Book Deal Page 6

  “Dybbuks,” the old man had said, raising the smashed hat. “Devils made me do it!”

  Deal had also listened to James Baldwin here, had been as mesmerized as everyone else by the incantatory power of the man’s words. Drawn by Janice or by Arch’s entreaties, and sometimes by his own interest as well, he’d heard poets, fiction writers, artists, reporters, photographers, social commentators, and crime writers, all of them connected in the common cause of books. It was an impressive array, and he wondered if Arch was right. Even the monthly readings by the local students and aspiring artistes had their charm. Would Mega-Media really mean the end of all that? No more Diego Quinteros. Usher in an endless run of famous ex-generals, first lady poets, and retired actresses come to hawk their fitness books? Anything was possible, Deal supposed, and still…

  “This kind of thing you’re talking about,” he said to Arch. “It really goes on?”

  “It’s no picnic for the little guy,” Arch said. “Not anymore. Read the articles, you’ll see for yourself.”

  Deal nodded, but something else had occurred to him. “Look,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be good for business, like, one antique store moves in beside another, it makes for more traffic, helps them both out.”

  Arch fixed him with a disbelieving stare. “Deal,” he said. “This is a serious problem. Who’s going to come into my store for a book they can buy for eight bucks less just across the street?”

  It stopped Deal, and he sat staring at Arch for a moment. “Me,” he said finally.

  Arch made a sound that might have been a laugh, but it was hard to tell. “I wish everybody were as stubborn as you. I wouldn’t have to worry about these guys.”

  Deal glanced around. “Like you say, you offer personalized service. People like that. And there’s the rare books. I don’t expect Mega-Media is going to get into those, are they?”

  Arch sighed. “The rare books are wonderful, but they can’t support the whole store.”

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  “I know you are,” Arch said. He mustered a smile then and rose, tossing his empty beer into the trash. “Hey, we’ve spent enough time wallowing. We’ve got a new assistant manager, we’ve got that fireplace, we’ve got a community here. We’re not going anyplace.”

  He gestured toward his office in the back. “Now, I’ve got some paperwork to do. Maybe I can get out of here in time for the second half.”

  Deal put his own half-finished beer on the table, nodded. “You’re welcome to come by the fourplex,” he said as he stood. “I suppose I ought to tune in, see what all the fuss is about.”

  “It might be good for you,” Arch said. “I’ll see when I can get loose.”

  “And if there’s anything I can do about all this…” Deal trailed off, nodding out the windows toward the abandoned bus station.

  “I know,” Arch said, moving toward the front now. “But don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen overnight. They could always change their minds, go after some poor bastard in another city. Besides,” he added, “I might have a trick or two up my sleeve. Something for Mega-Media to think about, anyway.”

  Deal studied him for a moment, waiting for more, but Arch seemed to have finished what he had to say.

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” Deal said. “For all of us.”

  They were at the front door now, and Arch nodded as he turned the key to let Deal out. His smile was genuine this time. “‘For poetry makes nothing happen,’” he said. “‘It survives / in the valley of its making where executives / Would never want to tamper…it survives, / A way of happening, a mouth.’”

  “Corso?” Deal asked.

  “Auden,” Arch said.

  “Right,” Deal said. He was outside now, turned in the cool evening air toward his friend. “What’s it mean?”

  “It means you don’t get involved with books if you want to make a lot of money,” Arch said. And then he closed the door.

  Chapter 3

  His bookkeeper had been on vacation for the week, and it took a good hour for Arch just to sort the mail that had accumulated in her absence. He’d spent the first fifteen minutes after Deal had gone wondering whether he should call Eddie Lightner, see if what the man had suggested to him yesterday were really true, but in the end, he’d decided against it. How could you trust a guy like that? Sentence the House of Books to heinous assault one month, show up a few weeks later with dirt for sale on Mega-Media. He should have talked to Deal about Lightner’s claims, he thought. Deal was in construction, he might have known what to make of it, how to check out the value of Lightner’s information. But it all seemed too sleazy, too pathetic, admitting he’d even think about turning to Eddie Lightner for help of any kind.

  Maybe tomorrow, Arch thought. A good night’s sleep, maybe he’d go see Deal after all. Deal would understand, he had a practical mind. If they could use Eddie Lightner, then use him. But first find out if Lightner was simply peddling another come-on.

  Bury yourself in minutiae meantime, Arch, he told himself. “I spent the entire day at the desk / and it nearly pulled me down like all the rest…” Lines from Machado rattling through his head. Furiously, he tossed circulars, magazines, and assorted junk mail into the trash can, and then, when that had filled, began what had become a mountainous pile on the floor beside him. Bills went into a sizable stack of their own on the left side of his desk. And there was a much smaller pile of personal correspondence on the right side of his desk, most of which would turn out to be drum-beating hype for new books from their publishers, along with an occasional letter from an author, or note of complaint or thanks from a customer. In front of him, in a spot all its own, sat the thick white envelope, addressed to him in a florid hand and bearing the return address of his sister in Nebraska.

