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  Henry had read no more than a few short stories by Updike and had little luck over the years selling his work. His own judgments were more practical. Because he had not really gone to college, beyond a few night classes at Northeastern, he had never taken any stock in those authors who were the darlings of academia. And over time he had found, without exception, that the writers he was most passionate about were also the ones he sold most easily.

  Another time she said, “Who's good?” And he had answered without thinking, because it was the book he was reading then.

  "Nick Tosches. Have you read him? He's very good. Edgy."

  "Difficult man,” she answered. “I've met him."

  This had sparked him. “The good ones are all difficult, aren't they? Each in their own way. But they're difficult for a reason. Tom Wolfe. Harlan Ellison. They're not alike. They're fighting for their lives. Everything is FDA-approved now. Homogenized. Pasteurized."

  To Henry's bewilderment, Morgan found this kind of off-the-cuff criticism enchanting. She seldom argued with his pronouncements, especially after encouraging him to talk about the authors he read and to explain the reasons he liked them. To entertain her—to see the curve of amusement in her eyes—he stretched his opinion in hyperbolic flares of dissatisfaction with the current state of literary affairs, making high crime out of lapses in creative effort, and capital offense from a waste of talent.

  One night he had brought a bellman to their door because he had spoken too loudly for too long. “Where is our Dickens? Where is our Trollope? What challenge is there to investing supernatural powers in an automobile when the world is in need of explanations and our religions have failed to answer? Where are Tolstoy and Dostoevsky when the dating habits of an air-head sell in the millions? What pleasure is there in a Cold War fantasy about the life and death struggle of a cardboard spy when the intrigue and game of our time needs a Dumas and the upheaval of history cries for a Victor Hugo? Why are we cursed with mediocrity and obsessed with the dissection of literary mice just as we stand on the doorstep of the stars?"

  He could bring the smile to a laugh if he worked at it long enough.

  At first she appeared surprised that there was a rationale beyond the accepted judgments of the literary establishment. She took his homegrown opinions as interesting vernacular aberrations—even cute. Why was Kipling so underrated and James so favored by the critics? Why was Thornton Wilder so often ignored? Was it impossible to overrate Mark Twain?

  Once when they were together, he had stood up on the mattress above her and posed with his hands in the air as if holding an imaginary book to the light.

  Study is like the heaven's glorious sun

  That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks,

  Small have continual plodders ever won,

  Save base authority from others’ books.

  He had said it to show off his attention to her sincere advice of long ago. He had finished his set of the Yale Shakespeare and had already begun rereading the ones he liked best. Love's Labour's Lost had become his favorite. He should have been embarrassed at his poor delivery, but she sat up from the bed, one hand extended dramatically toward him, and hardly missed the beat.

  These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights

  That give a name to every fixed star

  Have no more profit of their shining nights

  Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

  He took her hand and kissed it. She was so much brighter than he was ever going to be.

  His anger had brought him to his knees then. “Then why read? Why care about them? What does it matter what they write? Isn't it just for the little pieces of the puzzle that might be found there? For the little pleasure of another voice? Why do books matter at all? If the godfather's only search is for fame, what does it matter what name they give the stars? It's all a waste of time. We're better off wallowing naked in the grass by day and huddling in caves at night. The light of a television is more than enough to have sex by."

  But she had picked up the quote again. “'How well he's read, to reason against reading!’”

  He was astonished, as he often was. “It's only wonder, not reason. I'm in awe. I lie on my bed at night and read as if my life depended on it. And it does, even if it's a mundane life—but I'm talking about what goes on in my head. It doesn't matter whether it makes me laugh or cry, so long as it fascinates me. It doesn't even matter if I agree with what the author is saying, so long as I can talk back. There is no conversation with most of them. It's all one way. ‘Now listen here. Hear me, and shut up!’ But with the good ones, I lie there and wonder at all the things the words have made me think about that I never would have imagined before. I've even thought —once, when I was reading a book by Joseph Conrad, The End of the Tether, I think; a dark little story—and suddenly he said something. I can't remember the line exactly, but the old captain sits down with his Bible—no, his dead wife's Bible, with his finger in the leaves, but closed and held on his knee, and begins to remember her.... I had just done that. The very same thing. I had just been reading Yeats and stopped to hear my own mother's voice in my head. It's like having a conversation with someone without the rush of time."

  Soon enough, she became intrigued by his explanations, and then fascinated with the connections she could see between Henry's dismissal of New York literary judgment and her husband's dislikes for the people for whom he worked.

  She often quoted her husband's words. She called the literary establishment “The Self-Obsessed” because Heber did, and Henry adopted the term as his own. She held her own opinions as only that—opinion—subjective personal reactions. She never defended them afterward and wasted little time in explanation.

  Once she told him that, inexplicably, Heber had always liked Westerns, but she had never developed a taste for them. Henry, who had been introduced to Western fiction by his buddy Albert, tried to convince her to read a few of his favorites, which finally she did, and admitted reluctantly she liked them. Soon he had her reading Elmer Kelton novels, and Clair Huffaker and Jack Schaefer. He had even persuaded her to read Owen Wister's The Virginian, and then she wanted to talk about it all night, like a girl with a crush. She had a way of suddenly seeming very young.

