There weretwelveboxes of books. The damp in the basement had softened the cartons to cottage-cheese mush, and the back covers of the bottom layer of paperbacks were soft as felt. To Alan, these seemed unremarkable—all paper under the mountain looked like this after a week or two, even if Doug didn’t get to it—but Marci was heartbroken.“My books, my lovely books, they’re roont!” she said, as they piled them on the living room carpet.“They’re fine,” Alan said. “They’ll dry out a little wobbly, but they’ll be fine. We’ll just spread the damp ones out on the rug and shelve the rest.”And that’s what they did, book after book—old books, hardcover books, board-back kids’ books, new paperbacks, dozens of green- and orange-spined Penguin paperbacks. He fondled them, smelled them. Some smelled of fish and chips, and some smelled of road dust, and some smelled of Marci, and they had dog ears where she’d stopped and cracks in their spines where she’d bent them around. They fell open to pages that had her favorite passages. He felt wobbly and drunk as he touched each one in turn.“Have you read all of these?” Alan asked as he shifted the John Mortimers down one shelf to make room for the Ed McBains.“Naw,” she said, punching him in the shoulder. “What’s the point of a bunch of books you’ve already read?”
There weretwelveboxes of books. The damp in the basement had softened the cartons to cottage-cheese mush, and the back covers of the bottom layer of paperbacks were soft as felt. To Alan, these seemed unremarkable—all paper under the mountain looked like this after a week or two, even if Doug didn’t get to it—but Marci was heartbroken.
“My books, my lovely books, they’re roont!” she said, as they piled them on the living room carpet.
“They’re fine,” Alan said. “They’ll dry out a little wobbly, but they’ll be fine. We’ll just spread the damp ones out on the rug and shelve the rest.”
And that’s what they did, book after book—old books, hardcover books, board-back kids’ books, new paperbacks, dozens of green- and orange-spined Penguin paperbacks. He fondled them, smelled them. Some smelled of fish and chips, and some smelled of road dust, and some smelled of Marci, and they had dog ears where she’d stopped and cracks in their spines where she’d bent them around. They fell open to pages that had her favorite passages. He felt wobbly and drunk as he touched each one in turn.
“Have you read all of these?” Alan asked as he shifted the John Mortimers down one shelf to make room for the Ed McBains.
“Naw,” she said, punching him in the shoulder. “What’s the point of a bunch of books you’ve already read?”