“Do you mind if I go in for a minute?” Peterson asked. “There’s something I want to look for.”
“Sure. I’ll come in, too. I’m a bookstore freak; never pass one by.”
Bowes & Bowes was almost as crowded as the Whim had been earlier, but the voices here were subdued. They edged cautiously between the knots of students in black gowns and pyramids of books on display. Peterson pointed out one on a less conspicuous table towards the back of the store.
“Have you seen this?” he asked, picking up a copy and handing it to Markham.
“Holdren’s book? No, I haven’t read it yet, though I talked to him about it. Is it good?” Markham looked at the title, stamped in red on a black cover—The Geography of Calamity: Geopolitics of Human Dieback by John Holdren. In the bottom right corner was a small reproduction of a medieval engraving of a grinning skeleton with a scythe. He thumbed through it, paused, began to read. “Look at this,” he said, holding the book out to Peterson. Peterson ran his eyes over the chart and nodded.
Peterson moved towards the back of the store. A girl was perched on a high stool adding a column of figures into an auto-accountant. Her fair hair hung forward, hiding her face. Peterson studied her covertly while leafing through some of the books in front of him. Nice legs. Fashionably dressed in some frilly peasant style he disliked. A blue Liberty scarf artfully arranged at her neck. Slim now, but not for many more years, probably. She looked about nineteen. As though aware of his gaze, she looked up straight at him. He continued to stare at her. Yes, nineteen and very pretty and very aware of it, too. She slid from her stool and, clutching papers defensively to her chest, came over to him.
“May I help you?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a slight smile. “Maybe. I’ll let you know if you can.”
She took this as a flirtatious overture and responded with a routine which probably, he reflected, was a knock-out with the local boys. She turned away from him and looked back over her shoulder, saying huskily, “Let me know then.” She gave him a long look from under her lashes, then grinned cheekily and flaunted her ways towards the front of the store. He was amused. At first, he had really thought that she intended her coquettish routine seriously, which would have been ludicrous if she hadn’t been so pretty. Her grin showed that she was playacting. Peterson felt suddenly in very good spirits and almost immediately noticed the book he had been looking for.
He picked it up and went to look for Markham. The girl was with two others, her back to him. Her companions were laughing and staring. They obviously told her he was watching them, because she turned to look at him. She really was exceptionally pretty. He made a sudden decision. Markham was browsing through the science fiction selection.
“I have a couple of errands,” Peterson said. “Why don’t you go on ahead and tell Renfrew I’ll be there in half an hour?”
“Okay, fine,” Markham said. Peterson watched him as he strode out the door, moving athletically, and disappeared into the alley behind the building known as Schools.
Peterson looked for the girl again. She was serving someone else, a student. He watched as she went through another routine, leaning forward more than was necessary to write a receipt, quite enough to enable the student to look down the front of her blouse. Then she straightened up and looked quite offhand as she gave him his book in a white paper bag. The student went out, with a disconcerted look on his face. Peterson caught her eye and lifted the book in his hand. She slammed the cash register shut and came over to him.
“Yes?” she asked. “Have you made up your mind?”
“I think so. I’ll take this book. And maybe you could help me with something else. You live in Cambridge, do you?”
“Yes. You don’t?”
“No, I’m from London. I’m on the Council.” He despised himself immediately. Like shooting a rabbit with a cannon. No artistry at all. Anyway, he had all her attention now, so he might as well take advantage of it. “I wondered