I stopped my travels suddenly to take over the shop. I had been in the city for three days and spent most of the second one talking to the previous owner over the thick steam of hot coffee between stacks of books, some teetering dangerously and some perfectly aligned. "They need to go on the shelves," he said, "but I haven't been able to put them away. They pile up and wait, wait, wait, unpurchased and lingering like they know my weakness. I can't run the shop anymore," he said.

I liked the smell of it. The faded scent of pages and ink, dusty cloth covers, and in one corner, vanilla. Sweet clean musky vanilla, unmistakable. I stopped in front of a section of newer books which smelled like oranges and down further, where I found Poe, Dickens, Browning, strangely Doyle, it smelled sweet and heavy, cloying and only passingly familiar like I had walked by the source in the past but never looked at it.

I looked at the man's old face through the steam of our drinks, his glasses slightly fogged and I nodded. Help, I thought, I can help here for a time before I go on. I always need a quick job, a throwaway job to replenish the pocket money.

Back in my car that evening, I stretched in the back seat and looked at the bit of sky through my window, parked in an abandoned lot without lights, but still so few stars were out. The longer I stared the more stars should come out, surely, but still so few stars. I was unused to such a black sky at night, even from the other cities I slept in. I wished the weather was nicer. I would sleep outside if it were.

I'm working at the shop still now as I tell this story to myself. I dust the counters and check the nooks and crannies for books left off the shelves, out of place, for trash left by those customers I hate that come in for the oddity and buy nothing. Those that buy anything do so out of guilt. Something about the way I look behind the counter, reading, I suppose. I've been wearing the old man's glasses and found that for all their thickness, they seem to be a very slight prescription, if any at all.

The stars twinkled and multiplied behind my closed eyes as I tried to sleep. The smell of the book store was still in my nose. I don't know if I dreamed when I slept; I'm sure I did.

They say you always dream. How do they know, I wonder. I picture, then and now, men with wild untamed hair and glasses pinching their noses, white lab coats and scribbled notes on clip boards. Scurrying around a lab, filled with strange equipment like octopuses, so many arms reaching out to touch the sleeping heads of men and women, children and babies, all in an unnaturally natural sleep. The metal arms reaching out with buzzes and clicks but touching their foreheads with such delicacy ill-fitting a machine. The heart is maybe a lighted globe, different colors as different dreams filter in. A young girl comes in at dusk once to volunteer - there are always volunteers for the undoubtedly false promise of a night of perfect sleep - and the men smile and nod and usher her to a bed. She is precocious and careful in her movements; she lays herself down making sure her nightgown is straight and decent.

She sleeps and maybe there are no colors. What would the men do? They look at each other, and she sits looking at them. One steps forward and gives her another injection, not clear like the drugs to bring sleep but a cloudy blue, and her head falls forward. She is asleep in a way. They bundle her up and put her in another room, and when she wakes she thinks she has fallen asleep outside of a closed store, and wonders why she couldn't find the dream watchers.

Sometimes I imagine the cloudy blue liquid puts her to sleep in a way and she never wakes up. I try not to think about that. I don't like the idea that the dream watchers could do that even though they do nothing of their own volition but at my whim. Could it be that sometimes I imagine I could do that, I wonder.