but no doubt she would find out in time.
In front of the bookstore, however, she lost her courage. She stood looking into the display window, which was just as it had been on Friday except for a small ivory Madonna where her wooden cat had been. As long as she didn’t go in, anything was possible. But if she went in and Vince wasn’t there, or if he was cool to her or refused to tell her about Erika—well, she reminded herself, I won’t be any worse off than I was this time last week. Back where I started from.
But she knew she would have lost something important. A hope so new and fragile she dared not examine it.
She turned the knob and went in.
The fair girl was sitting on a folding chair at the back of the room, writing on a clipboard. She looked up as Frances came in, heralded by the little silvery bell. Several expressions crossed her face—recognition, surprise, terror. She stood up, holding the clipboard stiffly at her side. “Vince. Customer.”
A voice from somewhere in the back. “Don’t forget what I said.”
“Vince says that I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I was rude.”
“But you weren’t rude. You were terribly polite.”
“That’s what Vince said. There is a rude kind of politeness.”
“I know, you use it on people you don’t like. But there’s no reason you should like me,” Frances admitted. “You don’t even know me. I have no business going around asking strangers out for drinks—”
“I keep telling her,” Vince said, coming in elegantly from a back room, dirty hands held out in front of him, “you either like people or you don’t, and why wait for a formal introduction? Personally,” he said airily, “I always know the first time I meet somebody, and I hardly ever change my mind. I must say this is an improvement over that terrible dress you had on the other time, though.”
Frances was too embarrassed to answer. Vince came to a graceful stop between her and Erika. “It’s my day for apologies too,” he said nicely. “I didn’t get your name and address when you were here, or ask you what kind of books you were interested in. You left your packages, too.”
“Frances Ollenfield.”
“This is Erika Frohmann. Now you’ve been introduced. You can be rude to each other if you want to.”
He retreated into the back again. There was the sound of running water. Erika Frohmann seemed to be gathering up her courage. “I’m not very good at meeting people,” she said, looking not at Frances but at the floor. “And you reminded me of someone too. Not a parent.”
“I look like a million other people.”
Vince emerged again, drying his hands on a small grimy towel. “Don’t be modest, my dear. You have a lovely profile—now you’ve done away with those dreadful, horrible curls. If I didn’t give my customers a little shove they might never get acquainted. They’re such a small group I feel they ought to know one another.”
Frances said, “I like small groups.” Take off your mask, let me see if you know. They wouldn’t, of course. Even if they wondered, caution was an hourly habit. She asked, hot faced, “Is it all right if I look at the books?”
“Sure, go ahead. You can wash your hands when you get through.”
Erika Frohmann said defensively, “Paper gets so dirty.” She sat down again, but tentatively, propping her clipboard against the edge of a counter and plainly trying to think of something to write. Her apology made and accepted, if only tacitly, the conversation was apparently over as far as she was concerned.
Frances walked slowly to the shelves, conscious of the silent figure behind her. But the fascination of print took over. Bake had long ago introduced her to secondhand bookstores on Clark Street and Dearborn, a wonderful clutter of junk and treasure, with the three-for-a-dollar bins just outside their doors and tables of old tattered paperbacks just inside. She was still unable to pass a secondhand bookstore.
This place was small, but there was enough to keep her here all day. She walked slowly, picking up volumes as she went along, now and then putting one back, scrupulously, where it had been in the first place.
Here were the Ann Bannon books side-by-side with Jeanette Foster’s Sex Variant Women in Literature, North Beach Girl, and Take Me Home next to the Covici-Friede edition of The Well of Loneliness, dated 1928. Here, huddled together as though for warmth in an unfriendly world, were Gore Vidal and a tall thin volume of Baudelaire, translated by someone she had never heard of. Here were books in the field, for people with a special interest, a special orientation.
Her voice came out shrill with self-consciousness. “Are these for sale?”
Vince came to see what she was talking about. “That depends. Why do you want them?”
Now. Tell him. But she could only say, “I’ve read most of them, but there are some I don’t know.”
He looked at her. The right answer evidently showed on her face; he nodded. “I’ll ask Erika. A lot of them belong to her. She may want them back.”
Erika stood up, soundless in flat canvas shoes. He said, indicating Frances with his thumb, “Can she have your books?”
“What for?”
“I thought you wanted to get rid of them. That was the general idea of bringing them here, wasn’t it?”
“But not to just anybody.”
Frances waited. The books are here to be sold, she thought, this is a bookstore. Why are they on display if they’re not for sale? But she said nothing. Something more was involved—this was a matter with deep emotional implications, and anything she said was likely to be wrong. It was the boy, Vince, who said with an impatient edge to his voice, “You can have them back if you’ve changed your mind. Go on, take them home with you.”
Erika’s face was hard and cold. She looked at Frances. “Let her take them if she wants. But not for money.”
“Look, we went through this with the insurance money.”
“It’s the same thing.”
Vince said to Frances, “It’s not just curiosity, is it? You won’t pass them around for your friends to laugh at?”
Frances said steadily, daring everything now, “If I had any friends here, they’d be interested for different reasons.”
Vince smiled. “Okay, they’re yours. No charge. Get them out of Erika’s way. She likes to come here and brood.”
Erika put the clipboard down on the counter, carefully, as though it might shatter. She walked soundlessly out of the store. The chimes over the door jingled. A streak of sunlight flashed across the floor and was gone.
Vince took the half dozen assorted books Frances was holding, since she seemed unable to put them down. “Don’t look that way. I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings.”
“It’s her feelings.”
“Her best friend was killed. I told you.”
