Charles wandered down the stairs to the showroom. Dorothy was behind the counter talking with a middle-aged, upper-class lady with a large middle and larger upper.
“Mrs. Stratton,” he said. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Mr. Beale,” the woman said in a properly fruity voice. “Dorothy and I are discussing the banquet this evening.”
“We’re looking forward to it.”
The front door opened.
“Good morning,” Dorothy said in a bright greet-the-customer voice, and Charles turned to look toward the door, and then down slightly.
“Congresswoman Liu! What an honor!”
“Good morning, Mr. Beale.” She nodded toward the ladies at the counter. “Good morning!”
“Dorothy!” Charles said. “Roll out the red carpet. This is her! An honest-to-goodness congresswoman!”
“Oh, Mr. Beale. Please!” Karen Liu beamed her searchlight-strength smile and without any hint of embarrassment. “Thank you!”
“This is my wife, Dorothy.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Beale!”
“And our dear friend, Mrs. Wilhelmina Stratton.”
“A congresswoman?” Mrs. Stratton said. “How do you do!”
A few tangled moments passed, of ebullient greetings and fulsome praises and self-effacing protestations, and of Mrs. Stratton seizing opportunity with both hands. But finally the air cleared and extraneous personalities realized they were no longer needed. Only Charles, Dorothy and the fully introduced congresswoman were left.
“And what an interesting shop!” she said as she finally had a chance to see it.
“Oh, it is,” Charles said, “and I’m so glad to have you here. Let me show you around.”
“Let me just look at it all first.” They stood for a moment in the room’s center, Karen Liu completely inflated, her eyes sharp and darting; and Charles and Dorothy respectfully silent.
“Now show me something.”
“Of course,” he said. He led her to the shelves under the stairs. “Books,” he said. Dorothy watched from the counter.
“May I look at one?” Karen Liu said.
“Please.”
She touched a spine and then a few more, reading the titles. “I thought you sold old books.”
“These are a little bit old,” he said. “The very old ones are downstairs. But even middle-aged books can be very interesting and valuable.”
She slid one volume out. “Fishing?”
“A popular section.”
Then her eyes got very big. “Two hundred dollars?”
Charles nodded. “ Fishing Salmon and Trout, 1889. It’s a fifth edition and the leather is still in excellent condition. Cholmondeley-Pennell is a standard for people who collect in fishing.”
“What makes it worth two hundred dollars?”
“That people are willing to pay two hundred.”
“There are people that would.” She handed it to him. “But I wouldn’t.”
“It depends on what a person values,” he said. “But books can be valuable in so many ways.”
“The only use I would have for a book is to read it.”
“Some people use, and some collect.” Charles opened the book in his hand and softly turned the pages. “It means something to own a book. If a person enjoys fishing, this book can re-create that enjoyment. And this book, with its own collectible value, adds to the enjoyment. Some people collect antiques as an investment, but most do it because it enriches them in deeper ways.”
Suddenly the charm and smile turned off. The change was striking.
“Do you have any books that are valuable because of what they say about people?” She was looking at him, not the book in his hand.
“What kind of things would they say?” he asked.
“Things they wouldn’t want said.”
Dorothy busied herself at the counter, actively not participating in the conversation.
“I have books about human nature,” Charles said. “Some of them come to very bleak conclusions, and many people would rather not hear what they have to say. Is that what you mean?”
“It might be. What books did you sell to Derek Bastien?”
“Classic authors of the Enlightenment, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were books about government and law and human thought.”
“Were they the kind you just described?”
“Some of those authors had a bleak view of mankind, but mostly they were hopeful.”
The congressional brows furrowed, but the hearing room atmosphere had eased. “What if I wanted to buy something? What would you recommend?”
“I’d have to know what you value, Ms. Liu.” He smiled. “I have to know who you are.”
“All right.” She was back to smiling, but a superficial one. “Pretend I wanted to buy something. Find out who I am.”
“Do you have any hobbies?”
“Hobbies! Me?” The indignity was genuine.
“That’s where some people start. Fishing, camping. Sports. Baseball is popular.”
“I don’t have time for hobbies.”
“Do you have favorite authors?”
“Mr. Beale, I don’t even remember the last time I read a book just to read it. I only read reports.”
“Let’s step back from reading. What would you like to experience?”
“Experience?”
Charles’s own smile had faded. “What drives you, Congresswoman?”
She answered as seriously. “Struggle, Mr. Beale.”
“For what?”
“For justice.”
“I prefer mercy,” he said.