  By the look of it, he could assume what was in that envelope as well: another wad of the tract material she was fond of sending along to him, more of the Reverend James Ray Willis’s press releases, full of glad tidings and exhortations to join the multitudes who had already seen the light.

  Sara was his older sibling, three years his senior. She’d fussed over and protected him as much as his own mother had, and, while they were close enough in age for that relationship to endure, there had always been sufficient distance to insulate them from the petty squabbles and rivalries that might have developed otherwise.

  He had idolized her in his early years, admired and respected her later on—when she went off to college in New Orleans and later landed an impressive-sounding job with a publisher of inspirational books in Chicago. Though her visits home had dwindled over the years, they had maintained an earnest correspondence that flowed equally in both directions, at least until the last few years, when she had left her job in Chicago for a position as executive assistant to James Ray Willis, one of the few televangelists who had not been sullied in the era of the Jim and Tammy scandals.

  Though Arch still loved his sister dearly, it had become increasingly difficult for him to conceive of a member of his own family, certified agnostics all, working for a self-righteous egotist like Willis, who had seemed to gloat as his fornicating peers were picked off one by one. Nowadays, Willis seemed to cut less of a public figure, but Arch suspected that was because the man didn’t have to. With his high-profile competitors out of the picture, tithes by mail to the Willis compound had probably grown astronomically. Willis likely had to spend most of his time supervising his investment portfolio, his real estate holdings, and his growing business empire, lucky to carve out time for a Sunday sermon.

  Arch’s sister was fond of sending him copies of press releases from the Willis mill, announcing this and that new enterprise: the construction of a ten-thousand-seat “tele-chapel” designed by Arquitectonica; the development of the largest privately owned broadcast and production center in the U.S., on a sprawling site just outside Omaha; a series of planned Christian-living communities, actual little cities to be construct
ed on various sites around the Midwest; and on and on. She meant it as testimony to the vitality of her boss’s vision, Arch knew, but each fresh packet of material only sent him into a deeper funk concerning his sister.

  Cursed with the combination of a certain sweet but prim countenance and a growing career interest that was daunting to many less confident men, she had passed through a series of quiet and unsatisfying relationships into middle age, never coming close to marriage, or so it had seemed to Arch. Now, he was convinced, she had sublimated whatever earthly passions she might have still possessed into a near-obsession for Willis. How else to account for the breathless quality of her letters: “The kindest, most generous, most gifted and visionary person I have ever known…,” a phrase he could still see burning on a not-so-long-ago page.

  In reply, Arch had, by his own lights, lost it. He’d run off a copy of Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” highlighted selected passages in yellow marker, had sent it off Express Mail without a covering letter. There’d been no reply from Sara.

  Now he stared doubtfully at the fat letter, wondering what exercise of Christian charity it had taken for his sister to respond. How had she finally overcome his invitation to imagine the Reverend Willis in Yeats’s context: “…what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

  Still, curiosity gnawed at him. He could tear open the letter, pitch the Willis crap without even looking at it, force himself into his sister’s letter far enough to where he’d begin to sound her soft voice in his head, forgive her for whatever claptrap Willis was responsible for seducing her into. Soon enough, she’d leave off with that part of things, say she forgave him, and get into how she was doing, what she’d been reading of “worldly” literature, he could love her once again. That’s how it usually worked with her letters, after all.

  He took another glance at the formidable stack of bills, and nodded. No contest. Commerce would just have to wait. He flipped open his Swiss Army knife, slit open the fat envelope with a blade he knew he’d ruined cutting paper, then watched a typewritten sheet flutter out onto the floor. Strange, he thought, bending to retrieve it. His sister almost always wrote her letters in longhand, just another of the old-fashioned traits that endeared her to him. He tossed the fat part of the packet aside and turned to the letter.

  “Dear Dylan,” he read, wincing at the name he’d managed to drive from everyone’s usage but hers. “I am sure that you suppose I have not written sooner out of spite, though that is not the case at all. I know you don’t approve of my work, nor of my employer, and, though, you’ve never come right out and said so—don’t worry, little brother, I read you like one of your beloved books—you think I’ve squandered my life. The poem you sent along speaks eloquently in that regard. The fact of the matter is, your letter (not really a letter, though, was it?) arrived at a time of some crisis for me—and don’t worry, I am not ill, though I am confused, perhaps somewhat sick of heart. I might have contacted you sooner, but to tell the truth, I am not sure that the interpretation I find myself wanting to place on the materials I have enclosed is the proper one. But I have kept my own counsel long enough and know that I can trust you to read these documents and tell me if what I sense is of true concern. I love you, and I know, despite the miles and the many barriers that have seemed to distance us over the years, that you care for me just as dearly. I will be eager to hear from you. Your devoted Sara.”

