The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, and Leo Wyatt, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc.

This story takes place just before Season 5, right after Paige has quit her job at the social services agency. If she actually quit during the first episode of Season 5, please forgive the writer with no long-term memory.

July 15, 2002

She came in today, the kind of sexy free spirit I cannot keep from wanting, and oh I'm going to have to pour a lot of words into this journal to keep from saying anything to her. I know what Kara would say: "It's the 21st century! It's San Francisco, for God's sake!" Well, the fact that I happened to be born in a town with a lot of weirdos doesn't make me any more eager to flaunt my own weirdness.

Because it is weird. Let's face it. The vast majority of the people in the world desire members of the opposite sex. When you're different from the vast majority of the people in the world, you are by definition abnormal. And you can stand around chanting, "Say it loud, abnormal and proud" for days on end, but that doesn't make you normal. It only makes you an embarrassment to the rest of us.

All right, I'm not focusing on her. That's the point. Write the feelings out, maybe they'll go away. I had logged and brought down a few of the books from the second floor to shelve when the door opened. That stupid bell above it that usually makes a kind of clunk sang out like a chime, and I swear a gust of cool fresh air came in with her. "Hi, can I speak to the manager?"

"I'm she," I said. "I'm the owner, Eileen Temple. If it's about the lease, the check literally went into the mail last night."

"Oh, no, I don't want money," she said, and then chuckled. She has a contralto voice, melodious, with a wicked laugh. "Well, actually, I guess I do. I saw the 'Help Wanted' sign in your window?"

"Oh, yes." I'd practically forgotten I'd put it there. "Lately people have just been walking by it like it doesn't exist. I had some help before that, people who would stay on for a couple of weeks and just – leave. I would – Could you stay? I mean, I'd like to have you, to have someone who could be depended on – "

I don't know how long I babbled like this. She watched me with a little smile. Her skin is fairer than mine, that doesn't happen often. Her hair is dark red, worn in a careless full swirl. I always wondered if red hair would work on me, but I know if I tried it I'd wind up coloring my black hair purple or something.

She finally put me out of my misery. "Yeah, I'm looking to stay for awhile. I'm in between jobs right now. Kind of a voyage of self-discovery, you know?"

"Well, I've heard of the concept. Do you have any retail experience?"

She told me – apparently she pretty much put herself through college, mostly working tables, but working as a cashier in some places too. Her schedule is flexible, and minimum wage fine with her.

"It must be an inexpensive voyage of self-discovery," I said.

"Well, I'm not really the main source of income at home, which is – probably just as well." She sounded both rueful and droll.

"Oh," I said. "What does your husband do?"

She looked into my eyes for just a moment, and I know she knew, she knew how my heart dropped as I asked the question. Why didn't she just walk out? Why didn't she tell me, "My God, I haven't even signed the W-4 form and you're already sexually harassing me!" Why didn't she say, "Lady, if I touched you, you'd turn into a block of ice, so why even think about it?"

She just said, "I'm not married. I live with my sisters. One of them owns P3, the nightclub?"

I could only smile and shrug.

"Well, it's successful. And my other sister is Ask Phoebe, the Bay Mirror advice columnist."

"Sounds like you have a lot to live up to."

"You have no idea."

I pulled out the application and W-4 form and got her started filling them out at the little reading table, reading her name upside down as she wrote it. Paige Matthews. "Do you know anything about romance novels?"

"Not much. What I know I got from my friend, Luisa Ramirez. Maybe you know her, she used to work next door?"

"Oh, yes, Luisa was a regular. She came in at least once a week and bought two or three books. I was one of the first people she told when she got engaged."

"Yeah, she has about a million books from this place, I think."

"I miss her. She was so cheerful, showing pictures of her fiancé – "

" – which made it perfectly understandable why she needed the romance novels – "

My laugh just burst out of me, I couldn't help it. "Hey, Luisa adores that man."

"Yeah, she thinks he's a hunk."

"I've heard of a woman wanting a caveman, but I've never known one to take the expression so literally before."

This time she laughed, surprised, the way people are when they figure out that I actually have a sense of humor. I asked how Luisa's doing, and she said not too well – she just called off the marriage. I can't believe it! It was so close, she'd quit her job, had the final fitting on her wedding dress.