  She had said, “It's a better world they're in. It's a world of men and women and right and wrong. It's so civilized. It makes me want to cry."

  It interested him when it came out that she seldom saw any manuscripts for Westerns these days—probably because so few Western movies were being made.

  "Hollywood matters,” she answered. “What's good for Hollywood is good for America. The books are not bought for themselves, but because of what they can be used for."

  Morgan Brown had started working for Heber Johnson as a reader soon after getting her master's in literature at Boston University. She had worked as his assistant for the rest of his life. It had only been in the last ten years, as Heber's schedule slowed down, that she began to look for other work.

  "I really hated being an agent. I hated making decisions about people's lives. Heber depended too much on me. If I said no, he said no. I never negotiated any deals. I just made the decision that made the negotiations necessary. I think Heber started hating the authors, though he never said so. It wasn't like the way I feel about the people who own the homes I decorate. That's more disdain, not hate. Heber simply didn't want to read the work of his clients anymore, with all the complaining and the moneygrubbing afterward. He would get them a hundred thousand dollars more than they had ever made in their lives, and they would whine about his fifteen percent. Their greed colored his view of them."

  Then her face had changed with an urgency, as if she had not said all that she meant and to get it right mattered. “But Heber hated the publishers who encouraged it all even more. ‘It's all about the money,’ he said. They could be marketing breakfast cereal. They all used nice words to the feature reporters to explain how they loved books and the romance of publishing
and then turned around to their desks and signed another author who could churn out thrillers by the half dozen, or a self-help book which just happened to be like one already on the best-seller list, all the while some sap in Poughkeepsie slaves away at night trying to write the next great American novel, never knowing there is no chance in hell it will ever get published without passing muster in the marketing department—you know, the marketing department: where they tell him that the woman Raskolnikov kills has to be young so the story will appeal to the right demographic."

  Her voice had wavered with the kind of passion he wanted to hear. He could feel it in his spine when she broke through the reserve and her words came more quickly. She paused as if to contain the memory, but could not. “Though I seldom saw all that. I always loved the other part—not talking with the authors—just reading their work when it was still new and no one but they and I knew yet how wonderful it was ... or how bad....” She took a breath, and then another, and the words slowed again. “When he stopped negotiating as often, I had less to read. Getting into a new line of work was natural. And you know, we had moved so often over the years. New York. Beverly Hills. Back to Boston. We even lived in Vermont for two years. I had decorated at least twelve homes just for ourselves. It was the only other thing I knew about. And it has paid so well since."

  Henry knew, from very early on, that theirs was not a permanent relationship. But he had ignored the thought. The kind of matter-of-fact affair he had with Morgan seemed almost perfect to him. Until it was over.

  The end had been unexpected. Her announcement had come one morning, after little sleep and much talk. He was not sure he truly understood then, even as she drove away.

  Afterward, he endured the first bout of depression he had ever known. He had not wanted to get out of bed in the morning, and was too tired to read at night. His appetite for food disappeared. He stopped going to the Blue Thorn and nursed his bottled beer at home. Albert had shown up at Chestnut Street several times—spending more time talking to Mrs. Prowder than to Henry.

  Gently mocking, Mrs. Prowder had frowned at Henry as he passed. “You are getting too thin. And you are smoking again. I thought you had given up that nasty habit. You need to find yourself a good Italian girl ... I know that Lisa, who works at the Finnian's Drug Store. She's a pharmacist. Very pretty. Very patient. She puts up with me well enough. You must have noticed her. She was dating a doctor, but that's over...."

  In time, Henry had solved the problem with a daily walk from Beacon Hill to the Blue Thorn in Inman Square, and a liberal application of fresh ale. He had begun to smoke again, and lingered longer at the book sales.

  But the thought had occurred to him often since, that he was living an apparently pointless life. Morgan had gone back to caring for her husband, after years of being instrumental in the publishing of the very books Henry sold—and he would continue selling them, making a basic living with just enough left over for gas.

  What did he do that could not be done by others? The pleasure he felt before in his job was suddenly ephemeral. He liked to think he had some hand in preserving good literature for future generations. A high cause. But this sounded better than it felt. He never blamed his depression directly on his loss of Morgan. He had always thought of her as a catalyst.

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  Chapter Three

  Don't confuse legal and illegal with right and wrong. The difference is not a detail. It's like water and air. You swim in one and breathe the other."

  Uncle Jack tossed his cigarette at the hardened soil beneath the battered garbage cans beside the stairs. He was scowling as much at the sun as at Henry. Still, Jack looked too much like his brother for Henry to speak to him easily about things. It was in the hard edge of bone in his face and the turn of his mouth. But Jack wore a flat tweed cap, while his brother, Matt, went bareheaded in the worst weather. Jack shaved close and smelled freshly of witch hazel while Matt skipped his razor as often as not and usually displayed a rough of graying beard. Jack was not a skeptic, believing Lady Luck was only a disguise for the Virgin Mary, while Matt was positive the human race was lost and all that was left to do was finish the task as best as one could. Jack was the older brother, but few knew it.

