"In storage in Europe, some of them as long as fifteen years." He put a stack of books on the table. "Dirty work."
"It's okay, I'm dressed for it." She held up the book she was looking at. "This is so beautiful. Is it a book about the Tarot?"
"Not exactly. It's a novel, but the Italian edition has these tipped-in reproductions of fifteenth-century Tarot cards. They are beautiful, aren't they? Nobody does that kind of work in this country."
Anderson went back to the cartons, stacked more books, and finally sat back on his haunches with a discouraged expression. After a moment she said, "Moving is awful."
"It isn't that, but I think I've bitten off more than I can chew. I'm no librarian; I'm going to have to hire somebody."
"To shelve the books, and catalog them? I could do that."
He turned and gave her a skeptical look. "Do you know the Dewey Decimal System?"
"They don't use that anymore, it's all the Library of Congress System now. No, I don't know either one, but neither do you, so what good would it be? What you want is a system you can understand, so you can find a book when you want it."
"So?"
"So, novels in one place, art books in another, biography, science, whatever. I'll put labels on the shelves, and each book will have a sticker to show where it belongs. Books you're through with, that you want reshelved, you can put at one end of the table and I'll take care of them. Yes?"
"Yes, Maggie. Do it."
"And, books in foreign languages, I'll put on another part of the table with little slips of paper in them. And you can write on each one what kind of book it is, and then I'll know."
"Okay."
Every day, seeing Gene was almost like seeing him for the first time: there was a shock of wrongness, as if someone had come through a magnifying glass. His hands fascinated her; they were tanned, shapely, unscarred, with neatly trimmed nails, and they were twelve inches long from wrist to fingertip. Since the first day, when they shook hands, he had not touched her. She found herself wondering what it would be like.
Gene's habits were regular. He spent his mornings in the workshop, where he was fitting together an intricate inlaid tabletop. In the afternoon, he read his mail and dictated replies or annotated the letters for Margaret's attention. Most of his mail orders now were for books, some new, some from collector's catalogs.
Every afternoon Margaret worked on cataloging the books. Gene was impatient to get them on the shelves, but he understood that it would save time to do the cataloging first. When she realized how long a job it was going to be she began working straight through to dinnertime. Pongo's dinners were even more amazing than his lunches: one day it would be turkey mole with guacamole and corn fritters, the next coq au vin and carrot soufflé, the next a Middle Eastern lamb and apricot stew, with chickpeas and olive oil flavored with garlic.
The first time she went back to the library for another hour's work after dinner, Irma gave her a curious ironic smile.
The house was even bigger than she had realized. There was a dining room, never used so far, with a table that would seat twenty. Under the back stairway was a room fitted out with a huge reclining chair that could be used for haircuts or dentistry. There was a central music system with outlets all over the house; you could play any record or tape by looking it up in the catalog and punching in the number.
Books with slips of paper in them began to appear in Gene's out-basket. The slips marked pages on which passages had been outlined in pencil; some were annotated in Gene's precise tiny hand. Guessing at his intention, Margaret typed the passages single-spaced, one to a page even if it was short, and indented Gene's commentary. All he said was, "Maggie, I forgot to tell you these ought to be punched for a ring binder.' Punch them, will you, and after this use binder paper."
She could not discern any pattern in the things he was reading. Most were popular works on science or quasi-science; evolutionary theory, genetics, psychology, sociology, history. In one book he had written: "Is the problem that the gene's selfishness is not enlightened?"
At the end of the second week she made a down payment on a car, a three-year-old red Datsun. On the following Wednesday, after dinner, when Pongo had gone back to his cottage and Anderson had disappeared for the night, Irma said to her, "Gene thinks there's no point in your driving back and forth every day when we've got so much room here. If you want to move into one of the cottages, or upstairs, it's okay."
"That's incredibly generous," Margaret said. She tried not to show what she knew: this meant that she had been accepted as a member of the household.
"Maybe not," Irma said with a faint smile. "It probably means he'll get more work out of you. Go upstairs if you want, look in the empty rooms and see if you find one you like. Then I'll give you the cottage keys and you can go back and look them over before you make up your mind."
The upstairs apartments were like Irma's, each with a sitting room, bedroom, kitchenette, and bath. Each one was furnished in a different style, some formal, some cozy.
In the cool evening she walked back to the cottages. There were three, well separated and screened by hedges; the first had lighted windows, the others were dark. She opened the door of the middle cottage and went in.
"Cottage" was a misnomer. The living room was forty feet long and had a twenty-foot cathedral ceiling; it was luxuriously furnished, and so were the four bedrooms, one downstairs, three up, each with its private bath.
As she walked back, the door of Pongo's cottage opened and the beam of a flashlight hit her in the face. It dropped immediately. "Sorry," said Pongo's voice. "Didn't know it was you." He was in the darkness beside the open door; she could barely make him out.
"What would you have done if it was somebody else?" she asked.
He stepped into the light and showed her the gleam of metal in his hand. "Boom, boom," he said, grinning around his cigar. "Like to see my place?"
"All right?'
Pongo's living room was smaller than the other: it was crowded with furniture and bric-a-brac. The paintings on the walls were of cowboys and Indians. Beside the sofa was a black leather armchair, obviously too big for anyone but Gene. In a brass cage nearby, something small and brown leaped at the bars and stared at her with bright eyes.
"What's that?"
"Marmoset," said Pongo. "His name's Gwendolyn."
"He's cute," she said dubiously. "Does he bite?"
"Like a tiger," said Pongo. "Sit down, have a beer." He poured from a chilled bottle into a Pilsener glass. The beer was dark; even the foam was coffee-colored. "Kulmbacher," he said. "You ever have this?"
"No. It's good."
Pongo took a long draught, set his glass down. "You moving out here?"
"I don't think so. Irma told me I could use one of the apartments upstairs, or else a cottage, but they're too big for one person. I wouldn't know what to do with a four-bedroom house."
"Might have guests later. You could move in with me."
"Right, and I could do your cooking and cleaning."
"Feed the marmoset," he said. He passed her a bowl of macadamia nuts.
"Pongo, I'm going to get fat as a pig. Can't you serve something lighter for lunch, or else something not so good?"
He looked pleased. "Maybe. You're not fat yet."
"What does your name mean, Pongo?"
He grimaced. "Monkey."
"Oh."
"He gave it to me. It's all right around here, but if we go to Tampa, call me Bill, okay?"
"Okay."
She moved into the apartment next to Irma's; her rent was paid for the rest of the month, but it didn't seem to matter. Irma said, "If you don't like the furniture, the drapes, anything, go pick out something you do like -- Gene will pay for it."