Some Books Aren’t for Reading

by Howard Marc Chesley

  True received a total inheritance of about three hundred and eighty thousand dollars. On the advice of True’s family banker, we placed the money in high-yielding CDs and treasury notes with our joint names to ease inheritance burdens in case one of us should die. The accounts required dual signatures for withdrawal. At the time, it was not difficult to get yields of 8 and 9 percent, although inflation ate up much of it.

  It was a difficult decision to take money out of this account for a down payment on the house, but we took comfort in the belief that True’s father, the Good Doctor, would have wanted us to do so. We had been happy in our apartment in Brentwood, and the rent was moderate, but with Caleb it was much too cramped. And it didn’t have an outdoor place for him to play.

  The money had appreciated to about three hundred and ninety thousand dollars; two hundred and thirty-five thousand remained. It was a nice nest egg. If it continued to appreciate it would help pay for Caleb’s college education and our retirement, or perhaps help Caleb buy a nice little house when it became his turn. After feeling like adolescents for most of our grown-up lives, we were finally adults. We had Caleb, a home, and over two hundred thousand dollars safely tucked in the bank.

  There was always a trace of discomfort when it came to True’s father’s money. We both acknowledged that it was more hers than ours, but she showed little interest in managing it, and clearly True looked at me to take responsibility for it. I think it is fair to say that she trusted me.

  By the fall of 1999 a book called Dow 36,000 was quickly surpassed in Panglossian optimism by a new book entitled Dow 100,000 which promptly took over the top spot on the bestseller list. Today, these books sell for a penny on Amazon and there is no shortage of available copies.

  Red Hat, a software company that packaged and sold Linux, a gussied-up version of a free, public domain operating system, had an initial public offering at $14 a share and finished out the week at $85. On September 3, feeling lucky, I bought fifty shares of QQQ, a basket assembly of the most popular NASDAQ technology stocks. I bought it with money from our regular account, which was mostly fueled by my earnings, and had about seven thousand dollars in it. On September 4, the NASDAQ gained 108 points, its largest one-day point gain ever. I was on a roll.

  I calculated how much a $5,000 investment would appreciate at my current rate of success in the market. Of course I couldn’t expect it to go up 5 percent every week (compounding to a surprising 1,200 percent annually, or half a billion dollars, for the reader without a nine-digit calculator handy) as it had done for me lately. I wasn’t greedy, however. I could easily settle for 1 or 2 percent a week.

  We hired a sitter and I took True out for a celebratory dinner of lobster with coconut curry sauce at Chinois, her favorite food splurge. We usually found that no matter what the surroundings, the conversation centered on Caleb with occasional forays into topics of work or friends or politics or shopping.

  This night I had an additional topic in mind. I planned to update her on our financial situation. Taking on a paternal air, I expounded on our portfolio.

  “I know you have a limited tolerance for talking about this stuff, but I wanted to have a little money talk.”

  “You’ve been making us rich,” she said with a smile as she dipped crusty, fresh bread in the sweet lobster sauce. “That’s why we’re eating at Chinois. What else do I need to know?”

  “I want to take 20 percent of the inheritance money and invest it. Even though there’s been a big run-up, I think there’s some life in the stock market and I think we can make some gains.”

  “What if it goes down?”

  “There’s always some risk. That’s why I want to limit our investments to 20 percent and I only plan to buy stock in pick and shovel companies.”

  “What are ‘pick and shovel’ companies?” she asked. Although True was broadly educated and well informed in many areas of academic and practical pursuit, she was never embarrassed to admit she didn’t know something.

  “They’re the companies that have products to sell. Like Cisco makes routers.”

  “What is a router?”

  “Internet hardware. Things they need to buy to expand it and make it run. Even if eBay disappears, there will be other websites and an internet and they’ll need the equipment and the physical means to keep it going. And then there’s Microsoft and Intel and Oracle and Apple—”

  “Apple? At least I know what that is. Jessica has an iMac and it’s really cute.”

  “The term ‘pick and shovel’ is from the merchants who sold tools to the miners. Only a few miners hit it big, but the men who supplied the gear always made out.”

