It is currently 15:38 Pacific Time on Sun Mar 27 2005.
Currently the moon is in the waning Full Moon phase (84% full).
Currently in Saint Claire, it is a cloudy day. The temperature is 47 degrees
      Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the 
      northwest at 7 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 29.57 and rising, 
      and the relative humidity is 93 percent. The dewpoint is 45 degrees 
      Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius.)

Harp and Starling Bookstore, Upper Floors
The second floor, like the first, has plants scattered around the aisles.
      Fiction - fantasy, science fiction, horror, romances, and mainstream 
      fiction - populates the front half of the room. The back half, 
      conspicuously separated by a glass partition and devoid of plants, is the 
      rare and used book section.
On the third floor, the plants line the windows, but are not in evidence in
      either the sheet music section to the front, nor the instruction area in 
      the back, with several small practice rooms partitioned off. The middle 
      of the room displays a few intruments, including the harps which form 
      half the store's name.
Harp music sounds faintly from the third floor, on occasion. A staircase
      descends down to the first floor.

Nicodemus is thumbing through a book in the horror section upstairs, pretty
      much having the upstairs to himself this early on Sunday.
Gert slouches up from the first floor, bookbag hanging off her thin shoulders.
      She makes a beeline for the horror section, paying more attention to the 
      bookspines than to her fellow bookshopper.
Nicodemus isn't entirely oblivious to other people upstairs--mainly because it
      was just him until a few seconds ago and any disturbance is a noticable 
      disturbance. He looks up from the book in his hands, over his shoulder, 
      and at the woman coming up the stairs.
Gert, for her part, is preoccupied enough that she doesn't notice the skinny
      cop until she's in the same aisle with him. The sight of him gives her 
      pause for a moment, and then she offers a mumbled, "'Scuse me," and 
      squeezes past him toward the enormous section of books grouped together 
      under King, Stephen.
Nicodemus eyes you as you go past with that
      seen-you-before-but-can't-quite-place-who-you-are expression. "Hey," he 
      says, efficiently combining the do-I-know-you look with a one-word 
      response to your pardon. He's holding a book on vampires or some 
      similarly fanged creatures, if you judge a book by its cover art.
Gert looks back at the semi-inquiring word, her expression blank. She sees a
      cop. A short, skinny cop, sure, but it's not like she's any taller or 
      beefier than him, and a cop's a cop. She clearly doesn't remember running 
      into him before. "Hey," she replies, guardedly.
He apparently has a minor epiphany. "Forget where I ran into you before, but I
      remember the jacket," Nicodemus offers by way of introduction. "You read 
      any of King's stuff before?" he asks, careful so as to not immediately 
      offer an opinion about what may or may not be her favorite author.
Gert shifts her weight onto one foot, her gaze direct, her mouth unsmiling.
      "Yeah. My copy of _The Tommyknockers_ finally fell apart, though."
"The book any good?" Nicodemus asks quizzically, with the tone of someone who
      hasn't read the book. "The movie was bad enough that I wanted to gouge my 
      eyes out with a spoon."
Gert wrinkles her nose. "Ugh, yes. They fucked it /all/ up. The book's much
      better. Creepy, though."
Nicodemus nods in mute agreement as you talk. "Yeah, I heard that they
      constantly mess up the film versions. Probably the only one they ever got 
      right was Pet Cemetary, and that one wasn't quite as good as the book. 
      And then the sequel they made." He shakes his head in disbelief. "It was 
      so stupid it was comedy thirty minutes into the film."
Gert shifts her weight to the other foot. "_The Shining_ was good. Kubrick, go
      figure. And _The Shawshank Redemption_ was actually /better/ than the 
      story it was based on. _Stand By Me_, too." She smirks faintly. "King 
      movies are either shit or excellent. You ever seen _Storm of the 
      Century_? The miniseries?"
Nicodemus shakes his head negatively. "Haven't seen that miniseries. I'd
      honestly given up on King's books after I read 'It.' And then the TV 
      movie version of it. Ugh."
Gert purses her lips into a frown. "Too bad. He's actually a good writer, and
      he gets better. Especially now that he's moving away from straight 
      horror." She sniffs a bit. "D'you know, he's gonna be trying his hand at 
      adventure fiction? The old-fashioned pulp type stuff."
Nicodemus raises an eyebrow quizzically. "Really? It'll be interesting to see
      how he does outside his genre. But I really haven't read anything in the 
      way of pulp adventure fiction. Didn't he do something a while back.... 
      The Gunslinger?"
Gert chews absently on a thumbnail. "Yeah. He's almost done with that series,
      finally. Said he wasn't gonna do anything more afterwards, but I think 
      he's just one of those people who, y'know, have to do what they do."
"Oh, so it's something he did recently and not way back when he was first
      getting started with his writing career?" Nicodemus asks, genuinely 
      curious.
Gert rubs the back of her neck. "I think he did the Gunslinger /way/ back, when
      he was experimenting. But not when he was first starting writing, like 
      _Carrie_ or _Christine_. Then he did some others, then stopped for a long 
      time, and only just now is getting around to finishing the series." She 
      brushes a bit of hair away from her forehead and glances at the shelf. "I 
      ought'a re-read the old ones before I get to the new ones. It's been a 
      while, know what I mean?"
Gertrude and Officer Dalton are in the horror section, near the massive amount
      of Stephen King books.
Summer makes her way very slowly up the stairs, stopping for a moment at the
      top to steady her balance. She then slowly makes her way into the 
      fiction, studying a few books feature on the end of the fantasy and 
      sci-fi aisle. A bit pale and out of sorts, still, she takes down one of 
      the new hardcovers and looks it over without much real interest or energy.
Summer's name suits her well: the young woman has a fresh girl-next-door
      prettiness about her, a clarity of feature and a shine in her eyes. She 
      looks to be in her late teens. Her complexion is a little dusky, tanned 
      from long hours in the sun but not as dark as Latin skin. Long, wavy 
      chestnut hair falls nearly to her waist when loose, although she often 
      braids it. Her eyes are an interesting shade of hazel, bright and 
      intelligent, green mixing with gold and brown in the irises. Well-defined 
      features, a strong jawline, and a longish nose fall a little short of 
      beautiful by most standards. She's neither tall nor short at about 5'6", 
      her build willowy but not quite thin, and she is clearly a person given 
      to activity and motion. 
Slim, scuffed blue jeans descend to a flash of color at her feet: her trusty
      burgundy Doc Martens boots. A snug, faded black t-shirt with a graffiti 
      NOFX design on it reads, 'PUNK IN DRUBLIC' in lime green 
      decayed-typeface... and shows off willowy curves, where they can be seen 
      under her loose army-green (lined with orange) bomber jacket. She wears 
      no jewelry, and no makeup. Her long hair is tangled by the wind, hanging 
      loose to her lower back.
A reddish scab can be seen on one side of her jaw, a recent injury that looks
      it might be an animal bite of some kind. Several other marks and 
      scratches disturb the clean lines of her neck and throat, some 
      disappearing under her shirt.

