That's The Way (A Riddle)

This was a season of fog and more fog, sometimes misting into rain. You went out there early, all socked in, the streets black with wet, and the sky was so close you breathed cloud. The car windows were obscured with droplets and the cypress next to the sidewalk let loose fat showers that felt warm and sticky. You wore a stiff waterproof overcoat and a rain hat, but the ends of your long hair curled and frizzed; there was no way to escape the fog.

Parking was tough in this city and twice a week the street sweeper came through, its muted hazards blinking, followed by a traffic cop who'd leave a forty dollar ticket under your wiper blade if you hadn't moved your car. Only a few people who made it home early found a great spot and didn't have to run out to the street in the morning to find a new one. The rest of the neighbors, like you, drove off to wait in a coffeeshop, damp and sweating over a bagel, trying not to count the minutes until the hours they were paid to be inside somewhere.

Inside for you was the bookstore, and every morning, after driving across town and parking your car, you opened the place and hauled three heavy wheeled carts packed with books out to the sidewalk that fronted the store. On misty days you covered the books with large plastic tarps which you bungeed down so the mist wouldn't creep in and warp the pages. Even the regulars you counted on to sell their used books didn't come out on foggy days because the weather was so discouraging. When it was slow like this, you bought every book you could possibly buy and even some that might be questionable in hopes that simply having them would drum up business. In this season, something seemed better than nothing.

But your main source of income came from the few hot titles, brand-new hardcovers that flew off the front display for a few weeks and then died. You rearrange them now, these new titles, wondering why the publishers chose so many ugly gray-blue covers with blurry nondescript photos of faces on them. No matter how you organize the books, they never look enticing.

Still, though, sometimes in the afternoons the fog would lift a little, just enough to make you think the sun would finally come through, and when this happened more people would stop to admire the books displayed in the windows. And just when things seemed like they were looking up the fog would settle in again and the sun would retreat, first looking like a flashlight with weak batteries, then spreading to something less distinct, a broad area of brighter fog that seemed lit from within.

Q: What quality of something is better than nothing?