Afterword:

A Burglar’s Future

I thought I was just going out for a walk, doing what I could to pacify my Fitbit, but wouldn’t you know it? My feet had ideas of their own, and in no time at all they’d led me to that block of East Eleventh Street between University Place and Broadway.

A tailless cat sunned itself in the window of Barnegat Books, and barely stirred when I opened the door. I got a slightly warmer reception from my favorite bookseller, who was perched on his stool behind the counter. He looked up from his book, said “Oh, it’s you,” and resumed reading.

“It’s me,” I agreed.

A quick look around established that the proprietor and his cat and I had the store to ourselves, unless you count the spirits of a few thousand dead writers. “Good to see you,” I said. “Um, how’s business?”

“Don’t ask.”

“All right.”

He sighed, and answered the question now that I’d withdrawn it. “Business,” he said, “is non-existent. I’m essentially out of business. You know the bargain table I keep out front?”

“I knew something was missing,” I said. “What happened to it? Don’t tell me somebody walked off with it.”

“If only,” he said with feeling. “It was rare enough that someone swiped a book. No, I got tired of hauling it out every morning and bringing it in every night. And I got tired of people bringing a book inside and buying it and then cluttering up the store browsing through books they’d go home and order on line.”

“Oh,” I said.

“The world’s a different place,” he said. “Barnegat Books was already an anachronism when I bought it. Still, people used to read. They used to collect first editions, and track down the complete works of writers they discovered. Now they zone out with Netflix, and what reading they do is on an eReader or an iPad. And if they’re old-fashioned enough to collect books, they don’t have to hunt for them. Why breathe in the dust of an old bookshop when you can find anything you could possibly want through a five-minute online search?”

“You make it sound awful.”

“But it’s not,” he said. “It’s just different. Unless you have a store like this one, in which case the answer is obvious.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. “Close up shop,” he said. “You know, I never expected to make money here. I figured if I could break even, or keep losses to a minimum, I’d have a place to hang out and sponsor poetry readings and, well—”

“Meet girls?”

“And I met a few,” he allowed, “and sometimes that was good and sometimes it wasn’t, like life itself. And there was another benefit of owning the place. I had this other occupation.”

“Burglary.”

He nodded. “And I made enough at night to cover any losses I incurred day-to-day. But now that the entire planet’s wired for closed circuit TV, with security cameras everywhere you can imagine and some places you can’t, well, forget it. There’s no cash anywhere anyhow, and if you steal something nobody’s going to buy it from you, and being a burglar makes even less sense than being a bookseller. Two occupations, one legit and one not, and both of them rendered obsolete by encroaching technology.”

“You sound as though you’re getting ready to close the store.”

He looked at me. “And then what would I do? This city’s extortionate rent increases would have forced me out of here twenty years ago if I hadn’t been able to buy the building. This way I make enough renting out the apartments upstairs to keep body and soul together. If I had any sense I’d close this money pit, truck all these goddamn books to a landfill, and rent out the store to a chain drugstore or a boutique. You know what I could get for this space?”

“A good deal, I suppose.”

“As far as that goes,” he said, “I could sell the whole building. Get a few million for it. Retire somewhere. But you know what the problem is, don’t you?”

“You’re too young to retire.”

He glared at me. “And I always will be,” he said, “thanks to you, you son of a bitch. Back in 1977 I was around 35 years old. Now it’s what, 2019?”

“Last I looked.”

“And I’m still around 35 years old. The other guy you write about ages in real time. Matthew Fucking Scudder, the sonofabitch gets a year older with every passing year. Me, I stay the same year after year, frozen in time.”

“So does Carolyn.”

“Well, thank God for that. She stays the same, and so does the fucking cat. Raffles came to work here in 1994. That’s what, 25 years ago? And he was a year or two old at the time. So he’s gotta be 26 or 27, and do you have any idea what that is in dog years?”

“Dog years?”

