Even as he ushered Sandra out, he heard muffled laughter. He couldn’t see Jess and Noah anymore, but he sensed them in Medieval History. He knew the sounds of flirting in his store. The rustles and faint scufflings between the shelves, the creak of bookcases leaned upon, the squeak of the rolling step stool.
Jess, he chided silently, does he have to be one of those idiots who lie down in front of logging trucks? Really, now. But of course she had to find a leftie leafleter who shouted, “Would you like to save our forests today? Our trees go back to Biblical times!” to complete strangers on the street.
He had never seen Jess in action at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, but he could picture her. “Our trees predate Henry James. They gave their lives for him.”
“You’re not serious,” he heard Noah tell Jess.
“I am,” she said. “I’m afraid of heights.”
“I can’t believe you’d work for Save the Trees and never want to … experience them!”
“Can’t you experience them from the ground?”
Now he was whispering.
Silence.
“Jess,” George called.
No answer—as if to say, Oh, now you want me to come, when you brushed me off before.
He sat at his desk and glared in her general direction. In a moment she appeared in a V-necked sweater and a gauzy Indian skirt, the kind sold in stores called Save Tibet. She didn’t look embarrassed, or disheveled, or in the least undone. He couldn’t fault her, except that she looked far too happy for such a murky November day. There she stood, radiant. Her eyes were shining. All that from Noah? Had the shaggy tree hugger really cast that kind of spell?
“What is it?” Jess asked him.
“Get back to work, please.”
She smiled at him. He’d never asked her to do anything “please” before. She didn’t hear that he used the word only for emphasis. “Could I show Noah the Muir?”
“Is he interested?” George spoke in the third person even as Noah materialized behind Jess.
“Of course.” Then Jess saw that George meant “interested to buy,” and she looked a little disgusted. She liked to think of Yorick’s as some sort of rare-book room, a miniature Houghton or Beinecke.
He unlocked the glass case, and Jess took out
“Cool,” said Noah.
“
Golden compositae, George thought. How easy it was to forget the mountains, just a drive away.
“And look at this.” Jess opened the book and showed Muir’s inscription on the flyleaf.
Noah traced Muir’s signature with his fingertip. “That’s incredible.”
“That’s fifteen hundred dollars.” George took John Muir away from Jess and locked him up again.
Later, after Noah had to run off to work, Jess approached George at his desk. “Could I ask you something?”
“You could.”
“If you love books, why don’t you like sharing them with other people?”
“I do like sharing them,” said George. “I like to exchange them for money, in a transaction economists call making a sale.”
“You can hardly stand it when other people look at them.”
“Looking is fine. I don’t enjoy watching people paw through a signed—”
“You touch your books all the time,” Jess protested.
“I wash my hands.” He had her there, and he saw her smile, despite herself.
“You’re very supercilious,” she told him.
You’re very pretty, he thought, but he said, “Anything else?”
“Do you like owning books more than reading them?”
He began to answer and then stopped. “You want me to admit that I like owning better, don’t you? Then you can tell me that books are about reading, and that words are free.”
“No, I’m really asking,” she said. “Which do you like better—having or reading?”
“I like reading books I own,” he said.
“Does owning improve them?”
“You mean why not go to the library? Look at this
“What happened there?” She was looking at the white scar on the back of his right hand.
“Cooking accident,” he said.
She couldn’t help staring at where the scar disappeared into his shirt cuff. “That must have been some knife.”
“Look at this. Do you see the chapter headings?” He showed her the thick black type. “When I read Swift here, I’m reading him in this ink, on this paper, with this book in my hands—and I’m reading him as his contemporaries read him. You think there’s something materialistic about collecting books, but really collectors are the last romantics. We’re the only ones who still love books as objects.”
“That’s the question,” said Jess. “How do you love them if you’re always selling them?”
“I don’t sell everything,” he said. “You haven’t seen my own collection.”
“What do you have?”
“First editions. Yeats, Dickinson—all three volumes; Eliot, Pound, Millay …” He had noticed the books she read in the store. “Plath. I have
“I wish I could see them,” Jess said.
“You would have to come to my house.”
“Are you inviting me?” She must have known this was a loaded question, but she asked without flirtatiousness or self-consciousness, as if to say, I only want to know as a point of information.
Yes, he thought, I’m inviting you, but he did not say yes. He was her employer. She could act with a certain plucky independence, but he would always be the big bad wolf.
“I have a theory about rare books,” Jess said. “Here’s what I think. Rare books—any books—start to die without readers. The words grow paler and paler.”
“Not true,” George said. “Unread words don’t fade at all.”
“I meant metaphorically,” said Jess.
“You’d rather see them all in public libraries?”
“Ideally, yes,” said Jess.
“I’ve got a signed
“Really!”
He had to laugh. She was so eager.
She saw that he was in a good mood, and took the opportunity to ask, “Could I put up a poster outside the door?”
“No.”
“Wait. You haven’t seen it.” She hurried to the storeroom where she kept her backpack and brought out a poster, which she unrolled over his desk. Comically, with hands and elbows, she tried to hold down all the corners at once. Failing in the attempt, she weighted them with George’s books:
George saw a woodblock print redwood against a cloudless sky. One word in green:
“Sorry.” George pushed his books away. The poster rolled up instantly.
