He gestured towards the empty table. “So you were having a meeting?”
“Oh, yes. Sort of community organization.”
“I see. A community leader, no less.”
“Are you… I don't know what the word is. Collecting? Hunting? Today.”
“Hunting,” he echoed. “I like that. It makes looking through stacks of old books seem so much more exciting.”
“I'm sure it can be,” Callie said. She was watching how his grey eyes glistened as they reflected the ocean.
“So what is there to hunt in this town?”
“Um….”
“I mean, bookstores—any interesting collections?”
“Well, there was one downtown, but they just had a fire.”
He frowned. “I hope they didn't lose anything valuable.”
“Oh, I wouldn't know, but they mostly sold new stuff.”
Now he seemed to be studying her eyes and she couldn't look away. “Anything else?”
“Well, there's…” Callie paused. Did she really want to send someone to that awful place that she was plotting to have shut down at the first opportunity? Surely that was unseemly. Nevertheless: “There's always Café Monstro.”
He seemed to start. “Could you say that one more time?” The man cocked his head, the feathers in his hat jiggling in the air.
“Oh, I know,” she touched his sleeve. “It seems absurd, but it really is called Café Monstro.”
“I see. Where is this?”
“They serve coffee– it's a café, you know. But I must tell you, they have all their books in the back. The place has rather a bad reputation. It may not do for you.”
“Who can say?” He shrugged. “Where was this again?”
“Oh, it's on Ocean Highway,” she noticed he was staring intensely, hanging on her words. She added, “across from the Hotel Riviera.”
“Across from the Hotel Riviera,” he repeated, nodding. When he smiled he showed perfect teeth and his moustache moved. Unlike most professor types she knew, who got out of the army and went right to pot, he had taken care of himself, with a massive chest and a lean stomach. He reminded her of an adventurer in a novel or spy in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Not someone Cary Grant would play, but someone that Cary would probably have to kill or be killed by at the end.
“And they have books, you say?”
“Oh, yes. Actually they have a collection of rare books. In a section in the back. It's very beatnik, beaded curtains and all that.”
“This place sounds like an opium den.” He smiled and she laughed appreciatively. Take me take me take me.
“Would you care to accompany me to this place?” As if the idea has been there all along. “I could probably use a guide.”
I would go anywhere with you, she did not say out loud. The wind picked up and she touched her own hat to keep it from flying away. The roar of the ocean seemed far off as the waves sparkled and reflected in his gray eyes.
“Oh, I'm sorry,” he said, folding his arms as she realized she hadn’t actually answered him out loud. “I should know better. How forward and uncouth of me.”
“No! Not at all.” She had other errands, but now they had flown clean out of her head. “Of course! Of course. When?”
“I have absolutely nothing else to do.” He spread his wide hands as though indicating an empty table. “We could go now, as far as I'm concerned. I could buy you a coffee for your trouble.”
She indicated his empty cup. “You must drink an awful lot of coffee.”
“A weakness,” he said. “If you'd like to go, we could take my—well, it's a truck. I'm afraid it's awful, but it's useful for carrying a lot of what I pick up. It may be a little too rough for you.”
“A little too rough?” She repeated. “No, a truck sounds fine.”
She followed him off the terrace and through the lobby of the Franc Pavilion to a clean but battered Morris Minor pickup in the parking lot. She was forming a story about this man, now, the rugged intellectual, combing the highways and byways in his adventure-ready, trusted old truck.
When he opened the door and she slid in, he even took the initiative in fastening the seatbelt for her. As his arm fastened the belt around her, his forearm brushed against her hip bone and she felt an electric tremor travel through her body.
Then the strange Mr. Bookman went around and slid into the other side. As the pickup rumbled to life, he turned to her.
He smiled again. “Show me this place across from the Hotel Riviera.”
The woman had no way of knowing, but not once had the Book Man heard the name of the café when she had said and repeated it, nor could he hear the address or even the street when she said them. When she said the name of the restaurant, all he heard was skrrsksskrrsks, static, like someone taking a coin and scratching the words out of his mind just as they came in. That was the Blankguard’s doing.
They drove onto Ocean Highway as she pointed the way to go, looking up at him. He had learned so many theatrical tricks—the transfer of heat through his fingertips, the modulation of his voice to align with subconscious proclivities among the humans. He had wandered the earth destroying futures since what men called the Middle Ages, and he was a skilled hunter.
“The skrssks is right up there on the right, at skrrsks,” she said, the number once again scratched right out of his mind. He drove along the highway, restaurants and hotels on either side.
“I think you said there was a hotel,” The Book Man said. The paper screamed hungrily inside him, lusting, for he knew even in his blindness that the place was near. “You mentioned there was a hotel across from it?”
“Oh yes.” Callie enthusiastically lifted her slender legs up onto the bench seat and leaned against him to point. “That’s the Hotel Riviera, on the left.”
“Ah.” The Book Man looked up a bit to the left and saw a great white swoop of arches and a glassed-in swimming area, and a large carport for guests to unload their baggage.
Now would be the moment. As the Book Man drew near he kept his eyes on the hotel, hearing a certain blockage in his brain. And then when he knew he would be directly across from the place he sought, he turned his head.
And saw the Café.
Café Monstro: squat and black and guarded by a statue of Kronos, the old father and child-eater.
Chapter 30
The Book Man brought the Morris Minor to a stop at the edge of the parking lot. It was as though the café snapped in and out of his vision, trying to static itself over. He idled at the entrance of the lot, half in and half out of the street, when the woman spoke. “Well?”
“You know,” he said, adopting his most calm and normal-sounding voice, “I think I want to park on the street.” He shrugged and spun the vehicle around to find a parking spot in front of the Riviera Hotel. He looked again at the café and was mildly surprised that it was still there. So the spell was limited—and he had beaten it. He could feel the woman staring at him and so he smiled at her, remembering to crinkle his eyes because he had observed that cleverer mortals would not accept a smile without the crinkle. So many rules.