Chapter 15
Fifteen
On the last Friday before Christmas break, Arthur took a signed first of John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra out of the treasure room. He had stolen more expensive items, but when he stuck that one in his messenger bag, Arthur knew
it was the most important book he had taken so far. He was going to learn something now. A question was about to be answered.
He wasn’t in much doubt about the nature of that answer, not anymore, but that didn’t stop his stomach from bunching up in
a nervous knot of anticipation.
When he was back in his apartment, he called Shut-Up-And-Eat-It to arrange a meeting with Jayne.
“I need to get with your sister,” he said when Tana picked up. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I don’t see why not. Come by around four? If she can’t make it, I’ll call back. Is that it? I got food to deliver.”
“That’s it. Don’t keep people waiting on the best part of their day.”
“Ha,” she said. “You must think I fuck all of ’em.” And she hung up.
He didn’t think that. She had made three pickups since that one time they screwed, but had not stayed, had not even come in
the door. She had just accepted the books and left.
He wished he hadn’t done it and he couldn’t stop thinking about it and wanting to do it again. He remembered the breathless
way she had laughed when he roughly yanked down her jeans.
He remembered the way she cajoled him—come on, big guy, do me like you wanna do your little Gwennie—and was both aroused and stricken.
Arthur had felt he deserved something for himself after being terrorized for months; that he had earned the right to fuck Tana Nighswander.
Yet another part of him, even then, had known he shouldn’t do it, that it was a deeper
sort of wrong than stealing books from the library. Jayne was happy to offer her sister to the men with whom she did business;
she did it as casually as she’d offer a guest a beer. Those men were weapons Jayne had used to abuse her sister and now Arthur
was one of them. He didn’t know if Tana could forgive him, and maybe it didn’t matter—he was already certain he could not
forgive himself. The worst part of it was that if Tana came by the house and offered herself to him again, he doubted he could
say no.
When he got to Shut-Up-And-Eat-It, it was dusk. Jayne was already in the parking lot out back, sitting on the hood of her
Ranchero. Ronnie sat in the passenger seat, the door open, smoking a number.
“What did I tell you about bringing us this nickel-and-dime junk?” Jayne asked, casting her cold gaze across Appointment in Samarra. “This looks like a handful of crap. If this was in the quarter box at a yard sale I wouldn’t give it a second look.”
“I bet you wouldn’t. But if your buyer knows her twat from her Twain she’ll have a cardiac arrest when she sees it. That’s
a mint Harcourt and Brace first edition. Good luck finding a copy for anything less than seventy-five hundred dollars.”
She took the hardcover from him and tossed it to Ronnie.
“What’s it about?” Ronnie asked, gazing blankly at the cover.
“A guy who can’t escape his fate,” Arthur said.
“So, basically, your memoir,” Jayne said.
“You got that wrong,” Arthur said. “I’ve been doing the math. You said you needed sixty thousand dollars. With the O’Hara,
I’ve stolen closer to sixty-five. So we’re done now. Right?”
Jayne shook her head, looking sad for him. “Wrong. Maybe what you’ve took is worth sixty-five grand on the open market. But
moving stolen goods is different. You can’t ask for top dollar. You said this one is worth seventy-five hundred dollars? Well.
I’ll get two grand for it.”
“Two grand?” Arthur cried. He had expected her to jerk him around, had mentally braced for it, but felt shock lance through him all the same. “Two fucking grand?”
Jayne nodded. “I know. Highway robbery, right? And she won’t sell ’em for full value either. They’re too hot. She has to sell
through private channels, mostly abroad. It’s a long line of crooks, each one sticking up the last. By the way. Speaking of
my old Boston bookworm, there’s one she wants in particular. She’ll go twelve grand for it. Take that next and you can fuck
my sister in the ass.”
Arthur felt sick.
“Leave your sister out of it,” he said.
Jayne grinned. “It’s a bit late for chivalry, King Arthur.” Chivalry, there was a word he wouldn’t have expected her to know.
But if she’s so dumb and you’re so smart, why is she the one giving the marching orders? Arthur thought then. Gwen is the only one who doesn’t underestimate her because Gwen is the only one who doesn’t dismiss her as a dumb townie.
How did you wind up like the others, Arthur? How did you wind up a Rackham College asshole, a know-it-all who doesn’t know
a thing?
“What book?” he asked.
Some part of him already knew.
“I can’t remember the exact name,” Jayne said. “The skin book.”
“No.”
Jayne didn’t seem to hear him, went on talking. “I guess the guy who wrote it was some lunatic from the days of the witch
trials. They hung him for his crimes, then used his own fuckin’ hide to bind his journal.”
“That book is priceless. There are literally only five works of anthropodermic bibliopegy in all of New England, and—”
Ronnie hooted, puffed smoke from the corners of his mouth. “What the fuck you say, boy? Anthropo-fuckin’ biblio-whatsis sounds
like some shit you catch from a ten-dollar hoor.”
Jayne shook her head again. “You’ve got it all wrong, Artie. No book is priceless. Your mother. She’s priceless. You remember that.”
“I can’t take it,” he said. “They keep it locked up.”
“I’m sure they trust you with the key,” Jayne told him.
“Yeah, they do. And pretty much only me. Which is why when they realize it’s missing they’re going to know I took it.”
Jayne said, “Stick it on your roommate. He buys drugs. Say he got the key off you and stole that book for drug money. You
could fix him up for it easy. Steal a couple other books and hide ’em in his room.”
“He’s my friend,” Arthur said.
“Friends are nice. Alibis are better, though.”
“I can’t do anything for the next month. The library is about to close for Christmas break. School is back in session on January
15 and I can get you more books then. Not that one, though—forget about the Crane journal—but I can grab you plenty of other
books worth real money.”
Jayne studied him, head cocked to the side, then turned her face and blew a long rippling stream of white fog into the cold
air, as if she were smoking.
“Yeah. Okay, Artie. To be honest, the feeling’s mutual. I’ve only spent five minutes with you and that’s about all of your
miserable Black face I can stand for one month.”
Arthur wasn’t surprised to hear it. He was only surprised he hadn’t heard something like it sooner. Jayne didn’t seem like
the kind of person who would miss the low-hanging racist fruit. And yet he felt his vision tunneling ever so slightly, going
dark and strange at the edges.
“There we go. We finally got there,” Arthur said, his voice flat, toneless.
Jayne slid off the hood of the Ranchero.
“Next time I see you—say the end of January—you’d better have that book for me.” She spoke over her shoulder as she moved
around to the driver’s seat. Ronnie pulled his legs into the car. “No excuses, no bullshit. My connection in Boston has her
heart set and is going to give me top dollar. Think of it as your own Appointment in Samarra. You don’t miss an appointment like that, do you, Arthur?”
He didn’t reply as she got behind the wheel, slammed the door, and peeled out.
When something wet kissed his cheek, he thought, for half a second, that he was crying. But it was only a snowflake. By the
time he reached the street it was coming down in earnest, and it didn’t let up for three days.