The demon sometimes called the Book Man hungered, and now having been frustrated, he turned his pickup truck towards his next meal.
Chapter 25
Frannie came running out the front of the Milpitas Café to throw herself at Newp, who now sat behind the wheel of the Studebaker with a stunned look.
She slowed as she got closer and then tapped the glass.
He took a moment and then looked at her through the window. Then he rolled it down. “Hm?”
“That was amazing.” She leaned on the window.
“He turned into birds.”
“I didn’t even see you sneak out.”
“Oh. Oh!” Newp seemed to come more into his own awareness. “Yeah, uh. It seemed like the thing to do.” He turned, leaning closer. Frannie felt as though she were a carhop and he were about to order a milkshake. “You just charged him, Fran.”
“Yeah.” She reached out and brushed a few strands of hair from his face.
Saul came running up. “How did you pull this off?”
“What's that?” Newp said, and Frannie felt his hair drift away from her fingers. “Oh. It's complicated.”
Newp got out and Frannie drew them together to hug them both. They were both so much taller than her that her head came to about the center of Newp’s chest and about Saul’s neck. At once the terror of the night caught up to her in all its absurdity and she became aware that she was still dressed for dinner, in a cocktail dress and heels.
“So,” Newp said as he stepped back. “What was that thing?”
Not a man. It was a thing, after all.
Saul grimaced. “Why don't you come back to the café and we’ll talk about it.” He looked back at the broken-down hulk behind them. “Not this place. Café Monstro.”
###
The Book Man followed his hunger and the swarming of words ringing in his head as he drifted down yellow-lit streets. He passed a car wash where a man in shirtsleeves sprayed down his Ford while a pair of teens goofed around—that was the expression, goofed around—in the next stall, washing a '57 Chevrolet and throwing sponges at one another, the streets warm and the air cool.
He passed a bar with seven cars in its a lot, but this did not interest to him; he wanted stories, but not that flavor just now, not the near-languageless stories of sadness found in a bar. He yearned for something else.
The Book Man drifted in the Morris Minor, feeling more at ease among possible meals, but still tense. Finally a great shadow fell across his windshield, lights from the tower—a university smelling of paper and glue, the smells moving like a shockwave through the air towards him.
He pulled into the parking lot, killing his lights and rolling to a stop before the library of the University of California at Laguna Beach.
###
“I’ve never seen him. But I’ve heard about the Book Man,” Saul said as they gathered next to the stage at the Cafe Monstro half an hour later. The whole place was dark but for a swag lamp which hung over the booth, the lights sending out shards of reflected red and yellow through the paste jewels dangling there. Kurt had been waiting when they arrived and sat with them, dangling his skinny legs off the edge.
“Did you know about the Book Man?” Frannie asked Kurt.
Kurt shrugged. “I do the art. Books are Saul's thing.”
“So why do they call him the Book Man?” Newp asked.
“Because he's made of books,” Frannie said. “And I get the impression he likes to eat them.”
“He likes to eat stories,” Saul said. “He likes to find stories and consume them, especially in fire. This much I've heard about before. But what he really hungers for, really yearns for, is in there.” Saul jabbed a skinny finger at the beaded curtain leading into the book section. “He wants the Blanks.”
Newp nodded. “Okay. So do you think we threw him off the track?”
“For now, yes,” Saul said. “Frannie said she saw him at that bookstore the other day. So I think we can surmise he’d learned about the local stores and felt sure one of them held the Blanks. He learned that the merchants have a co-protection deal, so he felt certain he would follow us to the Blanks. But he had no idea that the spell I had hiding the Blanks was powerful enough to confuse him, that he wouldn’t be able to tell that we were leading him on a wild goose chase. So he's good and frustrated now.”
Frannie said, “Well, frustrated doesn’t sound like done.”
“Nah, I don’t think he's done. I think he'll lie low and look for another opportunity.”
###
The Book Man moved along the cloisters of the little university and felt a thrill when every student looked at him. He liked the sounds of the place at night, the tiredness and the eagerness, students with books, some hurrying back to dormitories and some walking slowly, girls chatting with boys as they walked, heads hunched.
He heard the giggle of a young woman with brown hair and a ponytail, in a white sweater and brown slacks. He put on a look that he had observed many times, a human, a normal person looking withdrawn and distracted. The girl who had giggled was walking with another young woman, their heads inclined towards one another conspiratorially. The Book Man let them pass him and then began to follow them up the cloisters. The one who giggled said a few more words, and then they were saying good night, and he followed her into the library at a distance, the glass doors only briefly between them.
She made her way to the elevator, and for a moment she stopped and spoke with a young man.
The Book Man waited at a rack of magazines and leafed through a copy of House Beautiful as the girl and boy chatted.
He heard the girl say, “No, I'll take them up, I'm going up anyway.” So she worked here, the fluttering paper birds in his skull said.
He was lucky that way.
He shot past the young man and joined the girl on the elevator before the doors closed, and she smiled wanly, not really paying attention to him. He put his back to the beige elevator interior. The little elevator was full, she and he separated by rolling book cart, an A-frame on wheels, filled to the brim. He pulled out a pipe from his coat and caressed it.
She was thinking of someone she knew. Her heart was giddy, and her mind shone with the story she was starting and restarting in her head:
She walks into a café—no, a cafeteria—now it was a parlor, a pizza parlor, and was morning, no, night, flicker flicker, story shifting, and she saw the boy studying and she said words/she laughed/she bumped into him/no that was absurd/she smiled and said nothing and sat across from him, this coolness as absurd as the pratfall she planned as an alternate.
She looked up from this litany of fantasies. “Say, are you a professor here?”
He lit a match and brought it to his pipe.
Down in the lower floors, smoke began to pour out of the elevator shaft, with the sweet smell of burning flesh.
Chapter 26
As Frannie and Saul pondered the Book Man and waited for his next move, the Legionnaires became obsessed with one thing: the luau.
There were bonfires all the time, Frannie knew, but the luau was something else: a night-long ritual of debauchery and song. Frannie knew almost nothing at first.
She ducked into the office at Café Monstro and found Newp, Betty and Truly deep in conversation. Frannie figured they were talking about Ed Sullivan, but she heard the word luau and she perked up like crazy.