After Hours at Dooryard Books

By now, Nathaniel recognizes most of Dooryard’s regular customers. A Melville collector in New Haven takes the train down once a month to make a circuit of half a dozen bookstores. A married couple in the neighborhood stops in every few weeks to ask whether there’s any new Longfellow.

And then there’s George, a professor at Columbia, who comes by whenever he’s in the Village to look at any Whittier rare editions that Patrick’s managed to get his hands on.

He’s forty-something and wears wire-rimmed glasses and black turtlenecks.

There isn’t a doubt in Nathaniel’s mind that George is one of Patrick’s conquests, or possibly vice versa.