From afar, to the room, Summer figures sci-fi and horror are next door as in
      most bookstores, so she's also on the end of your aisle, if that's OK?
From afar, to the room, Summer also negates anything in the desc that refers to
      happy and healthy, since she's obviously recovering from injury.

Nicodemus is holding what is essentially most likely a throw-away vampire
      horror novel in one hand while chatting with Gertrude. The pair, other 
      than the recently arrived Summer, are the only people on the second floor 
      at the moment. "I'd heard good things about the Gunslinger series, but 
      never got around to reading them. Are they really that good? Or is it 
      more along the lines of better-than-mediocre and backed by a horde of 
      loyal readers?"
Gert glances past Nicodemus to the obviously injured woman coming up the
      stairs, and her brow furrows slightly. "_The Gunslinger_ is really good," 
      she tells the cop, turning back to him. "He was stretching himself, 
      y'know? Like in _Eyes of the Dragon_. The others are good, but not /as/ 
      good. Like, well-written but not as different as the first one."
Summer glances down to them, her smile pallid and tentative. "Stephen King?"
      she asks, in a voice that would be mellow if not for a slight 
      scratchiness.
Nicodemus glances over his shoulder at the newest arrival, hesitates
      momentarily upon spying her obvious healing injuries, but then apparently 
      decides that discretion is the better part of valor--or politeness--and 
      doesn't bring the injuries up. "Um, yeah. King discussion. I'd always 
      thought of him as a hack with the exception of _The Shining_ and _Pet 
      Cemetary_." He turns back to Gert, "But I'm getting edjumakated." He 
      intentionally mispronounces the last word.
Gert's eyes flick back to Summer. She frowns, staring openly at the injured
      woman, obviously curious but too polite to ask. Nicodemus' wit prompts a 
      faint smirk from her as she shifts her weight back to the other foot. 
      "Dickens and Poe didn't get any respect from their contemporaries, 
      either."
"I'd compare him to Dickens, maybe," Summer murmurs, "but not Poe." One corner
      of her mouth turns up slightly. "I've never read Gunslinger, though... 
      it's good? I'm looking for something really distracting."
Though she wasn't looking to them at first, with the question the young woman
      lifts her head to look. "I'm not, I didn't mean to interrupt or anything."
Gert's brow furrows at Summer. She shrugs a shoulder. "Like I was telling, um,
      the officer here, it's a lot different from his normal stuff. More 
      serious, kinda artsy. Like _Eyes of hte Dragon_, which is total fantasy."
"Dalton. Nicodemus Dalton. And I'm sorry, but I've completely forgotten your
      name," he says to Gertrude.
"Gert," says the Chinese girl, giving her own name in the briefest way possible.
Summer essays a smile, fleeting. "Summer," she says quietly. "Nice to meet
      you." Putting the hardcover back on its shelf, she gestures to the area 
      around the K's. "D'you mind if I...?"
Gert nods quickly and steps aside to give Summer room to browse the Kings.
Nicodemus likewise steps aside to make room before resuming the conversation
      with Gert. "I'm not terribly interested in the pulp adventure genre, but 
      which of his horror or supernatural stuff would you recommend as being 
      genuinely scary?"
Gert has to think about this one and chews on her lower lip, brow furrowing. "I
      dunno. I mean, I don't get scared easily. Though I caught a cold halfway 
      through _The Stand_ and that freaked me out a lot." She smiles faintly, 
      just for a moment. "Honestly, I think his freakiest stuff is the stuff 
      that's, y'know, plausible. Like _Misery_. Or that short story in 
      _Different Seasons_, 'Apt Pupil'. I heard /that/ was a good movie, too, 
      but I haven't seen it yet."
Summer pulls out a copy of _The Gunslinger_, and wrinkles her nose. "That's the
      Nazi one, right?" she asks, glancing over her shoulder to Gert.
Gert nods to Summer. "Yeah, about the kid who blackmails the old Nazi." She
      looks back at Nicodemus. "Reeeally creepy. Like watching a train wreck."
Gert adds, "...In slow motion."
Summer winces, and begins looking through the book in her hands.
Nicodemus has disconnected.
Gert lets the conversation lapse. She manages to get a copy of _The
      Tommyknockers_ and then moves slightly to the side to skim over the 
      Koontz books.
Summer heads for the sci-fi aisle, taking _The Gunslinger_ with her and
      browsing a bit more.
Gert abandons Koontz and takes her King novel to an overstuffed chair for some
      pre-purchase reading.