Bookman's promise

I thought the pause was long enough to be significant. He coughed again and said, “What grapevine did you hear that through?”

“Oh, you know…here and there. The main question is whether it’s true.”

This time the pause was long enough to be halftime at the Rose Bowl. After a while I said, “Dean? You still with me?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Just trying to think what I might have. We got a lot of books here, pal. I gave up long ago trying to keep track of it all.”

“I don’t think you’d have any trouble keeping track of this stuff. You got a rare book room, I imagine you’d know what’s in it, right? I mean, this isn’t like the two million books you put out on the open shelves.”

“Easy for you to say. You got two million books?”

“Hell no, thank God.”

I waited. I heard the sound of a cigarette being lit. I heard him blow smoke. “Where you calling from?”

“I’m on the road. Trying to decide if it’s worth my time and energy to come all the way out to the coast.”

“And you’re a serious buyer, right?”

“Serious enough to make your day.” I decided to lie a little for the cause. “Maybe your month, if you’ve got what I want.”

“We might still have something, I’m not sure.”

Still? A damned significant word, I thought. He said, “I’ll have to check and call you back. What’s your name?”

Screw it, I thought: let’s see where this goes. “Cliff Janeway.”

“The guy in Denver?”

“I can’t believe how that story got around.”

“Yeah. You’ll have to tell me who the hell your press agent is.”

“His last name’s luck. First name’s dumb.”

“I could use some of that.”

“Maybe you’re having it right now, Dean,” I said with a nice touch of arrogance.

“Yeah, we’ll see. I’m sure you know if I did have something like that, it wouldn’t be at any dealer’s prices. I wouldn’t want you to come all the way here thinking there’d be a lot of margin in a book like that.”

“I’m used to that. I didn’t pay a dealer’s price in Boston, either.”

“Okay, so where are we? You want to call me back?”

“Yeah, sure. You say when.”

“How about tomorrow, about this same time.”

“You got it. Good talking to you, Dean.”

I hung up and sat there quietly, thinking about it.

About ten minutes later the phone rang. When I answered it, nobody was there.

Actually, somebody was there. For a moment I could hear him breathing, then he covered the phone to cough. And there was that faint hum on the line.

Dean.

My new old buddy, Dean Treadwell. The last of the good old boys, checking up on me.

Now he knew I’d been lying. I wasn’t on the road at all, was I?

I heard the click as he hung up the phone. The hum went away and the line went dead.

It was now twilight time, the beginning of my long nightly journey through the dark. For the moment the Treadwell business had played itself out. I didn’t want to leave it there, but there it sat, spreading its discontent. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to call a friend, catch a movie, do a crossword puzzle. I sure as hell didn’t want to sit in a bar full of strangers as an alternative to Erin d’Angelo’s luminous presence. When all else fails I usually work on books, but that night I didn’t want to do that, either.

In fact, I didn’t know what I wanted. I seemed to have reached a major turning point in my life as a bookman. I look back at that time as my true watershed, more significant than even the half-blind leap that had brought me straight into the trade from homicide. Today I believe I was shaped by that entire half year. Even then I sensed that I was moving from my common retail base into something new, yet for most of my waking hours I had doubts that I would ever get anywhere. This must be what a writer goes through when he’s groping his way into a book. I think it was Doctorow who said that about the writing process—it’s like driving a car across country at night and all you can ever see is what’s immediately in your headlights, but you can make the whole journey that way. Maybe the book