Work Song - Ivan Doig [72]
Volume by plated volume, Rab and I kept compiling and adding up the Sandison library-within-the-library. If the edition in hand matched a listing in a rare books catalogue, it was no problem to assign a value. Any we could find no listing for, one or the other of us would take, several at a time, for appraisal by old Adamson, the coldblooded antiquarian book dealer across town. As you might guess, there is a secret satisfaction in going through the streets with your arms around the Artful Dodger and Natty Bumppo and Emma Bovary, no one knowing you are hugging a monetary fortune as well as a literary one.
So, its hectic moments aside, the inventorying was the most pleasant kind of work, engaging the mind, and no unduly heavy lifting involved. Rab was sparkling company, as I had counted on. She showed up each morning bright-eyed for whatever the day might bring, and in plucking the SSS books from the shelves, she whisked in and out of the mezzanine stacks as if on jeweled skates. From the number of upturned male heads among the Reading Room patrons as she winged past overhead, I was not the only one appreciative of her presence.
I suppose I should not have been surprised when Sandison called me in to his office, and there, like one of the frowning Easter Island stone heads, was Miss Runyon.
“It seems there is a distraction in our otherwise flawless service to the reading public,” Sandison addressed me pontifically from behind his desk. “State your case, Miss Runyon.”
She drew herself up as if to huff and puff and blow me away. “It’s that helper of yours. She wears those little dresses, you can see everything she has.”
“You can? I mean, I had not noticed.”
“Then you are the only man breathing who hasn’t,” she declared.
I looked from her to Sandison and back again, both of them dressed twenty years behind the times. “Perhaps it is natural that the younger people take a different view of wardrobe than, ah, we do.”
Rousing himself, Sandison abandoned his chair and clomped out from behind the desk. “Your concern for propriety is notable, Miss Runyon,” he said soothingly as he escorted her to the door, “and I’m sure Morgan can deal with the issue.”
When she was gone, he rounded on me. “The next couple of days, you be the one to prance out there on the mezzanine and fetch the books,” he directed, “just on the chance that people may not be quite as interested in seeing everything you have.” His frosty eyebrows were hoisted high as he studied me. “You’re a sharper operator than I thought, Morgan.” He laughed bawdily. “Make the most of your time with Miss Rellis.”
I LOOK BACK on that midsummer stretch of weeks as a season of life that went up and down with the regularity of a carousel. Each day divided itself according to the female company of the time. At the boardinghouse, Grace and I stayed as self-consciously civil as schoolchildren who had been told to mind their manners or else; her hives had gone away, but her allergy to being taken up with me had not. Then I would go off to the library and the short-hemmed zephyr that was Rabrab Rellis.
With her keenness for being in on things, Rab was as intrigued with the inventory books as I was, both of us beaming like babies at the chance to handle lovely volumes that even the most omnivorous reader would miss out on in a lifetime. On nice days we carried the mood outside, joking to one another, and ate lunch on the library steps. Butte sunned itself those noon hours, as if storing up for rougher weather ahead. Gangs of boys swarmed down from the Hill neighborhoods, heading for the swampy attractions along Silver Bow Creek. On the next street, the Post building had put up a baseball scoreboard on its front, and the amplified voice