She shook her head.
He started coming toward her, looking at me all the time.
“How ya doin‘, fuckhead?” he said.
It was the opposite of our little meeting the day I had flattened his tire. Now I was playing it mute and Jackie was doing the talking. “I sure wouldn’t want to have a place like this…all these valuable books… such a rough part of town. I hear there’re gangs who don’t do anything but go around smashing up places like this.”
When he was three feet away, he stopped and said, “There’s always a scumbag waiting to tear off a piece of your life.”
He was doing all the talking.
“Broken window… somebody throws a gallon of gas in at midnight. Poof!”
Then he opened his bag and took out the two books he had bought. I knew what was coming and couldn’t stop it. He had paid for the books: he had a receipt; the books were his.
He opened the Stephens, ripped out the 140-year-old map and blew his nose in it.
He ripped out two pages of the second volume and did it again.
He tore a page out of the $800 Maxfield Parrish, set it on fire, and lit the cigar the gunsel had been chewing.
“No smoking in here,” I said calmly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see your sign,” Jackie Newton said. He dropped the flickering page on the floor and stepped on it. Then he opened the Parrish and held it out, and the gunsel dropped his soggy cigar inside it. Jackie rolled the book up in his hands and passed it to me over the counter.
“You got a trash can?”
I took the book with two fingers and dropped it into the can.
They headed toward the door.
“Come again,” I said.
Jackie laughed as they went out. Miss Pride let out her breath. The scissors slipped out of her fingers and clattered on the floor.
“I recognized him too late,” she said. “I didn’t know who he was until I remembered his picture just now.”
“It’s okay.”
“Pretty expensive way to show his contempt, wouldn’t you say?”
“Depends on your perspective. He can afford it.”
“What a terrible way to use your money, though.”
I saw Jerry Harkness come to the window. Go away, I thought, I’m not in the mood for this.
But of course he wasn’t going away. He opened the door and came in. He had slicked his hair and put on a tie and he wore an electric blue blazer. He looked like the well-dressed man of Greenwich Village, Mr. Cool of 1968.
“You ready?”
Miss Pride got her coat and wrapped her neck in a scarf. Harkness shifted his weight back and forth. His eyes met mine and the cool image melted and flushed. He looked uneasy.
“Okay with you, Janeway?”
“Hey, I’m not her guardian. Just watch your step.”
We looked at each other again. What passed between us didn’t need words: it was sharp and unmistakable. We were both years away from puberty: we had those years and that experience and a male viewpoint in common. I knew what he wanted and he knew I knew, and I was saying
I faced a bleak evening alone. Happy Halloween, Janeway. A light snow had begun falling. Tomorrow, I thought, I’d mosey up the block and have a little visit with Mr. Harkness. I shelved that plan at once. Mind your own business, I thought: make her mad and she may just quit and go to work for him. But the night was dark and so was I. Newton had put me on the defensive, Miss Pride had put me on edge, and I didn’t know where to go to get a shot of instant light. I didn’t want to read, work, go home, or stay where I was. I was at one of those depressed times when nothing seems to help.
It was then that the door popped open and Rita McKinley walked into my life.
