Jess swallowed hard, moved by the rabbi’s words. “I’m going to pay you back as soon as possible.”
“Don’t pay me. Pay the Bialystok Center of Berkeley,” he said. “Then you can write off the donation on your taxes.”
“I’ll pay you and I’ll pay you interest,” she resolved.
“No interest,” said the rabbi, spreading his hands. “No monetary interest.”
“What other kind of interest is there?”
“Ah.” The rabbi smiled at her. “I am thinking of a more substantial interest.”
“And what’s that?”
“I am interested in you.”
“Me?” Jess asked.
“You have heard the expression ‘Time is money,’” said Helfgott. “Some people prefer payment in money. I prefer payment in time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come to us for Shabbes,” he told her. “Or come to class, and when you’re done coming, then”—he drew out the word in a singsong voice—“thehen repay the loan.”
She was late to work. Half an hour late, forty-five minutes late. George sat at his desk at Yorick’s and called Jess’s home number, but no one answered. He began to call the Tree House and then hung up.
His old black telephone sat silent on his desk. The boxes he had stacked near European History remained unpacked. She’d quit. That was the most likely scenario. She had decided to leave but hadn’t bothered to give notice. That was usually the way with students. She had run off with her boyfriend, an amphibious creature George had met just once in passing at the Farmers’ Market, where Jess hailed George from a booth selling root vegetables.
“I want you to meet someone!” she called out in her friendly way. Then she drew Leon from the shadows, as one might draw a dark slug off a lettuce leaf. The boyfriend was a tall Russian, or Armenian perhaps, with slippery black hair and olive skin, and eyes of an unusually pale, druggy shade of blue. The better to see you with, my dear, thought George. “This is Leon,” Jess said.
“Hey,” said Leon as George extended his hand.
“This is my boss, George,” Jess told Leon.
Leon sized up George. “You’re the bookseller.”
“I am.”
“Good for you,” said Leon as though George were a child or a student or a dog performing some stupid trick. “What’s selling these days?”
George frowned. “Nothing you’d like.”
How quickly Jess had traded slacker Noah for sinister Leon. She was now over an hour late, later than she had ever been. Maybe she had not run off with Leon. Maybe she was dead.
He walked to the shop window, which Jess had set up with a display for Shakespeare’s birthday. Used paperbacks of the Histories and Comedies framed a leather-bound Complete Works, and a Tales from Shakespeare in two volumes, very fine condition, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. She had opened one volume to display a color plate of barefoot Miranda dancing with fairies on her father’s island, but George had vetoed that idea, closing the book to save its spine and protect its colors from the sun.
No one outside even stopped to look. The fine fall weather kept people out of dark little bookstores. He told himself this, although on rainy winter days, he tended toward the other opinion, concluding that few would venture out to browse when they could stay home and order books online or reread books they already possessed. Vanity, vanity. Instantly accessible, infinitely searchable, the Internet precluded physical transactions, so that there was little point to keeping a bookshop, even in Berkeley. Moments of discovery in the store were sweet but all too rare: the reunion of a customer with the long-sought Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the discovery of Linus Pauling’s copy of On the Origin of Species. Why live for such occasions? He only felt lonelier afterward.
He pushed away those melancholy thoughts and looked ahead to dinner. He had invited Nick, and his friend Raj as well. He had his own dissolute companions—or by the end of the night he’d make them so. There would be no wives or girlfriends, only good food and drink, George’s favorite kind of evening. Why, then, was Jess late today? She was holding him up. He had planned to leave early so that he could pick up dessert (he didn’t bake) and begin cooking.
The bell rang, and as the shop door opened, George backed away from the window lest he seem anxious. Surprised, he recognized the woman who walked in: not Jess, but Sandra.
“Welcome,” he said, noting her cloth bag. She had come just twice over the past nine months, and each time she had brought an ordinary book. A first-edition Fannie Farmer, and an old Mastering the Art of French Cooking. He had offered only ten dollars for the last, and she had left Yorick’s in a huff. Then he concluded that, when it came to her uncle’s estate, Sandra had already sold him the crown jewels, such as they were. “Another cookbook for me?”
“No.” She pushed her long hair back over her shoulders, a gesture surprisingly young for a woman so gray.
“May I help you find something?”
“No.” She stood quite still before him. “What I would like,” she said, and she spoke with precision, “is to take you to the house.”
“To your house!”
“My uncle’s house,” she amended. “The house he left me. I’m interested in an appraisal.”
Why now? he thought. And why him? Did she want a second opinion? Or was he the first? Just how desperate was she?
“Some of the books are valuable.”
Let me be the judge of that, he thought.
“Some are unique.”
“How many are there?”
“Currently,” she said, “eight hundred and seventy-three.”
The number startled him, because it was bigger than he expected, and more exact.
“Sorting out that many will take time.”
“That’s just it; time is of the essence,” she told him. “Would it be possible for you to come this afternoon?”
With some humor, he considered his empty store. “Sure.”
“I’ll show you.”
“I’d have to lock up,” he said. Jess should have been there to cover for him.
He stuck a Post-it on the glass shop door. “Back in an hour.”
Then he dashed off instructions for Jess, who had a key. He took his fountain pen and covered a note card quickly with his small tight cursive:
J.—I assume you’re writing a new theory of moral sentiments or testifying against Pacific Lumber. In either case, the books have not been shelved. Take care of that and break down the boxes!—G.
They took George’s car, because Sandra didn’t drive, and they drove through Elmwood with its beetle-browed old bungalows. Towering hedges of eugenia nearly obscured Sandra’s home from Russell Street. Her uncle must have bought the place for about a dollar, thought George, as he picked his way through a jungle of ornamental plum, live oak, and Australian tea trees, trailing their branches luxuriantly. There were figs and lemons, roses and giant rhododendrons, all overrun with thorny blackberry canes.
“Watch out for the cat,” Sandra told George as he followed her up peeling steps to the front porch.
She gestured for George to step in close behind her as she unlocked the door. Like a furry missile, the black-and-gray cat launched himself, trying to escape outdoors. George blocked him with his legs. Sandra scooped him up in her arms. “Down, Geoffrey,” she ordered, as if chastising a dog, and she dumped the animal onto a couch draped in dark green slipcovers. Geoffrey jumped onto the back of this well-protected piece of furniture and glared at her with furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.