Not The End

Early this afternoon clerks at Borders Express bookstore sold several copies of the bestseller novel  The Help.

But the real help came earlier in the day when the book crew found out they had been given a reprieve.

Their bookstore will stay open until at least the end of the year.

“It came through early this morning,” said Mary Davis, Borders’ corporate communications spokeswoman in Ann Arbor, MI. 

The bookseller renegotiated the terms of the store's lease and will stay open through at least the end of the year, Davis said.

Store Assistant Manager Kendra Barnett and employeess Dale Dyer and Kerry Breymann were rejoicing.

So were customers. All the chatter at the cash register was about the store staying open.

The best response came from an older woman who looked like she might have been a librarian, Dyer said.

She shook loose an emphatic “YEAY.”

Barnett, a 12-year- veteran of the store, came to work today expecting it would be a replay of yesterday.

“Yesterday we were saying, ‘We’re so sorry we are closing,’” Barnett said.

Customers have been so loyal to the store, she said.

Some of the most loyal customers have been local schools including Swampscott High School.

First thing this morning she was prepared to call the school with the bad news, since the school depends on the bookseller to stock titles on summer reading lists.

It was a call she is glad she did not have to make.

Breymann said she has been through a bookstore closing before, in Lexington in 2010.

It feels like a piece of your heart is being torn out, she said.

Borders closed about 200 stores earlier this year as part of its bankruptcy arrangements. Late last week it announced that 51 more stores were closing, the Swampscott store among them.

Every customer spoken to outside the store over the weekend reacted to the news of the store’s apparent closing in the same way.

They lamented the prospect of having to travel a greater distance to find a bookstore.

They lamented the prospect of losing the Swampscott store staff’s reading recommendations.

They lamented seeing another bookstore shuttered.

Tuesday brought relief.

The promise: They can browse, chat and buy books here for another six months.

“We are so grateful,” Barnett said.