I HAD OPENED my nameless bookstore on Central just down from 101st Street. It was the only one of its kind for miles. I carried everything from Tolstoy to
At first I was scandalized by the thought that a library would discard a book, but once I realized the possibilities for business, I made the rounds of every library in L.A., carting off almost two thousand volumes in just over three months. Then I paid first and last month’s rent on a storefront that was down the street from a Holy Roller church called Messenger of the Divine.
My friend Fearless Jones helped me throw together some pine shelving and I was in business. I bought magazines two for a nickel and sold them at twice the price. I traded one book or magazine for two of equal worth.
Business wasn’t brisk, but it paid the rent and utilities. And all day long I could do the thing I loved best — reading. I read
For a solid three months I was the happiest man in L.A., in spite of the cops. I had a checking account, and for the first time in my life I was caught up on my bills.
But then Love walked in the door.
It was a cloudless day in October, the year was 1954. It wasn’t hot or cold outside, but her dress was definitely a summer frock, white with a floral pattern. The thin straps lay loose on her brown shoulders. She didn’t seem to be wearing anything under that dress — not that she needed to. The sunglasses had been pushed up to the top of her head, nestled in the big, floppy curls she’d had done at some beauty shop.
Her face is what scared me. It was too wide to be pretty and too flat to be handsome, but she was beautiful anyway. I wanted to feel my cheek rubbing up against hers.
The last time I’d felt like that about a woman I almost got killed. So the fast beating of my heart was a coin toss between love and fear.
“Is Reverend Grove here?’” she asked me in a breathy voice.
“Who?”
“Reverend William Grove. He preached with Father Vincent and Sister Thalia.”
The skirt came down to the middle of her knees. Her legs were bare and her ankles were bound with thin straps of white leather snaking up from delicate sandals.
“I don’t know any Grove,” I said, forcing my eyes back to her face.
The name had some meaning to me, but it felt so distant that I thought it must be someone from long ago, maybe from down in Louisiana. Certainly not anyone this beautiful girl and I would both know.
She looked around the room, twisting at the waist to see for herself. She had a figure made for that kind of movement. Her eyes lit on a burlap curtain that hung over a doorway.
“Where’s that go?” she asked.
“My back room,” I said. Then it came to me. “You must be talking about the Messenger of the Divine.”
“Oh yes. Yes.”
The hope in her voice brought me up out of my chair. She moved toward me. Her hands reached out for me.
“They had a place look like mine down the street,” I said. “But they moved out. Must be two months ago now.”
“What?” Her face went blank.
“Moved,” I said. “Went away.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. They moved out in the middle of the night. Took everything. All that was left was an empty space and a few paper fans.”
I was sad to make my little report because now there was no reason for her to stay and twist around. I realized that I had spent a little too much time lately wrapped up in books. I had the notion that I should go out to the Parisian Room that night.
Just then the young woman leaned backward and then crumpled forward, into my arms. As I stood there holding her steady, the
