Brian Garfield: Necessity

She removes her sunglasses and replaces them with the clear-lensed ones and glances along the shelves. Hand-crayoned signs thumbtacked to the bookcases identify their subject matter: American Indians … California History … Colorado River … Gold Rush … Gunmen.…

The man with white hair separates himself from his customer and comes forward through the clutter. She sees that he is younger than he appeared at a distance; his smooth tanned face is interestingly in contrast with the color of his hair, which is abundant and well combed, and with the stoop of his shoulders, which at closer glance seems a symptom of scholarliness rather than age. He’s nearer fifty than seventy. His eyes are a troubled brown behind silver-framed glasses.

“May I help you?” He pronounces it he’p. Texas, she decides.

“I’m Jennifer Hartman-the one who called this morning about your ad? Are you Mr. Stevens?”

“Doyle Stevens.” His handshake is almost reluctant. He goes behind the counter and glances out the window and touches a corner of the cash register. He seems to go slack. His attention flits around the walls and she senses a furtive desperation. He utters an awkward laugh. “I feel tongue-tied,” he says.

Then he punches a button: there is the jingle of the high-pitched bell and the No Sale tab flips up and the drawer slams open with a satisfying crunch of noise. It is a gesture: some kind of punctuation.

He says: “You don’t look like somebody looking to get into this kind of business.”

It startles her because she hasn’t had the feeling he’s scrutinized her at all. “I’m sorry. What should I look like?”

He flaps a hand back and forth, dismissing it. “You want to know how’s business, I expect. I can tell you how it is. Calm as a horse trough on a hot day. Or, to put it another way, and not to put too fine a point on it-business is terrible. You think we’d be putting ads in the papers if we were earning a fortune here?”

He pokes his head forward: suspicious, belligerent. The mustache seems to bristle. “Mostly I get fuzzy-headed inquiries by phone. Investors looking for opportunities-want to know about inventory and volume of business. Traffic in the location, all that jargon and bullroar. I tell them if they need to ask those kinds of questions, this is the wrong place for them. I tell them it’s a terrible investment for a real businessman. You could earn more on your money with a passbook savings account.”

Doyle Stevens prods his finger into the drawer and rattles a few coins around and finally pushes it shut. It makes a racket.

Finally he stares at her face. “I get letters from folks in Nebraska. Retired couples looking to set themselves up in retail. Looking for something genteel to, I guess, keep them busy while they enjoy the winter sunshine. I tell them too-forget it, my friends, it’s hard work and it’s full time and then some. My wife and I work a six-day week. And most of our evenings on the cataloging and the mail order.”

He squints at her. “You don’t do this to make money. And you can’t treat it like some kind of part-time hobby.”

She says: “No. You do it because you adore it.”

But her smile seems to exacerbate his anger.

She says, “You have to love the smell of old books.”

“Don’t romanticize it. I hate sentimentality.”

Sure you do, she thinks. What she says is, “Do you and Mrs. Stevens work here together?”

“Normally. She’s at the accountant’s office this morning. Trying to untangle some of the shambles. Paperwork. Federal government, state, county of Los Angeles, you’d think we were right up there alongside General Motors. A small binness like this, the paperwork alone can-Aagh, doesn’t matter.”

He pulls an old-fashioned pocketwatch out of his shirt pocket and snaps its lid open and consults it. Oddly, she does not have the impulse to laugh at the affectation.

He says, “She’s got a good head for that kind of paperwork. And she’s saintly patient with the bureaucracies and their fools. I expect her back shortly, in time for lunch.”

Then he peers at her. “Ever been in the retail book trade?”

“No.”

“Then maybe you’re a Western buff. Afficionado of frontier feminism or Indian folk medicine-one of these fashionable concerns?”

“I wouldn’t know a frontier feminist from Martha Washington. But I adore books and I’d like to learn.”

Doyle Stevens doesn’t try to conceal his suspicion. “Care to tell me why you called?”

“Will you answer one question first?”

He has the talent to cock one eyebrow inquisitively. For some nonsensical reason she has always admired men who can do that. Ever since her third birthday when Uncle Dave-

She shuts off the thought, slamming a door roughly upon it; she says: “‘Investment opportunity for Western Americana bibliophile’-don’t you think that’s ambiguous? Your ad doesn’t make it clear whether you want someone to invest in your business so you can keep it going-or whether you just want to sell it and get out.”

He turns away momentarily. She guesses he’s looking at the customer in the back of the store. The man is well beyond earshot, putting a book back on its shelf and taking another down to examine it.

Doyle Stevens says, “How many sane people you think I’d find, invest money in this loony operation to keep it going?”

“So you want to sell it and get out.”

He waves a hand around, bringing within its compass everything in the shop.

“My wife and I owe the publishers close to ten thousand dollars in unpaid invoices. Another two, three thousand to the jobbers. Owe the bank sixty-five thousand in business loans, eighty thousand mortgage on our house. So you see the plain fact is, Miss Hartman-”

“Mrs.”

“Beg your pardon.” He takes it without a break in expression. “Mrs. Hartman. Plain fact is I could’ve filed bankruptcy but I’d rather not see a receiver take over this inventory. I kind of doubt we’d be fortunate enough to have it fall into the hands of a banker with a true hankering for Western books.”

He folds his hands, interlacing the fingers, looking down at them as if making a religious obeisance. “I was hoping to sell to somebody who’d have-at least a certain respect for this collection. Here, look here.”

He takes down off the shelf behind him a heavy hardcover with a pale blue dust jacket. It looks quite new. Stevens opens it with reverent care. “Triggernometry. Cunningham. The first edition, Caxton Press. Pret’ near mint condition. You have any idea how rare and precious this book is to a true collector?”

Then he replaces it on its shelf and heaves his thin arm high, pointing toward the very top of the bookcase. “Up there-all those? Firsts. Lippincott. Complete works of General Charles King, starting with The Colonel’s Daughter, eighteen and eighty-one. The first Western novel. The very first Western of all time.”

He possesses a bashful wicked smile like a little boy’s: peeking at you out of the corner of his eye, trying to get away with something when he thinks you’re not looking. “That is if you don’t count the penny dreadfuls and the Prentiss Ingraham dime novels and those God-awful stage melodramas of Buntline’s.”

She watches his face. He isn’t smiling any longer. He says in a different voice, “Who the hell remembers General Charles King now.”

“I’m afraid not I.”

“Why, shoot,” he says with a scoffing theatrical snort, “without Charles King there’d’ve been no John Ford, no John Wayne, no nothing.”

He is glaring at her. “I gather that doesn’t mean a whole hill of beans to you. So tell me, Mrs. Hartman. What are you doing here?”