  Henry tried to keep a poker face. “How much?"

  Jack squinted, even with his eyes shadowed by the bill of his cap. “A grand would just about cover it."

  Henry squinted enough to give his words the authority of serious consideration. “For how long?"

  He would not have denied Jack unless there was no money to be had.

  His uncle scuffed at a tuft of grass to help the pretense of negotiation. “I got loans out that are due by the end of the month. Two of the guys will be late. They always are. Say Thanksgiving."

  Henry lowered his head to make sure there was no question of the more important matter. “You won't tell Dad."

  Jack brushed the air with one hand. “Your dad likes not to be told. He's happier that way. I wouldn't disturb him for the world."

  Henry wanted more assurance. “You told him about the car."

  Jack bobbed a bit to avoid the jab. “He was on to me. It was in the heat of an argument. It slipped out. I'm sorry about that."

  Henry had rented a car for Jack so that his uncle could drive down to the casino in Connecticut. Jack had no credit cards. Henry's father knew that much to begin with. Henry had actually rented cars for his uncle more than a few times. Jack hated buses. He never liked sitting too close to strangers. Besides, if he had a car, he could take his girlfriend along. Sally would not sit on a bus. And then Jack always paid the credit-card bill promptly. This was one of the few times he had ever borrowed money outright.

  Henry asked, “What kind of deal is it?"

  A scowl erupted, and his uncle's eyes narrowed further. “For a grand I'm not telling you my life story. I'm saving that for the biographer."

  Henry relented. “I'll go to the bank later. Come by my apartment after nine."

  Jack looked down at something on the ground that needed study and kicked at it.

  He said, “That old lady you rent from doesn't like me."

  Henry answered, “Mrs. Prowder died."

  The scowl in Uncle Jack's face collapsed. “God bless her soul. I didn't see it in the paper."

  The obituary column in the Herald always got his uncle's first attention.

  Henry said, “She didn't rank a column inch. Just a good old lady."

  His uncle Jack nodded slightly. “Too few of those. Far too few, and most of them gone now .... She had a good eye for character."

  As Jack turned and walked out the driveway with his odd lope, the bottom edge of his tweed overcoat dipping close to the ground, Henry watched with the thought that the step was getting slower, no longer the little dance they once teased him over. Three vertebrae were fused together—to “take the swing out of my boogie,” his uncle liked to say—from a time when he was driving trucks for the Marines. Korea was still his favorite topic of conversation after the third beer.

  Henry said “Toodle” out loud to himself because Jack had left without his usual parting word. His uncle's mind was already on some other objective.

  As his uncle disappeared onto the street, Henry counted the number of cigarette butts on the ground to calculate how long Jack had been waiting. At least an hour.

  Because he only needed it about once a week, and rented parking spaces in Boston were at a premium well beyond his budget, Henry had always kept his van at his father's house in Brookline. It was the house Henry had grown up in, and the one he often referred to as home even after being on his own for over twenty years. Nevertheless, he wondered how his uncle guessed he would be there today.

  Two strips of broken concrete, tied by knots of grass, passed between the house and the neighbor's at one side, in the direction his uncle had gone. At the end of this was a separate garage of cement block molded to look like stone. His father's truck, emblazoned with Matthew Sulliv
an Electrical in large gold, gothic lettering was kept within the garage, and Henry's van, unmarked except by rust, was parked to the side and just in front of the barbecue pit which was made of the same cement block as the garage. The barbecue had not had a fire on weekends since his mother had died so long ago.

  With his van parked, Henry always used the back entrance, which was usually unlocked. This door stood in a direct line to the door at the front of the house. The two were so much alike that when two people entered from both ends of the house at the same time, it often appeared to be a mirror image. With his mind on his uncle, the coincidence startled him now as he entered.

  The figure at the front end of the hall spoke to him. “Everybody's been lookin’ for you. Your dad's been looking for you. He's gone off. Your uncle's been looking for you. He's outside somewhere."

  Malcolm Moore turned with the end of his words and headed up the stairs, as heavy-footed for a skinny man as he had ever been.

  His father had always taken in boarders. When growing up, Henry usually had someone living in the opposite room down the hall on the third floor. It had been a problem for him more than once—Maureen Williams had caused him his earliest heartache. An exchange student lived there even now. And Malcolm Moore had been occupying Henry's old room for almost the entire twenty years since Henry had moved out. In all that time, Henry had never heard Malcolm say hello or how are you or good-bye. But Malcolm had stayed the longest of all the renters through the years.

  Henry said thanks into the empty hall and went to the kitchen, in need of a drink of water. There his father had left a note in that perfect script the old man had learned in the late 1940s at St. Mary's school, before all the world had changed and handwriting became a lost craft. Henry had gone to Lawrence, the public grammar school, and his own handwriting was always a matter of embarrassment.