Bookman's promise

trade was like that. I had always been a slow learner, but already there had been wondrous moments when suddenly I understood, after months of plodding, some tiny piece of the enormous world I had come to. A-ha! A hit of knowledge! A leap of faith so striking that it sometimes took my breath away.

This was never greater than in those two weeks of 1987. I had bought the Burton, which I now know was the catalyst. Millie, my gal Friday, was off on vacation and I had been forced into the annoying business of minding the store. Richard Burton had fired me up and old Mrs. Gallant had stirred me up, but on a conscious level all I had was the annoying hunch that I might work till dawn; that, and how I’d explain to Dean why I’d lied to him, when I called him tomorrow.

My working domain was normally the back room, but in my solitude I wanted to be where I could at least see the lights of the street. I brought up my stuff and sat at the counter, but I couldn’t get my mind into it. I stared at my reference books and for a long time I just sat there and waited for my mood to change.

The book world was very different then. In 1987 it was real work to research even simple book problems. We were still in the earliest days of the Internet: the vast, sweeping changes that have come over us had barely begun, and none of us knew how crazy it would get. Points and values on unfamiliar books still had to be searched out the old way, in bibliographies and specialists’ catalogs, and with some, you finally had to go on a gut feeling. Knowledge was rewarded by the system: you put out your books, took your chances, and if another bookseller knew more than you did, he scored on your mistake. Today any unwashed nitwit can look into a computer and pull out a price. Whether the price is proper, whether it’s even the same edition—these questions, once of major importance, have begun to pale as bookscouts and flea markets and even junk shops rush onto the Internet to play bookseller. They love to say things like “The Internet has equalized the playing field,” but all they do is cannibalize the other fellow’s off-the-wall prices for books of dubious lineage and worth. They want to play without paying any dues, now or ever. They have no reference books to back up their assertions and they’d never pay more than pocket change for anything. They wheel and deal but they care about nothing but price. The computer may have leveled the playing field in one sense—it’s a great device for revealing what people around the world are asking and paying for certain books—but in this year of grace it will not tell you, reliably, how to identify a true American first of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

In those early Internet years I posted an epigram over my desk: A book is a mirror. If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out. That was written two centuries ago by a German wit named Lichtenberg, but I think the same applies today to a computer screen.

I had just ordered my supper from Pizza Hut when I heard the tap on my window. I turned and there she was, the Gibson girl incarnate. Those incredible eyes. That lovely smiling face, so loaded with mischief. I leaped up and toppled my stool. My crazy heart went with it, a mad tumble that had happened with only one other woman. The great adventure of love, more thrilling and perilous than a man with a gun: I had given up the notion of ever knowing it again.

CHAPTER 6

I fumbled with my keys and dropped them. Lurched over to pick them up, missed them in the dark, and almost fell on my ass. Had to go back for them, groping around on the floor. So far my performance was falling far short of the cool image I always project to the opposite sex. She stood outside, striking a pose of vast impatience. Looked at her watch. Tapped her foot while I got the key into the hole and opened the door.

“Sorry, I’m closed,” I said, regaining my cool.

“That’s okay, I’m just the gas girl, here to read your meter.”

I almost laughed at that but recovered in time to make a phony cough of it. “You’ll have to make it fast, I’m expecting someone.”

“No one special, I take it, from the look of you.”

“Just read the meter, miss, and let’s hold the fashion critique. This has been a hard day.”

“Obviously. A white sport coat indeed.”

“I wore it till the pink carnation began gasping for air and turning green around the gills. There came a point when I had to figure that the girl of my dreams just wasn’t going to show.”

“You have no faith. I had you pegged from the start. All pop, no fizz.”

“My faith was like the Prudential rock until an hour ago.”

“That’s not nearly good enough when I expected so much more of you. I take it from your wardrobe that we’re going someplace fancy. Burger King or Taco Bell? Do I get to choose?”

“Actually, I just…urn…kinda…ordered a pizza.”

She laughed out loud at that.

“I’ll bet I can cancel it,” I said. “I just this minute ordered it.”

“A pizzal And I’ll bet it’s a pizza for one.”

“I can have them make another one,” I said in the wimpiest voice I could put on.

She sighed deeply. “I guess you might as well. Oh, chivalry, where art thou? I’ll tell you this much, sir, Sir Richard Burton rests unchallenged in his tomb tonight.”

She browsed my shelves while I made the call.

“No anchovies,” she yelled from New Arrivals.

I appeared suddenly at her side. “How’d your case go?”