There was no price on the rack of cards, no price penciled on the backs. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a price anywhere in PLUMSHAW’S RARE BOOKS. I wandered back through the jumble of ill-lit rooms and when I reached the cash register I presented my postcard with a flourish to Plumshaw. Majestically, with her torso flung back, she took it from me. She looked at the picture, turned the card over and studied the blank side, and gave me a sharp glance, as if estimating my bank account. She held the card up and appeared to examine one corner. At last she lowered the postcard to the counter, where she rested it on its edge and supported it lightly with both hands. She drew her shoulders back and looked directly at me.
“That will be three dollars,” she said.
“Three dollars! For a postcard!” I couldn’t stop myself.
She hesitated; looked at the card again; reached her decision. “Some postcards are two dollars, some are three, and some are five. It depends on the condition. This is in very good condition, as you can see — no postmark, no stains, no creases. Only here, at the corner”—she held the card toward me—“it is bent a little. It hardly touches the picture itself, but the card is not in mint condition. I can let you have it for two dollars and fifty cents, but I cannot possibly—”
“Please,” I said, holding up my hand. “I’ll take it for three. I was just curious.”
“My customers never complain. If you think three is too high—”
“I think three is perfect — perfect.” Quickly, one after the other, I placed three dollar bills on the counter. She slipped them one by one into her hand and rang open the cash register.
“If you would care to see other cards, I have a number of unopened boxes—”
I assured her that I wanted only the one card. She picked it up, glanced at it once more, and slipped it into a small flat paper bag. She folded the top over once and flattened the fold with a single slow stroke of her long thumb. She held it out to me and said, “A very nice postcard.”
“Thank you,” I replied; it seemed the only thing to say. She banged the drawer of the cash register shut. No smile from Plumshaw — no flicker of friendliness — only, for a moment, she turned to look at the streaming window, as if imagining my misfortune.
Through cold, gusting rain I trudged uphill, keeping under the occasional awnings. Rain coursed down my face and neck and trickled onto my collarbone; the bottoms of my pants darkened. I walked with bent head, my hands thrust deep in my trench coat pockets. Between the shops the gray of the water met the darker gray of the sky. Somewhere on the water a bell clanged, and I heard ropes creaking and a faint tinkling sound. It struck me that Columbus had been wrong. The earth was flat, and ended right here, at Broome — you could fall over the edge into grayness, and be lost forever.
In my room I rubbed my hair with a towel and changed into dry clothes and slippers. Despite the chill the radiator was cold, and I put on my summer bathrobe, wishing I had brought my winter one. I had placed the paper bag on the night table and I now drew out the postcard and propped it up against the white porcelain base of the lamp. I had chosen well. The sepia sun, the sepia lovers on their rock, the gloomy reflections in the lake, all these pleased me. In the light of the lamp I saw details I had failed to notice in Plumshaw’s cavern: the tips of grasses rising through the shallow water in front of the pines, a pine root twisting through the bank and hanging over the water, a ribbon in her hair; and it was now plain that the figures were not looking out over the water, but were turned slightly toward each other. I could make out part of his face, and she was turned almost in profile. Her miniature features were sharply caught by the camera: I could see her eyelashes, her slightly open lips, a brown shadow of cheekbone. She was beautiful, but it was difficult to read her expression; I seemed to detect something questioning or uncertain in her face.
Lunch was served in the chilly room of small tables. There were seven other guests at OCEAN GABLES, all of them elderly except for a thin, fragile-looking, thirtyish woman with eyeglasses and sharp elbows, who sat hugging herself as she leaned over a book held open by a saucer at one edge and the top of a sugar bowl at the other and who looked up now and then with large, startled eyes. Even among the three couples there was no conversation, as if the presence of others compelled secrecy. After a hefty lunch I sought out the manager, John Kearns. I found him sitting in the living room reading a newspaper: a boyish gray-haired man with round, clear-rimmed eyeglasses and shiny cheeks, wearing a corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches over a buttoned sweater that revealed at the throat a red-and-black lumberjack shirt. He continued to hold open the paper while looking up with a big, hearty smile. “A cold snack,” he said, and shook his paper sharply once. I realized that I must have heard incorrectly: a cold snap. “We never turn the heat on before the first of October. By law I can wait till the fifteenth.” He paused and lowered his voice. “There’s a man coming to look at the furnace next week. Unusual weather for this time of year. Bracing. You’ll see: in two, three days people will be complaining about the heat and humidity. Never fails, does it.” The last sentence seemed not quite to fit, but I was certain there would be no heat at OCEAN GABLES.
I sat for a while in a small room off the living room, in a plump, flowered armchair beside a bay window dripping with rain. The room contained a small bookcase filled with faded forty-year-old best-sellers and back issues of an architectural journal. I felt myself falling into a black mood and I suddenly sprang up and went upstairs for my coat and umbrella. Outside the rain ran in black rivulets along the sides of the lane. When I reached the main street I walked down the other side, stopping in a warm store to look at bamboo napkin holders, lacquered wicker picnic baskets lined with red-and-white-checked cloth, and white wicker wine carriers each with an empty green wine bottle, and then stopping in an even warmer store to examine a perforated wall hung with big shiny brass numerals, brass knockers, barrel bolts, cabinet catches, and double-pronged door hooks. Toward the bottom of the hill I looked across the street for PLUMSHAW’S RARE BOOKS, but it had disappeared. I imagined Plumshaw folding it all up like a cardboard box and walking away with it under a black umbrella. A moment later I caught sight of a white telephone number in a dark window; beside it Plumshaw’s dripping black window reflected a white storefront, through which a dim book was visible. At the bottom of the street I walked through the muddy field past a gray rowboat half-filled with water. On the slippery pier I stood looking at a lobster boat with its piles of wet buoys, its slick tarpaulin spread over something with sharp edges, and its dark crate with a slightly open lid from which emerged a single brown-green pincer.
Back in my chilly room I wrapped myself in my bathrobe and walked back and forth rubbing my arms. The windows rattled. I began turning the sash locks, and discovered that one was missing — there were four little holes for screws. Still in my bathrobe I got into bed and lay reading one page in turn of the three impossible books I had brought with me: a history of the United States beginning with the Bronze Age, a complete Shakespeare in double columns, and a novel set in ancient Rome. I tossed the books aside and tried to sleep, but I was too bored for sleep. Rain lashed the windows — hammer-blows of rain. At any moment the panes were going to crack like eggshells. Then the rain would fall on the cold radiator, on the bedspread, on the open suitcase sitting on the wooden chair. Slowly the room would fill with water, slowly my bed would rise — and turning and turning, I would float out through the window into the angry sky. In the lamplit dusk of midafternoon I reached for my postcard. Despite a first, general impression of brown softness, I was struck again by the sharpness of the image as I drew the card close. I could distinguish the woman’s brown iris from her darker brown pupil, and I could see her individual eyelashes. With surprise I now saw that the man faced her directly: his forehead, the straight line of his nose, even his lips, were distinctly visible. I detected a harshness about his expression; she for her part appeared sorrowful, the set of her lips mournful. On the rock beside him I could see the interwoven pattern of straw on his boater and the tiny ivory monkey, his hands pressed over his eyes, on top of the walking stick.