She folded her arms and leaned her head. “Mercy is a whim. It is doled out by the powerful when they choose for a moment to lighten their oppression of the weak. Justice is equal and blind.”
“Justice means getting what you deserve,” Charles said. “I hope I don’t.”
“Some people just wish they could.”
“Well.” He sighed, and took a book from a different shelf. “You might like Sinclair Lewis. Or William Faulkner.”
“They’re old. The dead past doesn’t interest me. I live in the present.”
“Faulkner said, ‘The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.’ I think you would be fascinated by these stories because you would recognize everything in them and you would see how these characters dealt with the same struggles you have. You must know, Congresswoman, how tied our present is to our past. We’ve each gotten to where we are now through our past.”
“It’s been a hard road,” she said.
“Just think how decisions you’ve made in your past affect your present,” Charles said.
“Mr. Beale.” She had returned to her hardest expression. “I don’t know what that statement means. What exactly does it mean?”
“It was a general statement about all of us. I’m sure we’ve all made mistakes.”
“Are you trying to say something specific about me?” She wasn’t showing any emotion, just extreme attention. There was a short pause of measuring each other.
“I didn’t mean to be, and I didn’t mean to give any offense.”
“I’m not taking offense. I’m just trying to understand what you mean.”
He answered carefully. “I mean that I prefer mercy over justice.”
She thought carefully. “Then I do, too.”
“And my point,” he said, picking up the speed of the conversation, “is that authors like these have explored that conflict. As I said, you might be fascinated by the ways they resolve it.”
She joined the quicker flow. “I might just have to wait for the movie to come out,” she said with her standard smile. “Did you really just want to meet me because I was a friend of Derek’s? Was that the only reason?”
“Was that the only reason you let me come?”
“Let’s say yes, Mr. Beale, to both of those.”
“Let’s do.” He placed the books back on the shelves. “I had an interesting visit the other night. Pat White. He mentioned your name.”
She frowned, but only some. “We’ve been good friends for a long time. I feel very sorry for him.”
“Now, is that a case of injustice, or mercy losing to justice?”
“That, Mr. Beale, would be a very long answer, and I think I must have taken up quite a bit of your morning already.”
“I’m sure your time is much more valuable than mine,” he said. “I also met John Borchard.”
She crumpled the name into a wad and tossed it back to him. “That would be another long discussion.”
“Then let’s not have it,” he said, smoothing stiff creases out of the air. “Instead, Congresswoman-I wonder if you might want to look at something that isn’t a struggle. Something peaceful instead.”
“What do you mean?”
“A book that’s just for looking. A very special volume.” He crossed the corner to a shelf that was built tall to hold many sizes of books and took a small volume from it. “This was printed in 1892 in England. It’s called a Wisdom Garden. They were a popular type at the turn of the century.”
She opened to the middle.
“Oh,” she said, and in a moment everything had changed.
“I was just remembering your waiting room. All the flowers.”
Her mouth was still on oh.
Charles smiled. “The plates are engravings of English gardens.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“Now this is how the book was used. You set it open on your desk and simply notice it from time to time throughout the day. It’s meant to be calming.”
“That’s why I love flowers.”
“And the captions are from Proverbs. I’d like to loan it to you. Would you mind?”
“You’d just let me take it?”
“I’d be honored if you would. This is how cultured ladies of a former time dealt with their stress.”
“I could use less stress and more culture.” She lingered over the page for a moment. “I’ll be very careful with it.”
“That’s fine. That’s all it needs.”
The telephone rang, and Dorothy picked it up. “Alexandria Rare Books.” She listened. “No, we close at two on Saturday,” she said. “But we’re open until seven through the week.”
“And it’s noon now,” the congresswoman said. “I am so glad I came. And I know I will enjoy this book. When should I get it back to you?”
“Just when you’ve had time to look through it.”
“I’ll keep it for a few days and send it back. Thank you for our talk.” She opened the door. “We might want to talk again.”
“Whenever you’d like,” he said.
And finally, she was gone.
“What do you think?” Charles asked.
“I’m impressed. She’s a very strong personality.”
“Is she authentic? Sincere?”
“I think so. A force for good.”
“Corrupt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What would happen if that paper became public?”
“I hope it doesn’t.”
“Does she think I know about her past misdeeds?”
“I think she wonders, Charles. You led her right up to that conversation.”
“She was there waiting for me.”
“Do you think you’ll see her again?”
“That’s up to her. We’ll see if she returns the book herself or just sends it back, like she said.”