  “And women? Did women supply the gear, too?” She said mock-piquant. True sometimes tempered her feminism with irony.

  “I’m sure they did. I’m sure women found some product to offer all those horny miners and they probably made a tidy, consistent profit.”

  “The stock market makes me nervous.”

  “So did buying a house. So did getting pregnant. But they were right, weren’t they?”

  “What would Dad think? He worked so hard for that money. He sacrificed so that he could pass it on to his children.”

  I wish she hadn’t said that. I know that even deep in the ground Dad still believes that even a high-yield certificate of deposit is a needless and profligate speculation when compared to a comfortable passbook account with the small town bank that served him well for fifty years.

  “If he had invested some of it, there might have been more for you and your brother.”

  True blanched. I wish I hadn’t said it. I knew I had violated her sacrosanct view of her family with loose talk about filthy lucre.

  She recovered. I know she didn’t want to spoil our evening out. “I just don’t… I just don’t want us to be too money crazy. Okay?”

  “This isn’t being money crazy. It’s planning for our family’s future.”

  “I know you’re right. It’s just that I have been raised to equate money with work. I’m not comfortable getting it out of the air.”

  “I am working. There is effort involved. I spend time learning and researching. I don’t throw a dart at a board.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “It is for us and for Caleb. It is for education and security.”

  “I’m old-fashioned. I admit it.”

  “College will be expensive if Caleb decides to go to an Ivy.”

  She takes a bite of lobster to end the conversation.

  Chapter 7

  Nick pokes his head into the living room as I daydream on his sofa. “I got fuckin’ eighteen orders. I gotta start packing.” I realize I have been on his sofa longer than I anticipated.

  “Oh shit,” I reply. “I have to do mine.”

  Amazon requires that sellers ship within two days of the receipt of an order. I could wait a day or even two, but it’s good business to please your buyers with a shipment that arrives ahead of schedule. It makes for good feedback. I may have many failings, but I can say with pride that I have excellent Amazon feedback. When I am feeling low I can click on my feedback page and bask in the comfort of approbation.

  “Almost like having my lost original; precisely as described, well-packaged, and I got good follow-up emails between order and receipt. Thanks, Terminalbooks!” Rated by Buyer: grisha

  “OMG, this company is the best! I HIGHLY recommend them for anything! They are absolutely perfect” Rated by Buyer: John

  “the book I ordered was used but is in excellent condition. it arrived quicker than i expected (from california to pennsylvania). i would order from this merchant again without hesitation.” Date: 07/23/2004 Rated by Buyer: John B.

  I start to get up from Nick’s sofa and a sharp pain hits me in the ribs. I fall back to assess my disability. Nick is already in the back room he uses for storing books. “Hey, Nick. Can you give me a hand?” I call out to him. Doreen appears in the doorway, and then approaches.

  “You should rest
, Ralphie.”

  “I gotta get my orders out.” I try again to get up.

  She hesitates and then offers a hand as I swing to my feet, smarting in my rib cage. I say my thanks and goodbyes to Nick and Doreen and make my way out to the driveway where the Volvo is parked. In the cargo area the slashed tire sits loose where Nick placed it on top of several file boxes full of books. I open the driver’s door grabbing the top edge to brace myself as I slide in behind the wheel. My side doesn’t sting as badly as I had anticipated. Maybe the rib isn’t broken. The car starts willingly and I back out using the rearview mirror rather than turning my body to look. I’ll deal with the tire tomorrow.

  Back in my apartment I feel better. One of the many strengths of my small business is that the obligations are always manageable. My tasks are clearly defined and achievable. In advertising I was a hapless toreador chasing a darting red cape being whirled by whim-driven clients. In the bookselling era of my life one foot follows nicely after another. Right now I must fire up the computer and see how many orders I have.

