“Some bodies of books for somebody to love.” He said the words out loud to be sure.
When he returned home that evening, he would probably have an offer—or several. After a week he would take the highest bid, or the one he wanted to take, or none, if it suited him.
The bookshops and dealers who bought books from Henry knew his style. He had cultivated that. There was no sense in sounding like everyone else. There was no reason to do business like other dealers, so long as it worked. He knew they joked about him. It did not matter. He was odd. So what?
Henry had borrowed his sales method from an old catalog he had found years before—the inventory of one Elmer Watkins, Books and Printed Matter. Elmer had constructed a mimeographed list of books each month and sent it out to his clients, offering them a chance to buy anything for the price of their own choosing. They could bid any price on any book. At the end of the month he notified those who had been high bidders of their purchase when he mailed his new catalog.
This was the same method Henry had used when he started selling on his own. The only change in his methods had come with the internet, when he had shortened the bid period to a week.
The internet had changed everything. Through the late 1990s, the web had taken business from most of the larger bookshops, but it had been good to him. It had made his life easier and increased his turnover. Henry sold almost exclusively to other dealers, those with state resale numbers, so that he did not have to contend with sales taxes. But though the web giveth, the web also taketh away. There had been a tenfold increase in the number of people selling books each year since, year after year, many of them small and specializing in specific areas, such as vintage paperbacks. Henry had refused to specialize, and in the odd world of bookselling, this had become his limitation.
Now he wanted a shower and a change of clothes to eliminate the lingering traces of the house in Medford. He could not as easily wash away the images of decay in his mind. That kind of thing had never been part of his plan.
He had begun on his own in 1987 with about forty clients—every one of whom he knew personally from his years working for Barbara Krause at Alcott & Poe. Her bookshop had been his college. Barbara had learned to manage by first managing him, and he had learned the book trade. Though he had almost eight hundred regular customers now, many in England, Germany, and Japan, there were still too few for him to ever get rich.
In fact, Henry had always assumed that he would never be rich. Getting rich had not been part of his plan either. He had wanted to make an honest living, and he simply liked books. Most books. He liked their shape and size and weight and smell. He liked the look of the type set upon the page, and the subtle grain of fine paper. He liked the neat crimp and curve of a Smyth sewn binding and the textures of cloth. And ever since his eyes had begun to race just ahead of his mother’s hand on the page as she read aloud, he had loved to read. With the work done, he stacked the paperbacks on a shelf in the closet that filled the space beneath the stairs to the third floor. This was where he kept most of the titles he was selling. There were seldom more than two thousand books lining those walls or stacked in the file boxes on the floor. In the months since he had moved in, he had found the time to build shelves to fill the space there, but not to find a better place for his clothes, which he hung now on several rolling racks salvaged from a bankrupt clothing store. These he kept to one side of his mattress, in a bedroom already too small.
The rest of his books—the ones he kept for himself—filled a mismatched assortment of shelving on one wall of his living room, gathered around his desk. That left enough space for a couch, his Morris chair, a record turntable set over a stereo receiver on top of a narrow record cabinet, and two tall speakers in opposite corners. Most of his records were collected in small gatherings which still leaned against the single open stretch of wall opposite the books, just as they had since he moved in during the winter. He often examined the empty space of that wall with his eyes, calculating the most efficient system of shelving to hold both the records and perhaps an additional thousand titles for sale.
He stuffed the clothes with their sour smell deep into his laundry bag.
Now he deserved a treat. A reward. A week of false leads and empty promises had left him feeling a little down. It was good to have pulled something small out of all the crap he had been through of late. Way too much crap.
Especially from Della.
He let the water in the shower run cold.
She had wanted to come by again.
She had called almost every day since the last argument. But it was not going to happen. That was history. He was not that desperate. Almost, but not quite. He was getting too old to be changing his life to suit someone else’s idea of how to live. He had given it a try. She was not the right one. And he was not going to end up like that old guy in the room in Medford.
He was going to go to the movies instead.
For lack of space, he stood on his bed to change clothes, and idly calculated as he buttoned his shirt. He could sling a hammock between the window frame at one end of the room and the door frame at the other. He had always wanted a hammock to sleep in. It might be cooler in the summer heat. Or it might just be a good place to dump his dirty clothes. That bag was stuffed now beneath the clothing rack closest to the door.
At last he stuffed his wallet in his back pocket and dropped down the stairs.
Della Toth was sitting on the top rail of the wooden fence of the house across the street when Henry came out. She was wearing a dress instead of her usual pants, and swinging her legs. She had turned thirty-three just two months before, but she often seemed to him like an overgrown school girl. She had nice legs. She knew that.
She jumped and trailed after him. “Where you goin’?”
He tried to ignore her. “Out.”
Della came up right behind him. She smelled good, and she knew that too.
“They’re running some heartfelt documentaries at the Coolidge. The Capital is just doing last month’s action retreads. The Brattle has Preston Sturges. You want some Preston Sturges, I can tell.”