  Arch put the letter back on his desk, closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair with a sigh. Just what he needed. His sister suffering some kind of midlife spiritual crisis and turning to him for help. Worse yet, she must have seen some intention to undermine her faith in his sending her that poem, but his target had been that oaf Willis, not her whole way of life. God knows he didn’t have any corner on the way to enlightenment. What was he supposed to say now? Great. You finally came to your senses. Let’s nuke your whole past and start all over again? He’d be plenty happy if she just shitcanned the Reverend James Ray and went back to the publishers of Inspirational Thoughts for Moderns.

  He shook his head and opened his eyes, glancing around for what he’d done with the fat part of the packet. He was curious, at least, trying to imagine what she’d run across that could have her doubting Brother J.R. and the promise of joy and Christian zoning covenants all of a sudden. Tibetan mysticism? Secrets of the Rosicrucians? Tammy Faye’s letters to a prisoner?

  He swiveled about in his chair, spotted the packet on top of the pile on the floor, bent to pick it up. He ripped off the cover, unfolded the wad of papers inside. As he had anticipated earlier, there was a glossy brochure from Willis’s PR mill atop the stack, this one with a headline about a Christian cable service soon to be up and running. The God Squad cometh via satellite. Arch scanned a couple of more paragraphs, pitched the flyer over his shoulder.

  The second sheet was a Xerox of some crude spreadsheet, a series of inked or penciled figures with categories that didn’t make sense to him. This he stared at for a moment, until he was sure that it wasn’t his sister’s writing, then put aside. Beneath that was a typewritten letter to the Reverend Willis in what he thought might be German, and he put that aside as well. It was the fourth piece that caught his attention. he scanned the memo once, then a second time, to be sure he had not misconstrued. He flipped quickly through the rest of the papers, feeling a sense of sadness and despair descending upon him as he went. Sara, he found himself thinking. Oh, dear Sara. No wonder you feel those foundations quaking.

  He put the papers carefully aside, reached quickly for the phone. Though they hadn’t talked since Thanksgiving, and he kept almost no phone numbers in his head, he dialed hers without hesitation. There was a maddening pause until finally the call went through, then another frustrating period as the rings echoed futilely in his ear. He had almost returned the receiver to the hook when he heard the connection make and what he took for the sound of a voice on the other end.

  “Sara?” he called, snatching the phone back. “Is that you, Sara?”

  There was a hissing silence on the other end.

  “Sara,” he repeated, trying to keep his voice even. “It’s Arch. In Miami.”

  “She’s not here,” he heard a male voice say suddenly, and it startled him so that it took him a moment to answer.

  “Who is this?” he managed, finally. When there was no response, he tried again. “Listen. This is her brother, in Miami. Where is Sara?”

  There was another pause, and then the voice came again: “She’s in church,” the man said. And then the connection broke.

  Chapter 4

  Arch was staring at the phone, about to dial again, when he heard the knock at the rear door of the store. He glanced at his watch, puzzled. The rear entrance was deliveries only. He kept his own car in a tiny space back there; his accountant sometimes used that door; and a few of the staff who opened might come in that way in the mornings. But it was a narrow pass that led in from the alley in back, past assorted detritus and the foul Dumpsters of a restaurant that fronted the other side of the block, nothing a customer would want to use.

  Could it be Janice back for something she’d forgotten? Maybe she’d tried the front door and he hadn’t heard. Or maybe it was Deal, back to drag him off to the Colombian Superparty. The knock came again, more insistent this time, and he hesitated, put the phone back in the cradle. He needed to think about that next call for a moment, anyway.

  He came out of the windowless office into the room where he and Deal had been talking, noted that the sun was a red ball sinking behind the buildings to the west. Maybe it was the mood he was in, but he could swear the fiery light bounced from the deserted bus station windows like megastore neon already installed.

  The knock came again and he called out, “All right! I’m coming.” He’d see who this was, head on home, try his sister from there. The more he thought about it, the person who’d answered Sara’s phone must have meant she was in her offic
e. But still, who was it who’d answered? Not the Reverend Willis, certainly. Not even a smidgen of that man’s suffocating ebullience. A friend? But they all tended to be members of the congregation. And if she was at work, it seemed a bit too intimate for one of the anointed to be hanging out in her house unattended.

  Given what he’d just read, he was concerned, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. If it was Deal at the back door, he thought, pushing into the tiny rear foyer, maybe he could take up the matter with him, make sure he wasn’t overreacting.

  He flipped on the bare overhead light, found the knob, pulled the heavy steel door open as far as the safety chain would allow. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust; then he realized there were two people standing there in the narrow passage, a tall, dour-looking older man in a suit that seemed a size too small, and a sturdy woman, a head shorter, wearing white gloves and a veiled hat, a patent leather bag clutched under her arm. These are not Miami people, he found himself thinking.

  “Mr. Dolan?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Arch said, puzzled.

  “Is this the bookstore?” she continued, trying to peer over his shoulder.

  “The House of Books,” he said, nodding. “We’re closed, though.”

  “Oh, darn it,” she said, turning to her husband in despair. “I told you.”

  She turned back to Arch. “Dexter was hungry,” she explained, a mournful expression squeezing her round face. “So of course we had to eat.” The man glanced at her neutrally, as if she might be speaking some foreign tongue.