There Will Be Blood

Robin Agnew

The Ann Arbor Art Fairs, which happen every year during four of the hottest and/or wettest days in July (often both, as in this year), take over our town. About 500,000 people come through the city for the 4 day event, bringing with them mayhem, dollars, and human interest galore (as well as art, or course).

We’re off the main path of the art fair which is actually a good thing – it gives us room to set up on the sidewalk right in front of our store (which wouldn’t be the case if we were on Main St.) and we’re between two of the larger parking structures in town. We hustle a ton of dollar books – every one we sell makes us a little happier, and our book load a little lighter.

Of course we also sell the books that cost more, inside the store, and lots of people have made us a stop, including artists who need good reading materials for booth sitting. We have one lovely family from Richmond, Va, who come every year – the parents are classics profs, and like historical mysteries, their daughter likes Harry Potter (she has 73 different editions of all the various installments), and the twin sons, majoring in math, love Deaver, Connelly, Lehane, Child and interestingly, David Hewson, an author that’s seemingly enjoyed by the whole family. This year I got the guys started on Robert Crais and the Dad on Elizabeth George, two authors I love hand selling, both because they’re terrific and because people always want more.

We had another man from Ohio who, like my husband, loves Kem Nunn. Any other Nunn-ites out there? You know who you are and you are few and far between. I got him started on Jack O’Connell, another fave of my husband’s. Another woman stumbled in, looking desperate – she demanded to know where the Asey Mao section was. Luckily I have been selling books long enough to lead her to the luckily large pile of Phoebe Atwood Taylor books we have. She found five she’d been searching for.

All day there’s a swarm of people walking by and buying dollar books – one very elderly golf enthusiast had to make sure the golf book we had on the dollar table was really a dollar. He then wanted to know where the REST of our golf section was. I was saddened to tell him – as well as another elegant, browsing man – that we only sold mysteries. The elegant browser left with a copy of Farewell, My Lovely.

Oh, and the blood? A elderly woman who lives up the street stumbled on the sidewalk and gashed her forehead open – I was struck by how nice people are, as two people walking by helped her staunch the blood with a towel I gave them, and while I called 911, the sub shop owners from down the street hustled over and brought her a bottle of water. They even helped me wash down the sidewalk after the ambulance took her away. And luckily, one of them is a med student so he didn’t gasp audibly (as I did, I could NOT be a doctor) when he saw the gash. “Oh,” he said kindly, “it’s just a little cut.” I think he’s going to be a great doc.