Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

Penumbra nods. “You cannot follow me here”—he waves his hand back toward the dark doorway—“but I would speak to you after I am finished. We will have to consider what equipment to purchase … which companies to work with. I will need your help, my boy.” He lifts his gaze to look over my shoulder. “And you are not alone, are you?”

I look back across Fifth Avenue, where Kat and Neel are standing, watching us and waiting. Kat waves.

“She works at Google,” I say. “She helped.”

“Good,” Penumbra says, nodding. “That is very good. But tell me: How did you find this place?”

I grin when I tell him: “Computers.”

He shakes his head. Then he tucks a hand into his peacoat and pulls out a skinny black Kindle, still activated, showing sharp words against a pale background.

“You got one,” I say, smiling.

“Oh, more than one, my boy,” Penumbra says, and produces another e-reader—it’s a Nook. Then another one, a Sony. Another one, marked KOBO. Really? Who has a Kobo? And did Penumbra just cross the country carrying four e-readers?

“I had a bit of catching up to do,” he explains, balancing them in a stack. “But you know, this one”—he produces a final device, this one super-slim and clad in blue—“was my favorite of the bunch.”

There’s no logo. “What is that?”

“This?” He flips the mystery e-reader around in his fingers. “My student Greg—you do not know him, not yet. He lent it to me for the journey.” His voice grows conspiratorial. “He said it was a prototype.”

The anonymous e-reader is amazing: thin and light, with a skin that’s not plastic but cloth, like a hardcover book. How did Penumbra get his hands on a prototype? Who does my boss know in Silicon Valley?

“It is a remarkable device,” he says, balancing it with the rest and patting the stack. “This is all quite remarkable.” He pauses, then looks up at me. “Thank you, my boy. It is because of you that I am here.”

That makes me smile. Go get ’em, Mr. Penumbra. “Where do we meet you?”

“The Dolphin and Anchor,” he says. “Bring your friends. You can find it on your own—am I right? Use your computers.” He winks, then turns and pushes through the dark doorway into the secret library of the Unbroken Spine.

*   *   *

Kat’s phone guides us to our destination. The sky is opening up, so we run most of the way.

When we find it, the Dolphin and Anchor is the perfect refuge, all dark heavy wood and low brassy light. We sit at a round table next to a window flecked with raindrops. Our waiter arrives, and he, too, is perfect: tall and barrel-chested, with a thick red beard and a disposition that warms us all up. We order mugs of beer; he brings those along with a plate of bread and cheese. “Strength in the storm,” he says with a wink.

“What if Mr. P doesn’t show?” Neel says.

“He’ll show,” I say. “This isn’t what I expected. He’s got a plan. I mean—he brought e-readers.”

Kat smiles at that but she doesn’t look up. She’s glued to her phone again. She’s like a candidate on election day.

There’s a stack of books on the table and a metal cup with pointy pencils that smell fresh and sharp. In the stack, there are copies of Moby-Dick, Ulysses, The Invisible Man—this is a bar for bibliophiles.

There’s a pale beer stain on the back cover of The Invisible Man, and inside, the margins are mobbed with pencil marks. It’s so dense you can barely see the paper behind it—there are dozens of different people’s marginalia jostling for space here. I flip through the book; it’s jam-packed. Some of the notes are about the text, but more are directed at one another. The margins tend to devolve into arguments, but there are other interactions, too. Some are inscrutable: just numbers back and forth. There’s encrypted graffiti:

6HV8SQ was here

I nurse my beer and nibble the cheese and try to follow the conversations through the pages.

Then Kat gives a quiet sigh. I look up across the table, and see her face crumpled into a deep frown. She sets her phone down on the table and covers it with one of the Dolphin and Anchor’s thick blue napkins.

“What is it?”

“They emailed out the new PM.” She shakes her head. “Not this time.” Then she forces a smile and reaches to pick a battered book from the stack. “It’s no big deal,” she says, flipping pages, making herself busy. “It’s like winning the lottery anyway. It was a long shot.”

I’m not an entrepreneur, not a business guy, but in that moment I want nothing more than to start a company and grow it to Google size, just so I can put Kat Potente in charge.

*   *   *

There’s a gust of wet wind. I look up from The Invisible Man to see Penumbra framed in the doorway, the tufts of hair over his ears matted down, turned a shade darker by the rain. His teeth are gritted.

Neel jumps up to usher him toward the table. Kat takes his coat. Penumbra is shivering and saying quietly, “Thank you, dear girl, thank you.” He walks stiffly to the table, gripping chair backs for support.