~5~

SATURDAY MORNING. THE CITY WAS ALREADY HOT, loud and busy. Jack crossed York Street in front of the Queen Victoria Building and went down the steps to Susko Books, the basement headquarters to his global second-hand-book empire that so far was yet to open its second outlet. After last night’s wine, his head felt as though somebody had replaced his brain with a small, just-boiled cannonball.

The porn shop above was still shuttered behind its bright yellow façade. Deepak, the owner, ran an office-cleaning business in the mornings and did not open up until after noon; he DJ’d on the weekends, too, and owned a share in an Indian restaurant out in Pennant Hills. The guy was relentless in his ambition to hit ‘a million bucks before thirty’, and had even offered to buy out Susko Books. At least now with de Groot’s money on the way, Jack could tell Deepak no deal, and get back to his annual summer re-read of Treasure Island.

He unlocked the front door and walked into the quiet cool of shelved books, waiting to be held, read and loved. There was no air-conditioning, but with concrete floor, walls and ceiling, the place did all right during the summer. He closed the door behind him, dropped his keys, sunglasses and bag on the counter, and then slipped a CD into the stereo. Somethin’ Else by Cannonball Adderley. He pressed play. ‘Autumn Leaves’ kicked in with its opening burst of brass. As Miles said hello with his trumpet, Jack switched on the lights. He decided to do a little dusting.

The morning cruised along: a few decent sales and even a good-looking girl browsing the fiction shelves for half an hour. Before she left, they had a nice chat about Virginia Woolf. Jack admitted to not having read her, saying nothing about his failed attempt at To the Lighthouse. He was never going anywhere that was so painful to get to again. But the girl said that he should definitely read some Virginia Woolf and Jack replied sure. He had plenty of her novels in stock. He might even start today.

Eleven a.m. came and went. Jack flipped through a few pages of Orlando. By 1.30 p.m., still no Richard de Groot. He tried The Waves, but his stream of consciousness could not detach itself from the image of a smooth personal cheque or a white envelope stuffed full of crisp hundred-dollar notes. Virginia went back on the shelf and Jack began dialling numbers.

No answer on de Groot’s mobile, the call went straight through to messages.

‘Hey Richard, it’s Jack Susko. Maybe you forgot to come and see me. Maybe you should remember.’

Nobody was picking up at the gallery either. Jack’s happy morning air was starting to go a little afternoon sour. He got the White Pages out from under the counter and found de Groot: fifteen were listed, none of whom had the initial ‘R’. Jack rang them all anyway. Nothing. Just as his hangover had eased, a new pain in his head was starting to put the squeeze on. A case for the return of fine tobacco into his life was mounting and Jack had a strong feeling that the jury was not going to take too long with its final decision.

The front door opened. A tall, skinny, bearded man with long greasy hair. He was wearing an old, sleeveless white T-shirt with a few amber-coloured food stains under the neckline, and faded black jeans. No shoes. His arms were long and thin and tattooed. His sweaty feet made a wet, peeling noise as he walked over the polished concrete floor towards the counter. Jack sighed and waited for the inevitable. I’ve got no bus fare, man, and I’ve got to get up to the Blue Mountains by tonight. The guy had picked a bad afternoon to hustle charity at Susko Books.

‘Hey,’ he said, smiling.

Jack nodded. The guy’s teeth reminded him to ring the dentist for a check-up.

‘Yeah, look, this is probably a long shot but, um, would you by any chance have any, like, reference books on cults and religious groups, you know, stuff like that?’

The guy’s voice was nervous but did not sound too crazy, despite the subject matter. Jack scratched the palm of his left hand, thinking.

‘Might have,’ he said.

‘Oh, cool.’

Jack went over to a bookshelf and scanned the spines: St Augustine’s Confessions of a Sinner; A Light That Is Shining by Harvey Gillman; Marcus J. Borg’s The Heart of Christianity; Joan of Arc in Her Own Words; Roman and European Mythologies edited by Yves Bonnefoy; Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel; When the Day Is Done by Filipo de Tomasi. Many of them had been on the shelf for a while.

Jack checked the next row and found what he was looking for. He pulled out a large yellow book in floppy covers, an ugly but relatively difficult to get print-on-demand publication he had picked up at a garage sale in Gladesville a few weeks ago: Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties and Schools of Religious Thought by John Henry Blunt. It was a cheap facsimile of the original 1874 edition, but reproduced the lovely antique typeface. Before handing it over to the guy, Jack could not resist flipping open a page and having a look. He got page 114.

COTOPITES, or COTHOPITHÆ. An African name for Circumellions. It is probably equivalent to the Latin “Agrestes”, rustics or vagrants. [Isidore, Origg. viii. 5, 53. Honorius. Aug. de Hoeres. 69.]

‘This might be the thing.’ Jack passed over the book.

The man looked through it eagerly. His eyes flicked across the small, tightly packed text. He jumped to the final pages and ran a dirty fingernail down the W’s.

‘Ah! The Waldensians,’ he said. ‘Perfect.’ He read for a moment and then handed the book back to Jack. ‘I’ll take it.’

‘Okay.’ Jack checked the price that he had written in pencil on the title page. ‘It’s not cheap,’ he said. ‘Hard to get, actually.’

‘Right.’

‘Fifty dollars.’

‘Oh. Wow.’ The guy nodded and raised his eyebrows and his face grew dark with the shadows of disappointment.

‘Gee.’

For some reason, just then, Jack did not want this man’s money. His hip flask of milk-of-human-kindness was almost empty, but he gave it a shake and heard the barest of splashes. He may as well knock it off now. What the hell else was he going to do with the little that was left? He went behind the counter and slipped the book into a brown paper bag and passed it over to the skinny tall guy with no shoes. Fifty dollars was going to make about as much difference to Jack’s financial woes as an ice-cube in an erupting volcano.

He combed the back of his head with a hand. ‘How much you got?’

‘Aw, you know, like, ten bucks.’

‘That’ll do.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. It’s fine.’

The guy smiled, a little confused, but nodded his head some more. ‘Oh, that’s so cool.’ He shoved a hand into his pocket: the black jeans slipped further down his boyish hips. Then he passed over a tightly crumpled note. ‘Thanks man!’

Jack watched the guy leave. Hopefully the universe had taken note of his good deed.

Richard de Groot remained incommunicado for the rest of the day. He did not come by Susko Books, or call, or text, or email. And he did not send an authorised representative around to complete the agreed arrangement with Jack. On the way home, the universe did not drop any wallets without identification or bags of untraceable drug money in Jack’s path. No discarded lotto tickets with the winning numbers. Not even a packet of cigarettes. Maybe the universe had been too busy.