Anthology.The.Mammoth.Book.of.Angels.And.Demons.2013.Paula.Guran by Anthology Page A

missed the memo about this being Sharp-Dressed-Man Day in Glendale. ZZ Top start riffing in her head but the accompanying mind-video is a spontaneous mash-up with Robert Palmer and his fuck-me mascarenes and Bethany makes a note to self that she needs to start spending a little less time watching I Love the 80s .
    “I wonder if you can help me?” the customer says, coming to the counter. Cute accent. Like the guy from House when he’s not being the guy from House .
    “Almost certainly not,” she says. “But I’ll be real nice about it.”
    “Ah,” he says, not put out at all. Far from it. “I take it, then, that you are neither Michael nor, indeed, Michael?” Now he’s doing the other Hugh – Grant, not Laurie – and Bethany thinks he’s laying it on a bit thick but decides to gives him the benefit of the doubt.
    “Just Bethany,” she says.
    “Exactly who I was looking for,” he says, laying the book he’s carrying onto the counter. “I wanted to ask you about this.”
    There’s no such thing as a book you never see again , Fat Michael had told her, a little booksellers’ secret, shortly after she started working here. Sooner or later, no matter how rare it is, another copy comes across the counter . He’d been trying to make her feel better because she’d fallen in love with a UK first of Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age and had been heartbroken when it left the store with somebody who could afford it. He’d been right, too; in her time with the Michaels, Bethany had seen many a mourned book wander back to their inventory, including the Grahame; one of the store’s freelance scouts had scored another copy at an estate sale just a few weeks ago.
    And now here comes this customer with another book, another blast from Bethany’s past, from long before she worked here, but just as she remembers it; rich green cloth boards with a stylized Nouveau orchid on the front panel, its petals cupping the blood-red letters of the title.
    “You do recognize it, don’t you?” the man says.
    “Sure,” Bethany says, because she does. “ The Memory Pool . Nineteen seventeen. First and only edition.”
    When she looks up from the book she sees that the customer is staring at her with an expression that she finds confusing, one of well intentioned but distant sympathy, the kind of expression you might give to a recently bereaved stranger. He touches the book’s front panel lightly and briefly. “Mm,” he says. “And quite rare, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Extremely rare,” Bethany says, and immediately wants to slap her stupid mouth. Curse me for a novice, she thinks, a mantra of Gay Michael’s whenever he’s made a rare misstep in a negotiation. She’s only been at the store a year, really is a novice still, but tipping a customer off that they’ve got something of real value is like entry-level dumb.
    “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not actually looking to sell it,” he says, as if reading her dismay. “Just wanted to see if you knew it.”
    “Huh,” says Bethany because, you know, huh .
    The customer looks at her again, cocking his head as if intrigued. He extends his gloved hand across the counter. “James Arcadia,” he says, as Bethany shakes it. “I think, Just Bethany, we’d best have lunch.”
    “Why?” she asks, and she’s smiling. Not too much, though; he’s cute and all but, c’mon, he has to be forty at least. Still, she’s flattered. Feels like she should conference-text the Michaels. Not so frumpy .
    Arcadia returns the smile and she’s glad that his eyes are kind because it softens the blow of his reply. “We need to discuss exactly how we’re going to save the world,” he says.
    Well, Bethany thinks, that was dramatic, and, as if on cue, a woman screams from somewhere beyond the store. By the time a man’s voice, equally horrified, hollers “My God, look at that!” Bethany and Arcadia have already turned to look through the window.
    On the street outside, a man is