Bookman's promise

I made a gesture: I don’t remember.

“Oh, you’re impossible,” she said.

“Depends on what you’ve got in mind.” I cleared my throat. “So what happens if you think you’ll like an author, then he gets here and you can’t stand him?”

“I try to show some class. Sometimes it’s tough but I try to remember who I’m working for, just as you considered Lee and Miranda that night when you were so tempted to call Archer whatever you were tempted to call him. I never put the agency in an embarrassing position.”

“So you get your choice of jobs, and still you drive Archer.”

“Be nice to me and maybe someday I’ll tell you why.”

“Then let’s move on, as you lawyers like to say. You look at my books while I walk up the street and get us a really cheap bottle of wine to go with this grand feast we’re about to have.”

I bought a fine bottle of wine, but the liquor store, which always stocked corkscrews, failed me tonight and I had to settle for a cheap bottle with a screw top. I kept the good stuff to prove my intentions but I knew I was in for some joshing. So far I was batting a thousand.

We ate in the front room with only a distant light, a pair of shadows to anyone passing on the street. The screwball mood had deserted us for the moment, and what we now had was a spell of cautious probing. Was she really writing a novel? Yes, and she was serious about it, she had fifty thousand words as of yesterday. She was a light sleeper and there had been lots of time to work on it in the middle of the bleak Rock Springs nights. The law filled her days and she escorted for a woman named Lisa Beaumont, who usually had others she could call in a rush.

She had always loved books—new, old, it really didn’t matter. Even as a teenager she’d had dreams of doing what I did. “I knew a fellow long ago who showed me the charm of older books. He wanted to be a rare-book seller, just like you.” But what about me? What was it really like in the book trade? It could certainly be boring, but you never knew what might walk in the door the next minute and turn the day into something extraordinary. She cocked her head in bright interest—Like what, for instance?—and the next thing I knew I was telling her about Mrs. Gallant, the whole bloody story beginning with my trip to Boston. “Wow,” she said at the end of it. “So what are you going to do for her?”

“Whatever I can, which won’t be much. Eighty years is a long time.”

“A long time,” she echoed. “But wouldn’t it be great if you could find those books?”

“Oh yeah. It’d be great to win the Nobel Peace Prize while I’m at it.”

“Don’t make light of it. You could actually do this, if the books are still together. Then you could retire in utter glory. What else would you need to do in your career after that?”

“Oh, just the little stuff, like make a living.” “That’s the trouble with the world today: there’s too much emphasis on money.”

“Spoken like one who has money to burn.”

“Don’t harass me, Janeway, I’m composing your mission statement.”

We slipped back into cautious probing. Yes, she said with pointed annoyance, she did have a little money saved up. They paid her well at Waterford, Brownwell, Taylor and Waterford, where her office faced the mountains on the twenty-third floor and she was said to be on the fast track to make partner. They liked her, they were doing everything they could to keep her happy, but her heart wasn’t in it anymore. “I wonder how I’d like what you do.”

Who could say? Some of the smartest people never do get it— they have no idea about the intrigue that can hide in the lineage of a book, or the drama that can erupt between two people when a truly rare one comes between them. I quoted Rosenbach—The thrill of knocking a man down in the ring is nothing compared with the thrill of knocking him down over a book—and she smiled. But there are many quieter thrills in the book world. The bottomless nature of it. The certainty of surprise, even for a specialist. The sudden enlightenment, the pockets of history that can open without warning and turn a bookman toward new fields of passionate interest. Wasn’t that what had just happened with me and Richard Burton? “I think I’d love it,” she said. “You want a partner?” “Sure. I figure a fifty percent interest should be worth at least, oh, thirty or forty bucks. But you won’t have an office on the twenty-third floor.”

She asked for the grand tour as if we were serious, and I walked her through the store. I pointed out its attributes and shortcomings, and it took us twenty minutes to see every nook and cranny. We ended up back in the dark corner of the front room, where my best books were.

She looked up at me. “I guess before we seal this partnership we need to know more about each other. I’ll start. How much has Miranda already told you?”

“Nothing.”

“Lying’s not a good way to begin, Janeway. And you don’t do it very well.”

“Actually, I’m a pretty good liar when I need to be.”

“You’re good at stalling too.”

“You must be a killer on cross.”

“I sure am, so stay on the point: what Miranda told you and why.”

“She told me nothing. Nothing, as in no real thing, nada, caput.”

“Why do I get the feeling she told you about my dad?”

“I don’t know, maybe you’re a suspicious creature whose instincts are to trust nobody. All she said was that