She smiled, a rather sad smile I thought. "Maybe you'll get tired of reading me."
"Never!"
"But it's the same book all the time. How often can you read it?"
I looked at her, young, vibrant, maybe two years from death, certainly less than three. I knew what lay ahead for her; all she could see was a lifetime of wonderful experiences stretching out into the distance.
"Then I'll read one of your other books."
"I wrote others?" she asked.
"Dozens of them," I lied.
She couldn't stop smiling. "Really?"
"Really."
"Thank you, Ethan," she said. "You've made me very happy."
"Then we're even."
There was a noisy squabble down by the lake. She quickly looked around for her cats, but they were on the porch, their attention also attracted by the noise.
"Raccoons," I said.
"Why are they fighting?"
"Probably a dead fish washed up on the shore," I answered. "They're not much for sharing."
She laughed. "They remind me of some people I know." She paused. "Some people I knew," she amended.
"Do you miss them — your friends, I mean?"
"No. I had hundreds of acquaintances, but very few close friends. I was never in one place long enough to make them. It's only when I'm with you that I realize they're gone." She paused. "I don't quite understand it. I know that I'm here with you, in the new millennium — but I feel like I just celebrated my 32nd birthday. Tomorrow I'll put flowers on my father's grave, and next week I set sail for Madrid."
"Madrid?" I repeated. "Will you watch them fight the brave bulls in the arena?"
An odd expression crossed her face. "Isn't that curious?" she said.
"Isn't what curious?"
"I have no idea what I'll do in Spain. but you've read all my books, so you know."
"You don't want me to tell you," I said.
"No, that would spoil it."
"I'll miss you when you leave."
"You'll pick up one of my books and I'll be right back here," she said. "Besides, I went more than 75 years ago."
"It gets confusing," I said.
"Don't look so depressed. We'll be together again."
"It's only been a week, but I can't remember what I did with my evenings before I started talking to you."
The squabbling at the lake got louder, and Giggle and Goggle began huddling together.
"They're frightening my cats," said Priscilla.
"I'll go break it up," I said, climbing down from the veranda and heading off to where the raccoons were battling. "And when I get back," I added, feeling bolder the farther I got from her, "maybe I'll find out just how real you are after all."
By the time I reached the lake, the fight was all but over. One large raccoon, half a fish in its mouth, glared at me, totally unafraid. Two others, not quite as large, stood about ten feet away. All three were bleeding from numerous gashes, but it didn't look like any of them had suffered a disabling injury.
"Serves you right," I muttered.
I turned and started trudging back up to the house from the lake. The cats were still on the veranda, but Priscilla wasn't. I figured she'd stepped inside to get another iced tea, or perhaps use the bathroom — one more factor in favor of her not being a ghost — but when she didn't come out in a couple of minutes I searched the house for her.
She wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere in the yard, or in the old empty barn. Finally I went back and sat down on the porch swing to wait.
A couple of minutes latter Goggle jumped up on my lap. I'd been idly petting him for a couple of minutes before I realized that he was real.
I bought some cat food in the morning. I didn't want to set it out on the veranda, because I was sure the raccoons would get wind of it and drive Giggle and Goggle off, so I put it in a soup bowl and placed it on the counter next to the kitchen sink. I didn't have a litter box, so I left the kitchen window open enough for them to come and go as they pleased.
I resisted the urge to find out any more about Priscilla with the computer. All that was really left to learn was how she died, and I didn't want to know. How does a beautiful, healthy, world-traveling woman die at 34? Torn apart by lions? Sacrificed by savages? Victim of a disfiguring tropical disease? Mugged, raped and killed in New York? Whatever it was, it had robbed her of half a century. I didn't want to think of the books she could have written in that time, but rather of the joy she could have felt as she traveled from one new destination to another. No, I very definitely didn't want to know how she died.
I worked distractedly for a few hours, then knocked off in midafternoon and hurried home. To her.
I knew something was wrong the moment I got out of my car. The porch swing was empty. Giggle and Goggle jumped off the veranda, raced up to me, and began rubbing against my legs as if for comfort.
I yelled her name, but there was no response. Then I heard a rustling inside the house. I raced to the door, and saw a raccoon climbing out through the kitchen window just as I entered.
The place was a mess. Evidently he had been hunting for food, and since all I had were cans and frozen meals, he just started ripping the house apart, looking for anything he could eat.
And then I saw it: Travels With My Cats lay in tatters, as if the raccoon had had a temper tantrum at the lack of food and had taken it out on the book, which I'd left on the kitchen table. Pages were ripped to shreds, the cover was in pieces, and he had even urinated on what was left.
I worked feverishly on it for hours, tears streaming down my face for the first time since I was a kid, but there was no salvaging it — and that meant there would be no Priscilla tonight, or any night until I found another copy of the book.
In a blind fury I grabbed my rifle and a powerful flashlight and killed the first six raccoons I could find. It didn't make me feel any better — especially when I calmed down enough to consider what she would have thought of my bloodlust.
I felt like morning would never come. When it did, I raced to the office, activated my computer, and tried to find a copy of Priscilla's book at www.abebooks.com and www.bookfinder.com, the two biggest computerized clusters of used book dealers. There wasn't a single copy for sale.
I contacted some of the other book dealers I'd used in the past. None of them had ever heard of it.
I called the copyright division at the Library of Congress, figuring they might be able to help me. No luck: Travels With My Cats was never officially copyrighted; there was no copy on file. I began to wonder if I hadn't dreamed the whole thing, the book as well as the woman.
Finally I called Charlie Grimmis, who advertises himself as The Book Detective. He does most of his work for anthologists seeking rights and permissions to obscure, long-out-of-print books and stories, but he didn't care who he worked for, as long as he got his money.
It took him nine days and cost me $600, but finally I got a definitive answer:
Dear Ethan:
You led me a merry chase. I'd have bet halfway through it that the book didn't exist, but you were right: evidently you did own a copy of a limited, numbered edition.
Travels With My Cats was self-published by one Priscilla Wallace (d. 1926), in a limited, numbered edition of 200. The printer was the long-defunct Adelman Press of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The book was never copyrighted or registered with the Library of Congress.
Now we get into the conjecture part. As near as I can tell, this Wallace woman gave about 150 copies away to friends and relatives, and the final 50 were probably trashed after her death. I've checked back, and there hasn't been a copy for sale anywhere in the past dozen years. It's hard to get trustworthy records farther back than that. Given that she was an unknown, that the book was a vanity press job, and that it went only to people who knew her, the likelihood is that no more than 15 or 20 copies still exist, if that many.