Kate Carlisle - One Book In The Grave

“I’ll warn you beforehand that the outside of the book is less than impressive. Well, actually, it’s in horrible shape, but I know you can make it shine. The inside is exquisite.” He led the way across the room to his lovingly restored Chippendale conference table. We sat, and I watched him slowly unwrap several layers of white tissue paper to reveal a rather nondescript book.

The book was big, probably twelve inches tall by nine inches wide, but it was less than one inch thick. The leather cover was green, or it had been at one time; now it was faded to a dull gray. The front cover was badly frayed along the inner edges and outer hinge, where it would probably break apart at the least jarring movement.

And it was disturbingly familiar. I frowned and chewed my lip as I reached for it.

“I know it’s ugly,” Ian reiterated, misreading my reaction. “But the paper is still in excellent condition, and just wait until you see the illustrations.”

“Okay.” I picked it up cautiously, not only because it was old and falling apart, but because I was afraid of what I would find when I opened it. I stared at the spine. Beauty and the Beast , it read, though the letters had lost most of their gilding.

I opened the book, bypassed the flyleaf, and turned to the front illustration across from the title page. It was colorful and sweet and classically Victorian. A tea party for two. Beauty wore a regal red cape and her golden blond hair flowed in waves down her back. She sat at a table, pouring tea for the Beast, who was depicted as a huge brown bear. His appearance was hairy and scary, yet he seemed dignified and well mannered. The tea set was blue. I could’ve described it blindfolded.

I paged back to the inside flyleaf and stared at the inscription written there. My throat tightened and the pressure building in my chest began to ache.

“It’s very rare,” Ian said in a rush. “First edition. Look at the interior pages. They’re fantastic. I just need you to fashion a new cover and do some cleanup, and we’ll have a masterpiece to display in the children’s gallery.”

I ran my fingers over the dried ink and reread the sentimental inscription. The scrawled penmanship had a beauty all its own.

“Earth to Brooklyn,” he snapped. “What’s going on? Can you do the work or not?”

I shook myself out of my melancholy and glanced up at Ian. “I’m not sure I can.”

“What do you mean, you’re not sure? You could do this restoration in your sleep.”

“Oh, yeah, I can do the work.” I turned the book over to see if the damage extended to the back joint, but it was still smooth and unfrayed. “But…I don’t think I can do the work.”

He scowled, shoved his chair back from the table, and stood over me. “You’re speaking in riddles. What’s wrong with the damn book?”

“Nothing’s wrong with the book,” I said, and met his gaze directly. “Except that it was stolen.”

“No, it wasn’t.” He stared at my expression, then shook his head vigorously. “No way. What the hell are you talking about? I bought it from Joseph Taylor, the most reputable bookseller in the city. It was a clean deal.”

“I believe you.” Joe Taylor was an old acquaintance of mine. My mentor, Abraham, had known him forever, and over the years we’d done a lot of bookbinding work for him.

I touched the crisp, deckled edges of the paper and fought to stay calm. “But I’d like to find out who sold it to Joe, because I know they weren’t the rightful owner.”

Frustrated, Ian scratched his head, causing his hair to spike wildly. “What aren’t you telling me, Brooklyn? How do you know this book was stolen? Who did it belong to?”

Awash in memories, I didn’t realize until too late that I had tears in my eyes. I brushed them away with a fierce swipe of my hand and faced him. “Me, Ian. Once upon a time, this book belonged to me.”

“You?” Ian shook his head in confusion. “So what happened? You sold it to someone?”

“No.” Reluctantly, I pushed the book away and stood. “No, I gave it away.”

“Well, then there’s no problem.”

I laughed, but the sound was empty. “Believe me-there’s a problem.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” he muttered, and began to pace back and forth between the conference table and his massive antique mahogany desk.

Confused and unsure what to do, I leaned my hip against the table and glanced around the office, trying to distract myself by admiring Ian’s latest artwork. He still had the Diebenkorn painting of a woman drinking coffee prominently displayed behind his desk, but there were three miniature Rembrandt engravings on the wall closest to the door that I didn’t remember seeing before.

As always when I visited Ian, I thought how nice it would be to borrow from the vast Covington collection to furnish one’s office. And if the artwork didn’t impress a visitor, one could always enjoy the incomparable view of the Golden Gate Bridge seen through the big picture window by the conference table. I turned and stared out at the wide expanse of the bay and tried to appreciate the amazing vista.

“You want to tell me what happened?” Ian asked from close behind me.

I sighed and slowly turned around. “It’s a long story. Are you ready to hear it?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “I suppose I’ll have to.”

I smiled. “Did Austin ever introduce you to Max Adams?”

“Max? Sure. Didn’t he die a few years ago?”

“It was almost three years ago,” I said. But thanks to the reappearance of Beauty and the Beast , I was reliving the day as if it were yesterday.

I’d had a crush on Max Adams from the first day I’d laid eyes on him when I was ten years old. Max’s family had followed Avatar Robson Benedict-otherwise known as Guru Bob-to the Sonoma commune he’d established, just as my family had a few years earlier. So we all grew up together in Dharma. Max was my oldest brother Austin’s best friend until they each went away to different colleges.

While at Stanford, Austin met Ian and brought him home for Thanksgiving dinner. That was how Ian and I met, way back when. I was long over Max by then and started dating Ian, who made me laugh and shared my love of books and art and Monty Python movies. Our relationship got serious for a minute or so when Ian proposed marriage, but it didn’t take long for us to realize we weren’t meant for each other. Happily, we’d remained close friends and book-world colleagues.

Ian had recently proven correct my decision to end our engagement by coming out of the closet. But that was a whole other story.

I walked around the table and over to the window. “You know about Guru Bob and how he first got Abraham to hire me as an apprentice, right?”

“Of course. You were just a kid, right?” Ian said.

“Right. So back then, it was-”

“Wait a minute,” Ian interjected. “Do I need to hear the entire history of the world or can you skip to the good parts?”

“I promise I’ll keep it as short as I can. So, anyway, Guru Bob did the same thing for Max, asking Abraham to mentor him.”

“I thought Max worked with paper.”

“He did.” I gave Ian the abbreviated history. Max had been helping out Abraham Karastovsky at the same time I was working as his official apprentice. My little heart would go pitter-patter whenever Max came into the studio. I would dream of him and me bookbinding our way to our very own happily-ever-after.

Sadly, though, Max didn’t care much for bookbinding; he was always more interested in the paper itself than in the binding procedures. So instead of helping with binding books, he began to experiment with all sorts of different papermaking techniques.