Most of the shops on Madison sold clothes, and strangely, Casey didn’t care to look in them. Everything looked expensive and forbidding. Lately, she’d been revolted by her own clothing expenditures; she was in a perennial state of buyer’s remorse. On the corner of Seventieth Street, she rested at the flashing DON’T WALK sign. A few feet away was a rare-book store.
The box air conditioner propped on the lintel of its front door hummed steadily, dripping water onto the street pavement. Sleigh bells tinkled when she opened the door. From somewhere in the shop, oboes played on the radio. Illustrations from loose book pages, framed handsomely long ago, hung on yellow-painted walls.
An older man wearing a pea green–colored golf shirt greeted her.
“Good morning.” Fluffy white hair seemed to fly about the sides of his otherwise balding head. The frames of his eyeglasses were lapis blue, and the color matched the large face of his wristwatch. He was a very pale man, and the bright spots of blue on his face and wrist made him look younger, almost comic. He was perhaps seventy-five or eighty years old.
“That’s a remarkable hat,” he said. His voice was youthful and warm—it was a happy voice, and Casey felt comforted hearing it.
She touched her cloche—she’d hand-blocked the linen hat herself, sewn small red silk flowers on its left side.
“And your dress. My, my. Tremendous.” His voice was filled with pleasure.
Casey glanced down at her ivory flapper-style dress. It had two crimson lines flowing vertically across the front and back, and draped over her shoulders was a cranberry-colored silk cardigan from a thrift store. On the weekends, her fanciful clothes resembled period costumes nearly.
“Daisy Buchanan,” he said, referring to the coldhearted girl from The Great Gatsby.
“Yes. I guess so,” she answered. His comment was like a private wink. She hadn’t been aware of it, but he was right. Her hat and dress were things that a character like Daisy might wear. When Casey made up hats, she never thought of herself, but imagined a more interesting woman. It hadn’t occurred to her that she’d dressed like a character from a story. “Well, if she were Korean, that is,” she said, feeling self-conscious.
He looked at her quizzically. “Her ethnicity would hardly matter,” he remarked sternly, as though he wouldn’t back down on this point. “No doubt there must be many Korean Daisys or Beatrices or Juliets.”
Casey blinked, not wanting to disagree with an old man. It seemed disrespectful. Where was Beatrice from? Was it Dante? There was so much she hadn’t read. Jay used to say this often.
“Joseph McReed,” he said cheerfully. “You can call me Joe or Joseph. I answer to both.”
“Oh. . .” She smiled, feeling shy suddenly. He had her father’s first name.
Joseph limped carefully across the hardwood floor with his aluminum walker. He wore faded corduroys and tan-colored Hush Puppies. His left shoe looked far too big for his withered ankle. When he finally reached one of the glass-fronted bookcases, he scanned the spines of the stacked volumes and pulled out a small, fat book. “Yes,” he said, appearing pleased with himself. He pressed the book close to his chest with his long, mottled hands. Casey worried that he might fall over now that his hands were no longer on his walker. Liver spots dotted his creased brow, and the crinkles around his eyes deepened pleasantly when he smiled.
“Look, look.” He waved the book like a child with a toy.
To keep him from having to walk to her, she went to where he stood.
Joseph was grateful for this. He never took any kindness for granted. He moved nearby to his library chair beside his walnut desk, piled high with books and newspapers, and with his right hand motioned her to sit on the wing chair opposite his. Casey glanced at her wristwatch, then sat down. She had some time before catching the train.
Joseph was still holding the book close to his chest, hiding the cover with his two hands as if he were playing peekaboo. He looked at her with great concentration, then sprang the book from his tight embrace.
“You’re going to like this, I bet.” He handed her a copy of Jane Eyre wrapped crisply in conservator sheeting.
“Oh. . .” she said with a sigh. She opened the cover, and in it was a three-by-five index card: “1st American Ed., Excellent Condition, sm. ink stain on the back cover. $5,000.”
“That was my favorite book in high school.” She wanted to ask, How did you know?
His dark green eyes had brown flecks in them. His blond eyelashes were short and feathery, and the papery skin around his eyes were heavily freckled from the sun. Maybe he was even older than eighty. He was much older than her father, but with white people she had a hard time dating them accurately, because they acted more youthful than the Koreans she knew who were about the same age.