Paige said it was definitely strange. "She couldn't really give a reason. Just said something about not deserving to be so happy."

I shook my head and sat down at the table with her. "It's hard to keep a relationship going. There was a married couple who used to work here, filed for legal separation a couple of months after they started. The man who helps me with the bookwork just broke up with his girlfriend."

She raised her hands off the table sharply, as if it were hot. "Sounds like the place is cursed!"

She laughed, but she gave me a direct inquiring look, and I swear I almost spilled all of it right there – the shriveling client base, the employees who seem to grow discontented or depressed within weeks after starting here, the struggle to keep going when businesses right next door are flourishing, the downhill slide after several years of success. I almost got tears in my eyes.

But of course you can't do that. I stood and told her, "This is a romance bookstore, not an occult shop. When can you start, Miss Matthews?"

"Oh, please, Paige. I can start today, if you've got anything for me to do."

I looked over the application. I'm only five years older than she is. We're so different, she probably thinks I'm an aged fuddy-duddy.

I gave her the tour around the shop. The small area where we keep the brand-new books as loss leaders, and the rest of the store where we sell the used books that pay her salary and, with luck, mine. The back office, the alley entrance. The upstairs area, so far behind in the inventory there, I think that's what I'll get her started on tomorrow. Our internet sources of old and rare books, and our own website where we take orders, how we fulfill those and ship them. She's very bright, quick to learn. She really wouldn't need to be working for minimum wage at a failing bookstore. I have the feeling she'd be good at anything she turned her hand to.

I have to stop thinking about her hands, her mouth. The way a strap of her camisole dropped off her shoulder and she didn't even seem to care, not adjusting it for at least ten minutes. If I think about her I'll want her, and I can't want her. It's abnormal. And she wouldn't want me. And even if she did, I don't deserve to be that happy.

July 18, 2002

This may actually work out! I was afraid I'd bother her or be too distracted to work around her, but she spends most of the day upstairs listing the books from the big donation for the inventory, while I do the internet orders and greet every customer who comes in. Then every once in a while, she comes down, so pretty and funny, just something to look forward to.

The first time she came down today she asked for a match, and I told her there was no smoking anywhere in the store. She laughed and said she didn't smoke. "I'm trying to burn a couple of white candles up there, and they keep going out."

"I don't think it's the best idea to burn candles around several thousand old paperback books. Why do you want to?"

"Oh, you know, a nice smell. White candles are for peace, purification – "

"I don't think it'll work. I tried to burn incense down here a couple of months back, you know, establish more of a romantic atmosphere. It would never stay lit. If you're trying to drive away evil spirits, I guess we'll just have to walk around with smoking sage."

She was surprised (of course). "You know about burning sage? Are you a Wiccan?"

"Oh, no, not really. Although – " Well, I told her about the occult shop I'd actually thought of opening, how I dismissed the idea once I decided that a romance bookstore would be a more certain money-maker. And I had to tell her, "The very fact that I'm interested in the subject makes me a little nervous. There's a voice in my head that tells me it could only lead to evil."

Her lips parted, she started to say something, stopped. Then she said, "You have a lot of those kinds of voices in your head, don't you?"

"When your voyage of self-discovery ends in a psychiatry license, feel free to ask that kind of question. Until then – " I pointed to the staircase.

She laughed. "Yeah, you're right, totally fair." She started for the staircase, grabbed the railing, then leaned back, her body at an angle to the stairs.

"Except," she said, "if those voices keep telling you that everything you love naturally is evil, you might want to ask yourself how really angelic those voices are."

She swung herself back toward the railing and started up the stairs. I deliberately turned back to the computer, so that I wouldn't watch her climbing in her short skirt.

When did I begin to fear everything about myself so much? Oh, hell, I always did. When the store got successful I started feeling more self-confident, that's all. With the shop failing, I can't help feeling that it's me, something fundamentally wrong with me.

If I can keep focused on the intellectual content of the issues Paige raises, and ignore the humor and intelligence and easy sensuality of the person raising them, well, this whole thing might work out.