One thing that always bothered him was that she somehow knew what he was up to. He had habits. He liked habits. They were comfortable. They made things work. She was always taking advantage of his habits.
He said, “I need air-conditioning and popcorn.”
She came up along side of him. “So do I.” She said this as if it should be obvious.
It also bothered him that she could look him in the eye. It was not that he was that short. It was just that she was that tall.
He said, “Why don’t you leave me alone?”
He looked over at her as they walked. He liked her hair cut shorter. It curled on its own and picked up the light in the yellow. It reminded him of someone.
She said, “Because you need me. You’re a loser without me. I am your muse.”
He really hated the fact that she was so direct. He wished he knew a girl who could be kind—a little more gentle—with the facts of life. That was not Della.
He said, “Why don’t you go find Bob? I’ll bet he likes action films.”
“He’s on my shit list.”
“Put me on that list too, will you?”
“But I love you. I don’t love Bob.”
“Anymore.”
“Anymore.”
He had never before had to compete for a woman with another man. He was not about to begin.
Bob—the world’s authority on nearly everything. He had met Bob once, by accident, and it still made Henry’s toes curl.
They walked several blocks in silence. The pale evening light of June caught high in the trees. It was too bad he was with Della. It was a nineteenth century kind of light. Romantic. Overlapping variations of green parted into chasms of evening blue. With his eyes high, his shoe caught an edge and he stumbled awkwardly on some sidewalk bricks turned up by the roots of a tree.
She seemed to have missed his near pra
tfall when she spoke.
“It’s kinda European out. The way it stays light late in the evening, just like England.”
She knew he had never been to Europe. Why would she bring this up? It was another sore point.
He said, “Ah, to be in England—” but he was not good at sarcasm.
She interrupted, “We could go together. I have two weeks vacation coming. We could go in September or October after the tourists are gone.”
He could not tell her that he liked the idea. She would have everything planned within days, right down to the room numbers at the hotels.
“I don’t have any extra money. I don’t want to go into debt just to take a vacation.”
Della had often spoken of seeing Eastern Europe. Her mother had escaped from Hungary in the revolution of 1956. She wanted to see Budapest. She still had family there. This brought back to Henry the question of who it was her short cut hair reminded him of. She looked a lot like Ingrid Bergman in an old film he had seen—For Whom the Bell Tolls. He had not liked Hemingway’s book. It was not Hemingway at his best. The Old Man was trying too hard. But Henry still liked the film because of Bergman.
As they approached along Brattle Street, it was Henry who saw Bob first—the large figure occupying the very front of the line waiting to enter the theatre. Bob was getting a belly. Football players always ended up with bellies. His hair was longer since the last computer company he had worked for had shut down. Henry thought the long hair was probably more to hide a bald spot.
But this was no accident. Bob had managed to find out that Della wanted to see the Preston Sturges. Bob was that kind of competitor. Bob knew the laws of supply and demand. There was only one Della. And Henry was not going to sit in a row with Bob.
Henry abruptly turned and headed back. Della hesitated, but she kept going. She said nothing. It bothered Henry more than he liked that she kept going. He did not look back.
The world appeared suddenly darker as he walked. The sun was gone from the treetops. The distances seemed to have grown.
The narrow three-story building where Henry lived had once been a single-family house and later been divided as simply as possible by Mrs. Murray after her husband had died. She lived on the first floor. Sasha, a music student who was seldom home, lived above Henry on the third. The front door, which gave access to the first floor as well as the stairs, was often left unlocked during the day when Mrs. Murray was there. It was a quiet dead-end street, occasionally disrupted by arguments over parking spaces, but not often visited by strangers. Henry was surprised to find someone sitting on the stairs in the half-dark as he entered—a small man he thought he knew.
“Henry. Been waiting for ya… . Got a deal. Hav’a friend who’s just laid a good item off on me. It’s over at my place in Central Square. A nice item.”
“Hello.” Henry said, and waited for him to respond. There was a beat of silence before the fellow spoke again.
“Hello. Like I said. It’s real nice. Some good money. The guy needed the cash. I’m willing to sell it quick for cheap. Can you handle it?”
“Your name is Eddy?” Henry remembered him now. He had aged quite a bit in a few years. Thinning hair was combed over from the side of his head. His face was lean and he had lost weight in his shoulders. He had not shaved for at least a couple of days.
The man responded without a hesitation. “Right. What do you think?”
“I think it’s kind of odd for you to be waiting for me this time of night to sell me a book. Is it stolen?”
The shake of the man’s head came attached to a shiver of his body. “No way. It’s only eight o’clock. The night’s still young. And it’s only one book. If you can’t do it, I gotta get movin’. I gotta get my cash back tonight.”
Henry answered with unnecessary sarcasm. “For food, right?”
There was no shake of Eddy’s head this time. “No. I work at a restaurant now. I eat fine. I’m clean. I’m off the stuff… . That’s a fact. But there’s a book auction tomorrow—you know. In Newton. And all my money’s tied up. I gotta get a little back so I’ll have somethin’ to use tomorrow.”
