Hound

by Vincent McCaffrey

  This was all said to Henry with no real prompting. She could not have known he had been seeing Morgan Johnson. The Johnsons lived blocks away on Marlborough Street. In any case, he had only gone there to deliver the books Morgan purchased at the auctions. With Mrs. Prowder's caution, Henry could not escape the thought that there was some hidden power possessed by older women—an ability to read a man's mind—which was passed on through the generations and unbeknownst to mere men.

  Sitting in the Blue Thorn, staring at their reflections in the mirror across the bar, Henry reviewed much of this in his head as he had done many times since the morning. Now there was the news of Patty. Poor Patty. Lost Patty.

  He felt more than slightly maudlin and tried to shake it off by speaking up loudly. “A good pint of ale is worth living for."

  Tim shouted, “Hear, hear!” from a table where he was serving someone else.

  Albert nudged Henry with his shoulder and spoke in lower tones. “All you need is a woman of your own. All you need is a hug, but I'm not about to give you one. Alice would object—” He stopped short and turned to Henry on the stool. Henry could feel Albert's eyes directly on him. “Shit. This isn't just about old Mrs. Prowder, is it? Does all this have anything to do with a woman? Are you having problems with a woman again?"

  Henry opened his mouth and let it hang as he tried to find the right words, knowing Albert would interpret them the way he wanted. “Morgan Johnson called me last night. She wants me to look at her husband's books."

  Albert turned to the reflection in the mirror, then heaved another sigh. “You need a younger woman. At least pick on someone your own age. It's healthier."

  Henry defended himself. “I'm just looking at the books."

  Albert said, “Then stay away from the books in the bedroom."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Two

  The books he had purchased at the auction had cost Henry twice what he had wanted to spend, but then they were still worth a great deal more. He would just have to find a way to get his money back a little faster. There were several ways he could think of to accomplish that in how he presented the goods. He had played with this in his imagination as he unpacked them onto what would be called his kitchen table if he had a kitchen and not a kitchenette. He seldom used the space for eating, and his desk was already occupied with the remains of a previous batch.

  He first organized the books in short stacks, faceup, directly below the ceiling light which illuminated the whole of his apartment. He could offer them as a group, as authors of the 1930s. Most were women, like Bess Streeter Aldrich, Vicki Baum, Dorothy Canfield, and Fanny Hurst. He could offer those separately as key figures in twentieth-century women's literature. He could even ignore the content and offer some of them for their Deco dust jackets and design.

  He had speculated about this into the late hours, recombining the blunt colors of the covers and the bold typography of the titles for the visual effect that might be most eye-catching on his web site, until he was interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

  He had not even said hello before she spoke.

  "Henry?"

  Her voice was just the same, as if he had spoken to her only the day before.

  He managed to say, “Hello."

  Her voice lowered with recognition. “Hello."

  The moment was short, but many thoughts ran together.

  "Morgan. How are you?"

  She let one of her brief silences go by. She had always been good with silences. “Fine. A little lonely."

  He said the obvious. “I heard. I'm sorry."

  Her husband, Heber Johnson, had died some months before—was it in the early summer? Henry could not remember in the confusion of the moment. He seldom read the newspapers, and someone had told him after the fact. Heber had been eighty-four; once the most fearsome literary agent in Boston at a time when Boston bank money still financed the films made in Hollywood. A bullish figure in a silk suit and black felt fedora, Heber always had the ever-present cigar in hand, and by the late 1950s he had made the New York writers come to him. Even in his old age, his name had commanded respect. His authors were always published, because his authors always sold well.

  She said again, “I'm fine.” And then, as if to convince him, “It was a long time coming. How are you?"

  "The same. Of course. You sound good.” That was not what Henry meant to say. He added, “It's good to hear your voice.” But she was not calling for a chat. “Tell me what I can do."

  She might be over sixty now. Henry had never known her age. Heber Johnson had married her when she was still in her early twenties.

  She answered, “You can look at Heber's books.... I'm not selling them. I'm donating them—to Boston University. But I need them appraised. Honestly appraised. Not to scam the insurance company or the IRS. I need to know what they're really worth. A fellow from the university was over last week, and they have agreed to keep the collection together. It would be an appropriate memorial to Heber. And I hate those weaselly appraisers. The fellow from the auction house who looked at the furniture yesterday turned my stomach. He was practically begging for me to pay him off for a lower estimate so I could cheat on the estate taxes. You know how it is....” He could hear a weary breath in the pause. “Sure, I'll be taking a tax deduction. Certainly. But we haven't been doing well for some time, so there isn't a lot we need in the deductions department. You know Heber had gotten worse. He was bedridden for the last year."

  Henry told the lie. “No. I didn't. I'm sorry."

  Of course he had known. Why hadn't he called her? Why hadn't he offered some moral support, at the least? But she let him get by with it.

  "I don't know exactly why it matters now. I just thought ...” Her voice disappeared again.

