Booked to die

I went to a fast-food joint and brought back some sandwiches. We ate together in the front room. She was very hungry, and it didn’t take long and she didn’t say much. Personal questions were put on a back burner. Now there was just the job: the work finished and the work yet to come. She was relentless. When she spoke it was to make suggestions about color schemes and decorating and what the walls would need. “Are you going to do art as well as books?” she asked. When I told her I believed in learning one difficult trade at a time, she said, “Then you’ll need a picture for that wall, not for sale, for show.” The interest she took was personal and real, and by midafternoon I found her promise coming true: I was beginning to wonder what I’d have done without her.

At three o’clock I looked up and Peter was standing in the door. “I got a box of sports books, Dr. J.” They had all taken to calling me that, taking their cue from Ruby. I went through his books and bought about half. I bought with confidence and paid fair money. I knew what I wanted and nothing else qualified. I would buy no book that had a problem: no water stains, no ink underlined. I set a standard that still holds: if one page of a book is underlined, that’s the same as underlining on every page; if the leather on one volume of a fine set is chipped, the whole set is flawed. I would have only pristine copies of very good books. I would do only books of permanent value, not the trendy cotton-candy junk that’s so prevalent today. I paid Peter out of my pocket and reminded him that Hennessey still wanted to see him about Bobby Westfall’s death. “I don’t know nuthin‘ about that,” he said, and went on his way.

When I turned back to my work, Miss Pride was standing there. “I’m not sluffing off, you know. I wanted to see how you bought these things. I’m going to be your buyer someday, so you might say this is my first lesson. Why did you buy these and not something else? Why pass up the Jane Fonda book? I thought that was an enormous seller.”

I sat beside her on the floor and went through them book by book. Some of it Ruby had told me. Baseball books are all wonderful, Dr. J. Football books are a waste of paper. For some reason baseball fans read and football fans drink beer and raise hell. Basketball sucks and hockey can be slow. But always buy golf books, any damn golf book that comes through the door will sell. Buy anything on horses or auto racing. Buy billiards and chess, the older the better, but don’t ever buy a bowling book. On my own, I added this: a good biography on Jackie Robinson is worth ten books on Joe Namath. Robinson’s story had conflict and drama and racial tension, not to mention baseball. It would still be interesting a hundred years from now.

And as for the Jane Fonda Workout Book, phooie! There are two distinct kinds of book people, best-seller people and the others. Sometimes they cross over, but usually a best-seller like Jane Fonda or Dr. Atkins lives and dies on the best-seller list. Every single person who wants one gets it while it’s hot: six months later you can’t give them away.

We worked on toward evening. I could see she was getting tired, but I was just coming into my second wind. Every so often she’d come out and stretch, then go back in for another hour. She asked if Mr. Seals was planning on coming tonight. I said I didn’t know: Mr. Seals came and went according to his own whim. That night Mr. Seals did not come. At eight o’clock I told her to go home: I’d stay and putter around a little more. She said she’d stay and putter with me. We ate a late supper, delivered, and I pushed on to eleven o’clock. 1 could’ve gone another three hours, but it’s no fun working with a zombie. She was making a heroic effort, however, for a dead person.

“Come on,” I said, “I’ll drive you home.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t have to. But it’s midnight and you’ve worked hard and this is East Colfax Avenue. Get your stuff and let’s go.”

“Well the fact is, Mr. Janeway, you’re embarrassing me. I have no home. There’s no place to drive me to.”

“Then where are you staying?”

“At the moment I’m, um, between things.”

“What the hell are you doing, sleeping in the park?”

“I hadn’t quite decided yet, for tonight.” She went into the back room and fetched the little valise she’d been carrying. “The fact is, I just got to Denver an hour before I turned up on your doorstep. I got here with five dollars and spent half of that in the Laundromat. That’s how I found out about you—there was an old newspaper there from Sunday. Fate, Mr. Janeway.”

“Well, Miss Pride, tonight you sleep in a good bed.” I reached for my wallet.

“No you don’t, I’m not taking any money for this. I told you—”

“Pardon my French, Miss Pride, but bullshit.”

“I want a job, sir, not day wages.”

“Day wages would look pretty good to me right now if I had two bucks in my pocket. Besides, nobody works for me free, not now or ever. So take the money”—I shoved $60 in her hand—“and we’ll go find you a motel.”

“I will take it, then, but only if you agree that it’s a loan against wages.”

“Don’t push me, Miss Pride. You’ve been real good today; don’t try to back me into a corner at the last minute. Now let’s button it up and get out of here.”

It had been a good day. We had gone from strangers to those first halting steps into friendship. We had sat on the floor and broken bread together, which is a fairly intimate thing: we had talked about books and points, and about hope. What we didn’t know about each other would fill its own book: what we did know was a simple broadside. I sure liked what I did know. I liked her. She brought out something I had never felt before, an unexpected sensation of paternity. I felt suddenly responsible for her welfare.

The motel we found was a few blocks from the store: she’d be able to walk back and forth easily. I gave her a key so she wouldn’t have to wait on the sidewalk in the morning, and I went into the motel and paid her up for a week.