“You know what I mean. He’s almost as old as those Thai yowlers Lillian Jackson Braun wrote about. One of them was named Koko, and the other wasn’t.”

“Or maybe it was the other way around.”

He gave me a look. “Now Raffles is establishing himself as The Cat Who Lived Forever.”

“Well—”

“Never mind,” he said. “I’m not about to sell the building. I’m not closing the store, either, and I’m not moving anywhere. I’ll just stay here.”

“Actually,” I said, “I have to admit I’m glad to hear that. You know, people ask me about you all the time.”

He rolled his eyes. “When are you gonna write another book about me. That’s what they ask, right?”

“All the time.”

“Tell them,” he said, “never.”

“That seems so final.”

“Good.”

“They keep coming up with suggestions,” I said. “Things for you to steal. Just the other day a guy wrote that his girlfriend is a violinist, and she’d had a chance to play on a Stradivarius or some other priceless violin, and he thought of Katie Huang and wondered if there was some sort of priceless flute you could steal for her, or something.”

“Katie Huang,” he said.

“The Taiwanese flautist who worked at Two Guys.”

“I know who she is,” he said. “Haven’t seen her lately. And the restaurant changed hands. Two Guys from Taichung is now Two Guys from Dushanbe. That’s in Tajikistan.”

“Oh.”

“And it’s not a terrible idea, but you know as well as I do that something to steal isn’t an idea for a book. It’s just something to steal, and to hell with stealing.”

“Point taken. Another guy emailed to tell me how he’d walked into a high-security building the other day completely by accident. He’d been a responsible citizen and picked up an armload of trash in the street, and he couldn’t find a trashcan, and he walked to a building entrance to ask the doorman where he could find a trash receptacle, but the doorman wasn’t paying much attention, and some tenant saw him with his arms full and held the door for him, and before he knew it he was inside this secure building.”

He looked almost interested. “So what did he steal?” he wondered.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“He found a trash can, and got rid of what he was holding, and turned around and got out of there.”

“Hell of a story,” he said. “Alert the media!”

“Well, he thought it was interesting. And I’d have to agree, especially in this age of security cameras.”

“And you want to write a story about it?”

“Well, no,” I admitted.

“Is there anything you want to write a story about? Really?”

“Um—”

“Suppose I was still up for having adventures. Suppose I was as young at heart as I am in years. Suppose the two of us put our heads together and came up with something that would work, something you haven’t already written before, something genuinely good.”

I waited.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Would you be up for writing it?”

“I guess not.”

“Because you’ve aged in real time,” he said.

I nodded. “It’s the biggest mistake I ever made.”

“Well, it’s a problem,” he agreed, “but I’m here to tell you that staying the same age forever isn’t so hot either. If I’m too young to retire, well, you’re way past retirement age. I read your latest novella, the one where Matt Scudder’s every bit as old as you are.”

“A Time to Scatter Stones.”

“A novella instead of a full-length novel. I’m guessing neither one of you had the energy for a longer book. I liked it, but it felt like a swan song.”

“It probably was.”

“And you’ve been doing anthologies. I read one of them. They’ve been well-received.”

“I get good writers,” I said, “and stay out of their way.”

“Will there be more of them?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “They’re a lot of work. I’m beginning to think maybe enough is enough.”

“Amen to that. So what’ll you do?”

I shrugged. “Walk enough to keep my Fitbit happy. Hang out with my wife. Watch a little TV, maybe travel a little. You?”

“Sit right here,” he said. “God knows I won’t run out of things to read. Have lunch with Carolyn, grab drinks after work at the Bum Rap. As long as my upstairs tenants keep paying their rent, I can afford to keep the store open. Even if nobody ever comes in and buys something.”

“I’m glad of that,” I told him. “The place suits you.”

“I guess.”

“And I like having it here. You know, so I can drop by every once in a while for a little company and conversation. I enjoy our talks.”

“Come over any time,” he said. “God knows I’m not going anywhere.”