We ate in silence for a moment. Then she said, “Tact is not one of my strong points. If you were still a policeman, I guess I’d have to tell you, wouldn’t I? You can find out if you want: your friend Mr. Hennessey knows.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Good. And really, it’s no big deal. I’m just very… very… private. I value my privacy more than anything but my freedom.”
“Hey.” I held up both hands in a gesture of mock surrender.
The phone rang: the recorder kicked on. It was another dealer, in San Francisco, asking if she still had the first edition
“You’ve got your phone amplified all over the house?” I said.
She nodded. “That way I can weed out the pests. The answering machine puts a buffer between me and the world; the amplifier lets me know if it’s someone I want to talk to now. But I never get calls that can’t wait.”
“Not even George Butler the Third,” I said with false awe.
“George is a very large pain. I don’t know why I fool with him.”
“You know what I’d like to have?” I said suddenly. “Your Steinbeck, with the penis doodle.”
She laughed, the first time I’d seen her do that. “ ‘Tom Joad on the road.’ It’s one of my favorite books. Very expensive for that title.”
I felt my throat tighten. “How expensive?”
“If you’ve got to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Seriously, you don’t have to buy anything. I don’t charge admission up here.”
I took out my checkbook and tapped it lightly on the table.
Her eyes narrowed and got hard. “Fifteen hundred,” she said.
The knot in my throat swelled, but I began to write the check.
“Make it twelve,” she said. “I usually don’t give or ask for discounts, but I will this time. Make it payable to Greenpeace.”
I blinked at her. “Greenpeace?”
“Do you want me to spell it for you?”
“Greenpeace,” I said dumbly.
“Greenpeace gives me a reason to get up in the morning.”
I handed her the check. “Oh, I’ll bet you have at least a thousand very good reasons for getting up in the morning, Miss McKinley.”
She blushed when I said that. She really did. I felt a flush in my own cheeks. It had been a long time since I’d tried playing the gallant.
“So,” she said, going for more coffee, “you’ve just bought your first really nice book and paid retail for it. What are you going to do with it?”
“Gonna sell it.”
“Good for you. You think there’s any margin?”
“For something like this, there’s always margin.”
“You know, Mr. Janeway, I really do think you’re going to turn out to be a good bookman. You already know what sometimes takes people years to learn.”
“Which is…?”
“When you buy something unique, and pay twice what it’s worth, it’s a great bargain. It took me a long time to learn that. Some people never learn it. George Butler never has. Now it’s the only way I operate.”
“That’s fine if your pockets are deep enough.”
“That does help. It’s hard making it from scratch in the book business.”
“Tell me about it.”
Please tell me about it, I thought. We were going nowhere fast, on an endless merry-go-round of polite tea talk. I needed a breakthrough, something to batter down the walls she had built around herself. I had a hunch that if I walked out of there without finding that key, she’d never let me come back. There was something at work between us, and it was good but it wasn’t all good. I couldn’t get a handle on any of it. I knew she was curious about me but she’d never ask: by refusing to talk about herself, she had given up that right. I could see that if there was any opening up to do, I’d be the one to do it. Slowly I turned the talk to my childhood. She listened intently and I was encouraged to go on. It became very personal. Suddenly I was telling her things I had never told anyone.