  Eleven orders. Most of them are for academic trade paperbacks in the fifteen-dollar range, but one is for a copy of Howard Hawks, Storyteller, an out-of-print paperback in a scuffed and disarmingly artless black cover that I found a few days ago on a picked-over shelf at the National Council of Jewish Women thrift store on Venice Boulevard. Even with my slim book-scouting experience I know that film buffs crave this out-of-print title. I listed it for eighty-five dollars and it sold today to a Rachel Darby in Myrtle Beach. I have learned through my business that there are cineastes in every pocket of the country. I sell books about how to market your screenplay to places like Plano, Texas and Hibbing, Minnesota. And while it often surprises me when I send a treatise on Boethius to a small town in Georgia, it has been my experience that serious books about history and the classics mostly go to the East Coast.

  At a gross of $227 in sales I’m slightly below par for the day, but I’m in the game. At the computer I generate a list of books to pull off the shelves and packing slips.

  I have about two thousand books in my garage—give or take—in fifteen cheap white particle board bookcases, neatly arranged along the walls and in a back-to-back central island.

  List in hand, I remove my eleven books from the shelf. When I do this I always have a gnawing apprehension that a sold book will be missing from the shelf and lost. Today eleven books are all here. I am relieved.

  Back inside I place the books on a long folding table near my supplies, an assortment of bubble mailer bags (sizes #1 through #6), plastic sleeves in two sizes, tape, lighter fluid for dissolving and removing gooey price sticker residue, a razor blade scraper for prying off old labels, several varieties of erasers, scissors and pens.

  I place a book inside a plastic sleeve along with a packing slip, making sure to write “Thanks (Kevin, Julie, Huang, Ricardo, Susan, etc.)” on a blank portion of the paper, to give it the personal touch that will garner good feedback. I tape the bag closed and insert it in the bubble mailer, seal it, taping the edges to make sure it doesn’t pull open. I write the buyer’s name on the envelope and weigh the completed package on a small digital scale and note the weight on the pull slip that I will use to generate a postage label on my printer. I affix the labels to the correct packages and take them to the post office sorting station (where the mail carriers pick up their mail) on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica. I realize this all may sound like dreary rote to you, but these are the details that form boundaries and structure in my current life and I am truly thankful for the restraint and support they provide.

  At the Colorado Avenue sorting station, the postal worker takes my box of packaged and labeled books from me. He’s Korean, in his thirties.

  “How’s business?” he asks with a pleasant smile as he takes and sorts the packages into their appropriate larger bins.

  “Not bad,” I respond. Not good either, but I’m not here to chat.

  My rib stabs me as I bend to enter the Volvo, but overall I think my condition is improving. I drive the two miles back to my apartment. As I exit the car I look again at the file boxes of books from Anaheim. Most still sit underneath my flat tire. I should take them back inside and upload the titles to Amazon. I open up the back hatch on the Volvo, and then try to push aside the tire. My midsection smarts and I just remove one box that is already free.

  Wait… wasn’t this the box that had my shiny, sixty-dollar textbook Literature and Language in it? I’m sure I packed it here, along with the book on Sufism and the book on Islam and the book of Heinrich Kley illustrations. That textbook was the only book in the whole lot worth more than a twenty-dollar bill.

  Sucking in my pain I shove aside the tire and pore through the other boxes, looking for the orange sheen of the jacketless textbook cover with a generic picture of an autumn meadow. I can’t find it.

  Wincing in discomfort, I place the boxes on my little luggage cart and wheel them into the apartment. Carefully I go through each box, looking for the missing Literature and Language. It isn’t there.

  My heart starts to pound. Was it Buzzcut? Did he rifle through my books during my brief period of unconsciousness? I couldn’t imagine it. Buzzcut was a bully, but not a plunderer. Who else? The Mexican lady said I was out for “tres minutos.” Did someone at Volunteer Veterans remove the precious book in those three minutes? Who among the shoe-gatherers and salvagers-of-ancient-keyboards would have known that this was the pay-dirt book?

  Is anything else missing? I try to visualize the original treasure. My copy of Value Investing with the birthday inscription to Robert is here. The various ten-dollar spiritual books seem to be here.

  Maybe Helmet Head. He might have had time before Doreen went outside to lock my car. He is the most viable suspect.

