No, not books by Jane Austen, though Jeffrey Larkin named his bookstore on Haight Street after Jane, his favourite author. When I shopped and worked at Austen, Jeffrey had two employees in the book shop and three more who ran a novelty shop down the street called Forma. One of the bookstore employees got in a motorcycle accident and I covered shifts for him in ‘91 and ‘92. Austen sold mostly used books, and a small selection of new books. Always fun. We all smoked at the time and smoked in the store, because we still could. We drank coffee that we bought from a shop across the street (Jeffrey taught me to drink mine without sugar because it brought out the bitterness in the coffee) and listened to a lot of Nina Simone and Nick Cave. (A lot of jazz, and blues, and the only music that was off-limits was anything related to the Grateful Dead. It was Haight Street and the element the Dead would bring into the shop was not desirable. We didn’t play any punk either, just because it wasn’t conducive to looking at books.)

I remember in winter, Jeffrey made sure customers took off their gloves to look at the books because ‘it’s impossible to look at a book carefully with gloves on.’ I still think of that when I go into a shop from the cold. And that he didn’t have to ask people of a certain age because they knew better.

Jeffrey died of a heart attack at age 51 or so in 1994. He was gay, but had been mostly celibate since his friends started dying of AIDS. I still dream of Austen Books and Jeffrey about once a year. The sublunary version of Austen was a narrow one-room affair (not counting store room and bathroom) of probably 800 square feet. He and a friend built the floor to ceiling shelves that ran the length of the store on both sides. The dream version of the store tends to be much larger – two rooms at least, with tables full of books as well as much lower shelves. High windows sometimes let in light from outside, and the hues tend to the lavender. It’s always good to talk a little with Jeffrey in these dreams.

Last night I dreamed of the shop again, but a young couple owns it now. They said that Jeffrey had moved on. I woke feeling very strangely about that. Insofar as I believe something of us lives on after we die, I hope that Jeffrey has reached a place that he wants to be.