The Book of Air and Shadows

filthy, clutching these to his breast when Glaser and Rolly arrived. Glaser took in what his clerk was holding and asked, “What about the Dickens?”
    He meant the 1902 edition with extra watercolor illustrations by Kyd and Green. Sixty volumes. Crosetti said he was sorry. Glaser tried to push past a pair of cops, who stopped him, grabbed him, yelled angry words, which Glaser returned.
    Looking up at Crosetti, Rolly asked, “Did you manage to get the Churchill out of the basement?”
    “No. I was going to, but they wouldn’t let me.” He explained about the big fireman.
    She sniffed the air. “Everything in there is going to smell like bad french fries. But you saved the
Indian Tribes
at least.”
    “And Jane and Walt.”
    “Yes, them too. Sidney doesn’t think you know anything about books.”
    “Just what they cost,” he said.
    “Yes. Tell me, if that firefighter hadn’t shown up, would you have dashed into the flames to save the
Voyages
?”
    “There weren’t any flames,” he said modestly, “or hardly any.” She gave him the first smile that ever she gave him, the toothed grin of a young wolf.

    The next day they took stock and discovered that, aside from some smoke damage, and the smell, the showroom and its contents were unharmed. It turned out that in the kitchen of the restaurant next door was a hole in the floor, and into this hole over the years the cooks had poured odd lots of grease when the main grease barrel was full or when they were too pressed or lazy to carry the stuff to where it belonged. This had pooled down in the basement, between the walls, and somehow ignited. The firefighters had smashed through the party wall in their efforts to halt the burning, and as a result much of what had occupied the bookstore’s basement was wrecked by heat, collapsed brickwork, or water. The packing case containing the six volumes of Awnsham and John Churchill’s
Collection of Voyages and Travels
(1732 edition) had unfortunately taken the brunt of the wall’s collapse. These volumes now lay upon a worktable amid the ruins, around which table stood Mr. Glaser, Crosetti, and Rolly, like cops examining a murder victim, or rather the two young people were like cops-Mr. Glaser was like the victim’s mom. Tenderly he ran his fingers over the crushed, soaked, and blackened full-calf cover of volume one.
    “I don’t know,” he said in a little creaky voice, “I don’t know if it’s even worth the effort. What a colossal loss!”
    “Wasn’t it insured?” asked Crosetti. They both stared at him in distaste.
    “Of course it was insured,” Glaser replied tartly. “That’s hardly the point. This is probably the finest set of the Churchill 1732 in the world. Or was. It was in the library of one of the minor Godolphins, probably untouched and unread from the time it was delivered until the library was broken up at the death of the last heir in 1965. Then it belonged to a Spanish industrialist for nearly forty years and then I purchased it at auction last month. It was perfect, not a trace of wear or foxing or…oh, well. Impossible to recover. They’ll have to be broken for the maps and illustrations.”
    “Oh, no!” exclaimed Rolly. “Surely they can be restored.”
    Glaser peered at her over his thick half-glasses. “No, it simply doesn’t make economic sense, when you calculate what restoration would cost and what we might realize from a rebound and doctored set.” He paused, cleared his throat: “No, we’ll have to break them, I’m afraid.” This in the tone of an oncologist saying “stage four melanoma.”
    Glaser issued an immense sigh and waved his hands weakly, as if chasing gnats.
    “Caro, I’ll leave it in your hands; do it quickly before the mold starts.” He shuffled away to his private office.
    “He wants you to break the volumes?” Crosetti asked.
    “It’s not a complex task. But we have to dry the set out,” she replied, a distracted look on her face. “Look, the fact is I’m going to need some help.” She seemed to notice him again, and an appealing expression came to her face, a look he rather liked. He mimed searching for someone behind him and said, “Oh, not me! Man, I failed finger painting. I never once colored completely inside the lines.”
    “No, this involves handling paper towels. The drying operation has to go on all day and night, maybe for days.”
    “What about our jobs?”
    She gestured broadly to the environs. “This place’ll be