"Can" B. Worth - Part Three

"Can" B. Worth

Part Three

            I continued pretending.  What is “pretending” and why am I doing it here?

            Pretending, in this …antiques and rare books dealer meaning… is the conscious action to fake or “pretend” to be very, very and aggressively very BUSY figuring out HOW MUCH …YOU… are going to PAY for a something (anything) in this case the something being “the entire contents of this old dead professor emeritus’ office and I will have it completely cleaned out by 5:00 PM today too”.  “Pretending” is done to create a foil to cause the seller to believe that when the buyer utters “THE NUMBER” (the “I will pay” this amount) that it appears to the seller that the buyer …put a lot of thought, physical effort and MONEY into that cash-on-barrelhead utterance.

            In my antiquarian realm the actual number the buyer utters …has very little to do with “what” “is in there”; in this case the contents of this office.  It is actually a carefully chosen number that the buyer chooses to be “THE NUMBER” that the seller will most easily accept as a “good” therefore “I will sell” “THE NUMBER”.  THAT NUMBER is NOT PRETEND.  It is a skeleton key to the treasure chest.  Fitting that key into the treasure chest lock and having that key open that chest for the buyer… is it.  All the rest is show based on “gut”. 

            In this case I had a three rung step stool of gut.  The first rung was when the lawyer called me to “see if” and he described the setting… sort of.  My “gut” said “scholarly” (the rare book seller’s term for an academic hoard of old books and paper) and  “go look”.  The second rung was when the lawyer opened the door and I looked past his head and saw to “my trained rare bookman’s eye… mummified old books and paper”.  My gut saw the “looks right” setting.  The third rung was when the two Maine railroad pamphlets were below the Chronicles of Casco Bay pamphlet.  More than a rung, that was actually a leap of rare book affirmation.  The on the desk top books, with John Neal salted down in them TOO… “clinched it”:  The “I AM BUYING THIS LOT” (the office contents) became fixed passion.  I don’t need to look at ANYTHING; I just need to get “THE NUMBER” into the lock on this treasure chest.  And do the appropriate amount of pretending.

            I already stated that I understood that the lawyer… now outside waiting for me to finish pretending and deliver “THE NUMBER”… “didn’t care, wasn’t timing me and just wanted to “get out of here.”  AND:  I already had a number:  “Twenty-two hundred” with “done by five”.  THAT number I LIKED and didn’t spend ANY time thinking about it after finding “Neal next to Neal”.  The gut on the contents read “safe bet” AND that number gave me two great back up numbers; “Eighteen fifty” and “sixteen fifty” IF there was some testiness about THAT LARGER “the number”.  I always like good “backup” numbers that show LESS well for the seller than “THE NUMBER”.  Further… my backup of  “the number” doesn’t go the other way.  Nope.

            So all this finds me fifteen minutes into pretending with my back turned to a nuisance and A SHORT forty-five minutes left of “pretending” required.  That’s why just sitting in the old emeritus’ chair and fussing with my cell phone would have been preferred.  In this case I have to “put on a show”.

            AND not “get this guy excited”.  Note that I am not telling this man that I am “BUYING” the contents, that I am a DEALER, that I WANT THIS STUFF or …care.  HOPEFULLY I will pull this “clean-out” off without ever alerting him that this is a commercial transaction of rare books taking place right in front of him.  At this moment he thinks I am a “clean-out” man.  Maybe.  Therefore I didn’t turn around and could feel his eyes absorbing EVERYTHING I did so I … picked up the plastic shopping bag containing two rolls of paper towels AND a four roll package of toilet paper (“THANK YOU FOR BEING THERE”) AND …turned, took them out of the bag, placed them on the desk top and TURNED BACK away again.  Further fortune smiled upon me for a tray toping a box beside the desk held “cleaning supplies” and these were in a hand reach so I… in one pirouette gesture added a “WINDEX” spray bottle to the desktop assemblage.  That stalled me for beneath that bottle and its companions was an “old book”; a thick old book with no spine left and in “rough condition” but still a “19^th century brown publisher’s cloth” so… I picked it up and looked at it.

            “NOT VALUBLE” rang internally as I title paged it (rare bookseller’s action verb) to find “HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS”, N.Y., 1853.  This is an “always around” (in the market) tome that’s best feature is the inclusion of many plates and hand colored illustrations of… American authors and their homes… that commercially no one cares about but are “nice” when first “discovered” by the neophyte.  Here it be as a (waste) basket case stored on a cleaning supply tray?  I put it back.  The historian mumbled something.

            “What?” I said.

            “That book.”

            “Yes.” I said picking it back up.

            “Can collected rare books”

            “This is one?”

            “No.”

            “Ok.” I said putting it back down.

            “He found that in the trash”

            “Trash?”

            “Yes he showed it to me when he found it.  Just last month.”

            “Oh.  You want it?”

            “Want it?  No.  I mean.  He FOUND it in the trash and showed it to me”.

            “Oh.” I said taking my hand away from the cleaning tray.

            “It has old prints in it.” the historian said.

            “I see that.”

            “He showed them to me”.

            “You want it?” I asked again.

            “No.  But Can collected rare books.  He’d show me one every now and then.  They were always good; really rare.  Very pretty too.  ‘Handsome copy’ is what he’d say.  Took them all home to his wife’s library.  SHE had the collection actually.  He’d buy one for her birthday or Christmas.  He’d show me them.  That book there is just junk.  He found it in the trash in the department office.  I looked at it when he found it.  He had it on the desk.  I wondered where it went”.

            “You want it?  Here.  You can have it.” I said now reaching for the book.

            “No, no; it’s just JUNK.  He said so.  ‘You know what a rare book looks like’ he’d say to me.  I do know.  He showed me”.

            “Oh.” I said withdrawing my hand from the book.  I was saying a lot more than “Oh” to myself.  First I said I just killed five minutes.  The maze of what I said next was more complicated.