Henry had decided not to go to Newton. It was an estate auction. Perhaps he had made a mistake. Maybe there was something there to see. Eddy seemed very intent on it.
Henry said, “Why didn’t you bring the book with you?”
Eddy leaned his head to the side and examined the wallpaper. “I didn’t plan it out that way. I was over this way for something else. The idea just hit me to check with you before I went home.”
Henry smiled at the evasion.
“I don’t keep cash around Eddy.”
The man’s eyebrows rose in perfect arcs. “You got a card for the bank machine, right?”
Henry tried to see what was in the man’s eyes. Was he desperate? Was there any panic?
“What kind of book is it?”
The eyebrows fell. “Arkham House.”
That was a limited market, Henry knew, but it was steady.
“Recent?”
“Nah. From nineteen forty-three; Beyond the Wall of Sleep, in jacket.”
A rare book, limited market or not. Henry had never cultivated a taste for the hothouse atmosphere of H. P. Lovecraft’s world of horror fiction.
“How did you come by it?”
“A friend. I said a friend before, didn’t I?”
There was a hint of irritation in his answer, as well as the sound of New York. Henry guessed that Eddy had been raised there.
The last Henry knew, Eddy was a drug addict. Eddy Perry had once run a small used bookstore right in Harvard Square, above the old Wursthaus. That was years ago.
Henry considered the possibilities.
“I don’t deal in stolen books, Eddy.”
Eddy’s cheeks puffed where he had lost teeth. The unshaved grey stubble there made him appear older than he was. “Don’t shit me. I’m not a thief. I got this legit. I passed two Benjamin’s for it. The guy needed the money and I saw I could double it. What’s wrong with that?”
Henry shrugged, as if unconcerned. There was no point in upsetting this man. He seemed to remember Eddy upset easily.
“Was the book his to start with?”
“Yeah. It was me who sold it to him in the first place—once upon a time …” he hesitated, and repeated the words. “Once upon a time, I bought it as part of a collection, years back. I sold it to the guy when he was flush.”
Henry was not in the mood for sitting alone at home. “I’ll take a look.”
He began to regret his decision from that moment.
Eddy was out the door with his words. “Follow me.”
Henry stayed a step to the rear. Eddie chatted, his questions broken by long silences as they made their way to Central Square.
“How’s business?”
“Quiet.”
Eddy said, “Summers were always quiet at my old place. Didn’t pick up till the Harvard students got back in August. Tourists don’t buy books.”
Henry noticed the man’s feet as he answered. Eddy’s black cloth sneakers were worn through in places above the rubber soles.
Henry told him, “I don’t have to deal with the public anymore. I’m online. Just dealers.”
Eddie blew air into his cheeks. “Whew. It’s a new world out there. The machines talk to each other and the people watch TV.”
Henry was surprised by the comment and considered it silently as they circled to a street behind, and a narrow house sandwiched between several others just like it. The smell of spoiled milk and coffee grounds filled the hall. Eddy opened a double-locked door which had clearly been kicked in several times before and repaired with a metal plate.
Paperback and hardcover thrillers were piled in a jumble on a mantle above a fireplace which had long since been plastered over. The apartment was small, but still bare of any real furnishing. A grey metal office desk filled the space below the single window. Yellowing newspapers partially buried a heavy black Roy
al typewriter, a relic of the 1930s. The bed had been left unmade and covered with a blue wool blanket that showed the lumps of wadded sheets. There was no television set. No radio that Henry could see. No pictures on the wall. A cheap plastic frame sat on the desk behind the papers, but he could see little of the picture it contained.
The book in question was face up on a card table at the center of the room. The dust jacket had been carefully encased in clear plastic, making it look very neat. On the endpaper, a penciled name had been erased, but the indentation remained visible. He knew the name immediately.
“I remember that sale …”
Eddy nodded. “Can you imagine people with that kind of money who don’t take care of themselves?”
“Yes.” Henry answered. He had gone to such auctions many times over the years.
He had always thought it was a funny name—Hale Peabody. It made Henry think of the phrase “Hail, Caesar.” The family had once been among the rulers of business in Boston and Salem. Henry had also been in that house at Prides Crossing on the North Shore during the auction about fifteen years before. The prices were way above his head that day, but Henry had managed to buy one book, a small vellum volume of Cicero for twenty dollars. He had been the only one to spot the pale brown ink inscription and the numerous notations throughout the text for what they were. The book had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. From the notes, it appeared Jefferson had sent it to John Adams some time shortly after the War of 1812, with the intent of making a point in an ongoing argument. Jefferson’s signature was clear, if crammed a bit below the notation on the flyleaf. This page had fastened lightly over time to the free endpaper, and gone unnoticed. Only God knew how Hale Peabody had acquired it, or why he had owned a book collection of weird horror stories by the likes of H. P. Lovecraft.
A Slepyng Hound to Wake Page 2