of the Illumination Society were now immersed in an earnest discussion regarding dues and the privileges of officeholders. Oh, how he longed to steal that book—so crammed with fantasies and flesh! But it was too large for him to slip under his shirt. He noticed a small card glued inside the front cover. It read RARE BOOKS & MAPS, and was followed by a St. Louis address—on Fifth Street, not far away. His whole body quivered at the prospect! Perhaps there were more such books to be found there.
The next afternoon, following a show where sales of LUCID! hit a record high, Lloyd went searching for the shop (with the express intention of locating and stealing a forbidden text). The address in question was a very narrow shop front, not much wider than the single door, with just one small window. The pane was so caked with mud and crusted insects that it was impossible to gain any idea of what type of business was conducted inside, but the moment Lloyd was inside the door he knew that he had found what he had been searching for. The shop was much deeper than he expected, laid out in a series of small plaster-peeling rooms and alcoves built off one long hall lined by a tatty Oriental carpet. On the wall behind the door hung a Dutch map of some section of the coast of Africa, and on the floor below lay a transparent celestial sphere and a page from an illuminated manuscript depicting a sleeping peasant being inspected by a family of hedgehogs. The place was silent but for the buzzing of a bluebottle butting the inside of the clouded glass. As there was no one about, Lloyd peered into the first room. More maps covered the wall—or pieces of maps—some framed, some torn and decomposing. Piles of books lay everywhere.
He found amid the mouse dirt and cobwebs a fat vellum volume concerning the history of military fortifications. In the neighboring alcove he found the travels of Hakluyt and the Wildflowers of the Southern Alps, which had several blood-smeared mosquitoes smushed between its pages. At last, however, on top of a crooked chimney pile of texts, he came upon an edition of Nicolaus Steno’s famous anatomical work on the ovaries of sharks, which gave him hope that he might have hit on a heap of biological or medical texts. Perhaps somewhere near the bottom was hidden the documentation of some forensically vivid mating ritual or a diagram of the female organs. He became so engrossed in this possibility that he was not even aware of the hint of witch hazel insinuating itself through the haze of cracked book paste and Graeco-Latino-English terminology—until the man’s stealthy approach was announced with a phlegmy clearing of the throat. Lloyd tipped over a pillar of crumbling books and stared up in panic, choking on the dust.
The man who confronted him now was but a smidgen over five feet tall, with tufts of wild hair and bushy eyebrows giving way to a domed forehead. His hands were soft and effeminate-looking, yet there was about his frame a contrasting hint of martial energy and force of character, which was undermined by a noticeable hump on his back. The man’s attire consisted of a neat but worn dark twill suit with a faint powdering of dust, an expensive-looking white shirt and a silver pocket watch suspended from his waistcoat by an oily chain. On the thick hooked nose above a bristle of gray mustache propped a pair of round wire spectacles, and when he opened his mouth to speak Lloyd spotted a calcium stain on his front tooth.
“This is not a lending library, young man. These books are for sale. Get along.”
He pivoted to leave, but Lloyd piped up.
“But it looks like there are a lot of books that no one wants to buy! Wouldn’t it be better if some were read?”
“You know nothing,” the man croaked. “I do a brisk trade with bibliophiles from all over the country and indeed the world. From here to Boston, London, and Antwerp. There is a buyer for every book under this roof. You do not look like a buyer to me. Please go.”
“Couldn’t I just sit in one of the rooms and read?” Lloyd begged. “I won’t disturb any of the … buyers.”
This plea grated on the humpy man’s nerves, for he slapped his hands together and stuttered, “H-how … how did you come to find me?”