Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

The book is very slim but very beautiful. It’s bound in brilliant gray, some kind of mottled material that shimmers silver in the light. The spine is black, and in pearly letters it says ERDOS. So the Waybacklist grows by one.

“It has been quite some time since one of these arrived,” Penumbra says. “This requires a celebration. Wait here, my boy, wait here.”

He retreats through the shelves into the back room. I hear his shoes on the steps that lead up to his office, on the other side of the door marked PRIVATE through which I have never ventured. When he returns, he carries two foam cups stacked one inside the other and a bottle of scotch, half-empty. The label says FITZGERALD’S and it looks about as old as Penumbra. He pours a half inch of gold into each cup and hands one to me.

“Now,” he says, “describe him. The visitor. Read it from your logbook.”

“I didn’t write anything down,” I confess. In fact, I haven’t done anything at all. I’ve just been pacing the store all night, keeping my distance from the front desk, afraid to touch the parcel or look at it or even think about it too hard.

“Ah, but it must go into the logbook, my boy. Here, write it as you tell it. Tell me.”

I tell him, and I write it down as I go. It makes me feel better, as if the weirdness is flowing out of my blood and onto the page, through the dark point of the pen:

“The store was visited by a presumptuous jackass—”

“Er—perhaps it would be wisest not to write that,” Penumbra says lightly. “Say perhaps that he had the aspect of … an urgent courier.”

Okay, then: “The store was visited by an urgent courier named Corvina, who—”

“No, no,” Penumbra interrupts. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Stop. Before you write, I will explain. He was extremely pale, weasel-eyed, forty-one years old, with a thick build and an ill-advised beard, wearing a suit of smooth wool, single-breasted, with functioning buttons at the cuffs, and black leather shoes that came to sharp points—correct?”

Exactly. I didn’t catch the shoes, but Penumbra has got this one nailed.

“Yes, of course. His name is Eric, and his gift is a treasure.” He swirls his scotch. “Even if he is too enthusiastic in the playing of his part. He gets that from Corvina.”

“So who’s Corvina?” I feel funny saying it, but: “He sends his regards.”

“Of course he does,” Penumbra says, rolling his eyes. “Eric admires him. Many of the young ones do.” He’s avoiding the question. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he lifts his eyes to meet mine. “This is more than a bookstore, as you have no doubt surmised. It is also a kind of library, one of many around the world. There is another in London, another in Paris—a dozen, altogether. No two are alike, but their function is the same, and Corvina oversees them all.”

“So he’s your boss.”

Penumbra’s face darkens at that. “I prefer to think of him as our patron,” he says, pausing a little on each word. The our is not lost on me, and it makes me smile. “But I suspect Corvina would agree wholeheartedly with your characterization.”

I explain what Eric said about the books on the short shelves—about Penumbra’s disobedience.

“Yes, yes,” he says with a sigh. “I have been through this before. It is foolishness. The genius of the libraries is that they are all different. Koster in Berlin with his music, Griboyedov in Saint Petersburg with his great samovar. And here in San Francisco, the most striking difference of all.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, we have books that people might actually want to read!” Penumbra guffaws at this, and shows a toothy grin. I laugh, too.

“So it’s no big deal?”

Penumbra shrugs. “That depends,” he says. “It depends how seriously one takes a rigid old taskmaster who believes that everything must be exactly the same everywhere and always.” He pauses. “As it happens, I do not take him very seriously at all.”

“Does he ever visit?”

“Never,” Penumbra says sharply, shaking his head. “He has not been to San Francisco in many years … more than a decade. No, he is busy with his other duties. And thank goodness for that.”

Penumbra lifts his hands and waves them at me, shooing me away from the desk. “Go home now. You have witnessed something rare, and more meaningful than you know. Be grateful for it. And drink your scotch, my boy! Drink!”

I swing my bag up onto my shoulder and empty my cup in two stiff gulps.

“That,” Penumbra says, “is a toast to Evelyn Erdos.” He holds the sparkling gray book aloft, and speaks as though addressing her: “Welcome, my friend, and well done. Well done!”

THE PROTOTYPE

THE NEXT NIGHT, I enter as usual and wave hello to Oliver Grone. I want to ask him about Eric, but I don’t quite have the language for it. Oliver and I have never talked directly about the weirdness of the store. So I start like this:

“Oliver, I have a question. You know how there are normal customers?”

“Not many.”

“Right. And there are members who borrow books.”

“Like Maurice Tyndall.”