The Illumination_ A Novel - Kevin Brockmeier [96]
“How about for the Basilakos? The hardcover there? What would that set me back?”
“Price inside the cover.”
It happened the same way every day, eight to ten hours of work for a few dollars in sales. No one ever came to him with books to trade, except for a handful of his regulars. The one with the clip-cloppy high heels and the endless collection of alternate history novels. The one who shopped for his bedridden grandmother, picking out the kind of mysteries that had the name of the author embossed across half the cover. The one who sorted through Morse’s entire stock every Monday and Thursday, deftly and selectively, as if culling the almonds from a jar of mixed nuts. And the smaller one, the talker, who had left Morse staggering across the hospital parking lot the day the Illumination began, his body whitewashed with lacerations.
“How goes it, MP?” That was what he called him, MP—short, he said, for Morse Putnam, Missing Person, Mister Popularity. “Keeping busy?”
“Yeah, yeah, keeping busy.”
“Selling a few books?”
“Selling a few.”
“And how are you feeling today? Feeling good?”
“Mm-hmm. Feeling good.”
This was their ritual, although sometimes it was “Are you feeling groovy today?” and Morse would say, “Feeling groovy,” or “Are you feeling lucky today?” and Morse would say, “Feeling lucky,” which made the one with the gold watch and the vein in his forehead chuckle and tell him, “You’re okay, my friend. Nothing wrong with the old Morse-man, is there? Anyway, two of yours for one of mine, right? That’s the bargain?”
“One for two. One for two or cash money.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. I’m just twisting your balls a little. Here you go,” and he would hand Morse a pair of hardcovers he had just purchased from Barnes & Noble, the printing sheen still on the jackets. Sometimes, if the smaller one was in the middle of a job, he would leave immediately, but often he would stay and chat with Morse for a while, telling him about the college girl, a real looker, he had goated around with at his cousin’s wedding, or the flatbed truck that had woken him grinding its engine that morning, or the trouble he was having with one of the smackheads over on Spring Street. His first few visits to Morse had been guilt visits, pity visits, his way of showing faith to a living thing he had hurt and tried to help, like a man stopping off at the pound to look in on a stray dog he had clipped with his car. Let’s take a peek at the poor battered son of a bitch. Let’s see if we can’t donate a few bucks to the cause. Soon, though, somehow, he had developed a real affection for Morse. He began confiding in him, telling him dirty jokes, asking after his health. On torrid summer days, when Morse’s old wounds lit up, the smaller one would make a wincing noise of drawn breath and shake his head in apology. He seemed genuinely sorry to have injured him—and in spite of himself, Morse responded to his contrition.
“All right, then, take it easy, MP,” he would say after he had plucked some yellowing old best seller from Morse’s blanket. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” and once he had left, Morse would turn the books he had given him spine-side-up and riffle through the pages, watching the shower of fives and tens that fell ticker-taping to the ground.
In the winter you could never stay comfortable. It began with your hands, which grew chapped from the cold and turned a frayed, weather-bitten red. You could breathe on them, you could wedge them under your arms, but it made no difference. They would not stop aching. Your blood showed its pain in them with every pump, phosphorescing through your skin like those deep-water krill that glowed in the wake of a ship. Your eyes dried out, and your stomach gripped you. You experienced a piercing sensation in your eardrums. There was a specific dental pain, brought on by the way you clenched your teeth against the chill, that you could see throbbing through your gums in the morning, bouncing up at you when you cupped your palms to your mouth. As for your feet, you could not feel them at all.