  Oops. Where is The Old Man and the Sea that I got for Caleb? I don’t see it. It’s not there. This doesn’t make sense. If two valuable books were missing, then I would suspect foul play. But a valuable book and a worthless book? A current textbook with a high Amazon ranking and a ubiquitous old novel? There is too much randomness here to ascribe purpose. Hmm… Wouldn’t that phrase go nicely on my epitaph?

  Chapter 8

  On March 14, 2000 the total value of outstanding shares of Priceline.com hit $17.7 billion. At its close of $131 a share, that made the startup airline ticket seller worth more than American, Delta and United Airlines combined. Remarkably, Priceline was selling a paltry $40 million a year in tickets, and losing money on every ticket it sold. Its total physical assets consisted of a few rooms full of computers and a few floors of eager twenty-somethings—callow and overpaid MBAs and computer nerds. Its IPO, which was originally issued at $16, finished its inaugural day up 425 percent at $68. Was it worth $16 or $68 or today’s $131? Clearly it continued to have value if you owned the shares and there was some naive optimist willing to pay more than you had paid. In every transaction, there had to be a greater fool.

  On Colonial Avenue two blocks down from our sturdy Mormon house was a glass, spruce-and-white-stucco, modern cube-on-cube structure with a Japanese garden in front. Protruding noisily among the mostly postwar bungalows that lined the street, it was a sign of the rising tide of gentrification. The old timers on the block thought it was pug-ugly. Most contemporary houses on this side of town are the cynical postmodern aberrations that refer only to the irony of modern materials—turrets made of chain link and that sort of thing—and not their beauty. This house was elegant and classically formed with Bauhaus simplicity. Through the large windows I could see a white Saarinen tulip table and matching chairs. I admired the house and wondered who lived there.

  A sports car usually sat underneath a fitted green cover parked in the driveway. I intuited from its curvy shape and wire wheels that it was a Jaguar XKE. It was sexy under wraps, like Charlize Theron in a bathrobe. One spring day in 2000, I left the office early and drove my new Volvo down Colonial Avenue toward our house, eager to get back to True and Caleb. I noti
ced a shiny, bulbous powerboat shoehorned onto a galvanized trailer in front of the modern house. A man in his early forties, nicely tanned, with a neatly cropped beard and wearing Nike sandals, cargo shorts and a French T-shirt was hosing it down. From its telltale w hull shape I knew that it was a Boston Whaler, a vaunted and expensive East Coast fisherman’s craft with a walk-around cabin and a flybridge. Two giant new Yamaha V6 outboards hung off the transom. The fiberglass topsides gleamed and water from the hose formed droplets over the heavy wax that remains after new boats are popped out of the mold. I slowed to admire it.

  The man lowered the hose in deference to me and the Volvo. I came to a stop and lowered the passenger side window.

  “Nice boat. Is it new?” I called through the window with a neighborly smile.

  “Came in yesterday. Two months on back order.”

  “Thirty feet?”

  “Twenty-nine six,” he replied. An accurate estimation of a boat’s size is a secret handshake of fraternity between boat owners. His look became welcoming as I admired the Whaler. I would guess it cost close to a hundred grand.

  “They just trucked it out,” he said. “The factory’s in Florida now. Brunswick bought ’em out, but they’re still all-hand laid up like they used to be in Massachusetts. You fish?”

  “Not really. Occasional trip to Cabo. I’m more of a rag man.” He nodded as I patronized him with the vernacular that power boaters use for a sailor but that sailors never use among themselves. “I live on the next block,” I added. “Mitchell Fourchette.”

  “Chuck Firestone.”

  Firestone? Was he a tiremaker heir? He had the aura of old money about him. That would explain the house and the toys although Bel Air or Hancock Park would be a more likely venue for a real Firestone.

  I stepped out of the car to fully take in the Whaler. He seemed pleased to share its features—the composite, hand-laid, foam-cored fiberglass hull, the self-bailing cockpit, the twenty-four-gallon bait tank and the patented Boston Whaler “reverse-chine” bottom design. We climbed aboard to check out the pressurized hot and cold water and the thirteen interior lights. Belowdecks reeked of the acrid smell of new fiberglass. I admired the teak cabin sole and then I remembered that Caleb was home waiting for me to go biking with him. I thanked Chuck and left.