  He could not remember that voice ever sounding weak. The point was that she wanted his advice. She wanted his help, now.

  He said, “If you need the money, you should sell them.” He had to say that much. He was pretty sure the money made no difference to her. He waited for her to answer.

  Her voice lifted at the thought. “I don't. Not really. I have some family problems to take care of—nothing I can't handle. And my son Arthur is doing well. He's made another film. He's managed to stay off drugs and stay married, and he has two kids now. I'm a grandmother! How unlikely is that! And he wants me to come out there to live. I put the condo up for sale, and I'm going out to California officially for a visit. If I like it, I'll stay. When I've paid all the bills and the government gets through with me, I'll still have more than enough, I think."

  Henry had met the son once. More like his father than his mother.

  "Okay. Sure. When do you want me to come over?"

  Her voice regained the positive control he'd always admired. “Well, that's the problem. I thought I had lots of time. But I received a good offer on the condo last week. That means I'll have to be out of there a little sooner. With the holidays coming, it could be confusing if we wait till next month. I'm guessing it would be best done this coming week. Can you manage that?"

  He could. Oddly, the first thought which occurred to him was that he should quit smoking immediately, so she would not be disappointed in him. The thought was broken by the sound of a voice in the background.

  Henry said, “Where are you now?” His eyes went to the clock by his bed. It was after ten.

  She answered, “In the house on the Cape. I haven't stayed in Boston since Heber died.” But he could tell she was distracted by something else.

  It was odd how things happen. He had even been thinking about Morgan at the auction that day. But then, he often thought of her.

  He had first met her as Mrs. Johnson when he still worked for Barbara at the bookshop. Morgan had come into Alcott & Poe looking for “yards of books” to fill the shelves in Back Bay condominiums owned by people who did not read. Barbara ran the best used bookshop in Boston and understood the need to sell stock in quantity—she was always
struggling with the Newbury Street rents—but she hated interior decorators. She called them “furniture dealers” and passed the job of helping Morgan off on him.

  Henry had liked Morgan immediately for her forthrightness.

  She directed him to “Skip the best sellers. I want copies of the good books by the midlist authors who earn a living, day in, year out, with their typewriters."

  Henry liked the arch of her eyebrow, which made her skepticism at some of his choices seem so obvious without a word. He had liked the agate green and brown of her eyes. She used them to see and not just look, and this had made him uncomfortable on a few occasions.

  Morgan once asked him, “What kind of books do you keep at home?” after rejecting one of his recommendations.

  He had fumbled for the right explanation. “Favorite authors—but only in editions I like. Reference books, of course.... I don't collect, really. I don't care much for the untouchable quality of first editions."

  She liked that answer and added, “An untouchable book is worthless. Who do you read? I bet what I'm looking for is exactly what you read."

  No. His habits were rather parochial, he knew. But that was that.

  He had confessed his orthodoxy. “Mark Twain. Trollope. Yeats. Robert Graves.” Then he had told her hesitantly, “I've just begun to read all the Shakespeare plays, first to last. I've always meant to."

  She looked at him very seriously, as if her words should not be ignored. “You must read your Shakespeare out loud. It is the only way to understand the brilliance. There is music in the language that gives it meaning. You don't want to miss that. Pretend you're John Gielgud. If it drives your roommate crazy, find a new roommate. Shakespeare is more important."

  Like a teacher, he thought.

  He defended himself too quickly. “I live alone, so that's not a problem. I'll give it a try. I've actually never thought to read it aloud."

  She had backed away then and looked at him from head to toe. “I'm surprised you live alone. You're smart. You're a very handsome man. You shave. I notice you bathe regularly. You stand up straight. You laugh at my little jokes. All you need is someone to show you how to dress. Go to London and live for a year. You'll find a good English girl there who'll fix your wardrobe right up."

  Morgan was a lean woman, arms slender with muscle showing instead of loose flesh. She stood very straight herself, almost soldierlike, he had thought before learning that her father had been a career naval officer. She was strong and enjoyed showing it, the same way Henry's sister, Shelagh, used to rebuff his help. Morgan carried her own choices to the register, grasped in stacks between her sagging hands and raised chin. And there was always her voice—her voice so very sure of itself.

  The very first day she had explained it all shamelessly. “These people I buy for don't read. They are cretins. But I have to buy good books for them anyway. I have to make it appear that they have taste. I'll give them credit for that. At least they want to appear civilized, and they have an idea what that looks like. So that's my job. If I buy a lot of leather bindings, then everyone will know they're phonies. They really want to be taken for what they are not. They want the books to look used and appear that they've been read, but in a condition that says they take care of them. These are not the intellectual slobs who hold a book with one hand while eating dinner with the other. These are people who buy five-thousand-dollar dresses to go out to fund-raisers for the poor, where they write a check for five hundred bucks so they can congratulate themselves on their generosity.... I'm sorry. I apologize for sounding so cynical. But I need your help. Who knows? Maybe some rainy day, they'll read one of these books and it will change their lives—or at least make them want to read another. It's possible."

