining cultural trends and events, and written then about subjects as diverse as liposuction and plastic surgery; the horrors incurred on animals in slaughterhouses; the slow erosion of the middle class; the scourge of AIDS; and the increasing cost of living and education in the U.S. Feeling overstuffed with information, desperate for a different path and a new spiritual diet to feed my creative impulses, I finally escaped to Ithaca, the most progressive city in the country, to avoid the money trap I saw closing in on me in one of the wealthiest counties in the world on the east coast and to explore more of what I really wanted – jazz, poetry, sex, mysticism and their interconnections, evolving my own kind of higher education. I found work at a bookstore and began teaching writing parttime at the local colleges. I wasn’t writing for prestigious publications or interviewing celebrities like before, but I definitely felt more laid back in the city’s artistic surroundings, doing more of what I pleased.

I had met Bonita at a free concert at Cornell up the hill two winters before the time of this story, Bonita, who wore her blond hair in a punk cut, very popular in those days, and was herself a kind of show. In the Big Apple, she had collaborated with renowned composers and put on a concert of her own whose so-so reception had crushed her high expectations to the extent she fled the music scene there and returned home to Ithaca, where her aging mother lived, and subsequently abandoned her first passion, music, for her second, cooking.

In Ithaca, it was Bonita who served me my first vegetarian meal, eggplant, her favorite, which I’m sorry to say made me vomit even before sampling. In my previous life running around doing interviews, I’d snacked perpetually on junk food – chips, McD’s, and Slim Jims – although I became someone who wanted to avoid meat altogether after the trauma of witnessing what took place in slaughterhouses. The mere sight of eggplant reminded me of the mutilated bodies of animals and, no matter what I told myself, I could not sever my associations or alter what seeing that item on a plate triggered in me. Bonita tried a second batch without tomato sauce, which elicited virtually the same reaction, so, no eggplant, but she introduced me to many other fine meat-free dishes and I became, like her, vegan.

My daily life was peopled by Bonita and those who came into the used-book section of the store, where I worked, either to pick up a text they had requested or wanting to order an obscure book in person. My clients, generally older, were discerning and comprised a small, loyal group I got to know fairly well.

One late afternoon a guy who looked to be in his early 40s, someone I did not know, appeared before me querying about a book whose title he knew only vaguely, explaining off the bat, he wasn’t really a reader, although the book was important, because of his wife. He was nervous, wringing his cap in his hands, the way beggars sometimes do in movies, with dark circles under his eyes and unkempt, greasy hair. His disturbed air and jittery eyes made me fully attentive to him at once.

The book he wanted was about grief, he said. His wife had read it after her mother died and had recommended it. The man, Hubert or Humphrey, said this was his first outing in a while because he was so busy at his farm and, since his wife had gone, the killing of pigs was now up to him. His wife had been much better at killing pigs than he was, he said, while still fidgeting with his cap, so I couldn’t help notice his fingernails densely rimmed with dirt.

“Pigs are so intelligent,” I said, both horrified and curious about what I was hearing. “May I ask what happened to your wife.”

“She had every kind of cancer you can imagine,” he said, “even though we worked outdoors, long hours, got up early every day. Never would have guessed it. She was a strong woman.”

“Who killed pigs,” I said, briefly flashing on our signed first edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, with its story of pigs’ intelligence, sociability and memory, which I might have proffered, although I thought better of it. I had read the book not long before and recalled how the pigs altered the Commandments: “no animal shall kill any other animal”; and another about how all animals are equal. What would a non-reader who killed pigs for a living do with that novel, I pondered.

“She could slit their throats in one swift move. Didn’t think about it, just one right after the other. I mostly took care of feeding. Now I’m doing both.”

“Parents and kids,” I offered.

“What’s that?”

“I meant to say, pig parents and their kids.”

“We don’t look at it that way. It’s hard for me not to say, we. This is the first time I’ve been out since she went,” he repeated. “But I remember her telling me about this book that was so helpful, so I figured I could ask for it, for myself.”

I wrote down the name of the book, whose author and publisher I would scout out later, sitting before the backroom computer. I told Humphrey or Hubert, I would order the book for him and took down his name and phone number.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said, “It must be very hard.”

A lump I could see rose in his throat and his eyes began their dance again. It was clear he wanted to say more or just cry in front of somebody. Maybe someone came in then, because I don’t recall exchanging with him any further.

I felt sorry for the guy and for the pigs too, thinking, what a bind to feel you must make a living this way. Next time he comes in, I thought, I’ll tell him, “why don’t you let yourself cry, Hubert. Go, stand in front of the pigs in their pen and weep with them for your loss. The loss of your wife and their loss of freedom, family and lives. Weep with them for all the killing in the world people do, thinking it’s just a part of life, excusing it, as if it was as ordinary an act as picking up a fork and knife.” But I never had the chance to tell him.

He never answered his phone when I called to let him know his book had come in and he never returned to the store to pick it up, at least while I was in it. He was probably so busy, he had no time to read, or couldn’t handle reading, what with all those pigs squealing and the memory of all the things his wife had done.

- Arya F. Jenkins’s stories and CNF have been featured in About Place Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cleaver Magazine, Fictive Dream, The Feminist Wire, The Nonconformist Magazine, Sinister Wisdom and many other publications and have received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, a collection of short stories, and a novel. Arya’s website is https://aryafjenkins.com/

Copyright©2026 by Arya F. Jenkins. All Rights Reserved.