  He had gotten to know her then, and on her repeat visits, but not well until several years later. After Henry had left Alcott & Poe and was selling books on his own, he had encountered her at an auction. Then it was like meeting a lost friend on the field of battle.

  She immediately made her case. “Your old boss, Barbara, wouldn't help me. She tried, but she doesn't think like you. She started picking out a bunch of classics. I tried to tell her how that would look artificial. I think she took it the wrong way. So now I'm out here trying to buy books just like you."

  In fact, she had not really been looking for the same kind of lots. He had no use for the common good books. He only wanted the unusual and uncommon things he could sell in his catalogue to other book dealers. When she started showing up at one of the larger auctions in Northampton, they sat together. They began having dinner together after previewing the lots and before the actual auctions began. The auctions were held at the old hotel there, and often ran late.

  It was on a rainy night in January, when Henry had worried out loud about driving back to Boston on icing roads, that she had simply stated the fact.

  She said, “I'm staying put. I've rented a room. And I think it would be very nice if you would stay as well.” With her eyes fixed on his own.

  Because of her style, the way she walked, the words she used, he had assumed she had come from old wealth.

  He had known people born and raised in wealth all his life. It was the nature of his hometown, divided as it was between the Village and South Brookline. Growing up in Brookline meant that he had been in the homes of the rich with friends from high school long before he was a book dealer. And more importantly, he had seen their books. Henry had observed their indulgences and divided them into two types. There were the ones who reacted against their breeding by becoming rude and arrogant slouchers, who assumed too much and expected everything. Morgan was the other type.

  She wore clothes he thought were high fashion until a remark he made about a green dress he liked, when he had learned it had been bought in Paris almost twenty years before. She wore jewelry, a diamond ring which had belonged to her grandmother, and sometimes her mother's favorite pearl necklace. She wore no perfumes, but he could not forget the scent of her for days after they had been together.

  It was an odd and disquieting relationship, which had only lasted a year. He never really saw her in Boston, but often at the auctions. When she ended it, she had done it in the kindest way.

  "I love you. You're a foolish book hound to have gotten involved with an old bitch like me. You're really too innocent for a man your age. But my first love is my husband. I've been selfish enough. Being unfaithful has been a little harder on me than I thought it would.... I'm not saying that to make you feel guilty. This was my doing. I needed you more than you needed me. But it has gotten to be more than I can handle."

  Her husband needed her care. He had suffered another stroke. He was incontinent. They had not slept in the same room for years because of his coughing and fitfulness at night, but Heber needed her to be there now.

  In fact, it was Henry who had been wrought with guilt.

  He had never really thought about marriage. He had, in fact, purposely avoided thinking much about it. His life was simple and peaceful, and he had liked it that way. He had been in love before—passionately enough to want to be with someone all the time. He had survived those experiences—though he was not really sure he had survived his relationship with Barbara yet. He was still feeling like an escaped prisoner who might be tracked down.

  Now he had been responsible for the unfaithfulness of another man's wife. He could not excuse himself for acting out of love. Not love as he wanted it to be. He certainly liked Morgan more than any woman he had met since Barbara. He liked being with her. And he enjoyed her—like a dessert, he thought. One could live without dessert. One should not break moral codes for the pleasure of dessert.

  But his feelings for Morgan had been new to him. He might have loved her if she had wanted him to. She was an extraordinary woman. But she had never allowed any real intimacy beyond the physical. She had kept the greater part of her life separate from him, seldom speaking of it more than was necessary. And he was happy to have her companionship. He had not sp
ent time with a woman since leaving Alcott & Poe.

  Unfortunately, they had too little time together. She was always rushed. He never saw her when he delivered the books at her apartment building—only Fred, the useless superintendent, who stood and watched while holding the door—except for the last time, when her son, Arthur, had been there visiting and had helped Henry unload. Arthur had been inquisitive about his mother's new profession. Henry had said little and played the part of delivery boy.

  Henry drove to the auctions in his rusting blue Ford van, arrived early, and examined each lot in the preview carefully, taking notes even on things he knew he would not buy, if only just to learn a little more about them. Morgan arrived in her Jaguar with little time left, walked around the room at a steady pace, and took no notes. It was completely a matter of first sight with her.

  At dinner they spoke about films or books they liked, or some gossip she had heard about an author. She enjoyed gossip. She seemed to have read everyone. These were untold stories, some she had witnessed, and others from her husband, about writers and other agents and publishers. He had suggested more than once that she should write a book of her own.

  Her opinions were far more defined than his, and always had the sound of finality.

  Once, she surprised him with “Updike will be forgotten within a few years of his inevitably overblown obituary notices. The term ‘a writer's writer’ really means he holds little interest for the general public, and I don't even think the high-lit types really like him. For a writer so proud of his stylistic control, he seems to have a limited idea of what he's writing about."