Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

“Nonprofit?”

“It sounds better than, like, secret society. Anyway, I said they’re trying to break the code, and of course people perked up at that, because everybody at Google likes codes—”

Books: boring. Codes: awesome. These are the people who are running the internet.

“—and I said, maybe we should spend some time on this, because it could be the start of a whole new thing, like some sort of public service code-breaking thing—”

This is a girl who knows her audience.

“—and everybody thought that sounded like a great idea. We voted on it.”

Amazing. No more sneaking around. Thanks to Kat, we now have Google’s official backing. It’s surreal. I wonder when the code-breaking will commence.

“Well, I’m supposed to organize it.” She ticks through the tasks on her fingers: “I’ll round up some volunteers. Then we’ll get the systems configured, and make sure the text all looks okay—Jad can help with that. We need to talk to Mr. Penumbra, for sure. Maybe he can come to Mountain View? Anyway. I think we can be ready in, like … two weeks. Say, two weeks from today.” She nods sharply.

A fellowship of secret scholars spent five hundred years on this task. Now we’re penciling it in for a Friday morning.

THE ULTIMATE OK

PENUMBRA AGREES to keep the bookstore open until the bank account runs dry, so I go back to work, and I go back with a mission. I order a book distributor’s catalog. I run another Google ad campaign, a bigger one. I email the organizer of San Francisco’s big literary festival, which runs for a whole week and draws free-spending readers from as far away as Fresno. It’s a long shot, but I think we can do it. I think we can get some real customers. Maybe we don’t need the Festina Lente Company. Maybe we can turn this place into a real business.

Twenty-four hours after the start of the ad campaign, eleven lonely souls have wandered in, which is pretty exciting, because before, there was only one lonely soul—me. These new customers nod when I ask about the ads, and then four of them actually buy something. Three of those four pick up a copy of the new Murakami, which I’ve set up in a neat little stack next to a card that explains how awesome it is. The card is signed Mr. Penumbra in a simulation of his spidery script because I think that’s probably what people want to see.

Past midnight, I spot North Face from Booty’s out on the sidewalk, walking with her head down, headed for the bus stop. I run to the front door.

“Albert Einstein!” I shout, leaning out into the sidewalk.

“What?” she says. “My name is Daphne—”

“We’ve got the Einstein biography,” I say, “by Isaacson. The guy who did Steve Jobs. Still want it?”

She smiles and turns on her heels—which are very high—and that makes five books for the night, a new record.

*   *   *

There are new books coming in every day. When I arrive to start my shift, Oliver shows me the boxes in a pile, his eyes wide and slightly suspicious. He’s been a bit unsettled ever since I returned and told him everything I’d learned in New York.

“I thought there was something strange going on,” he said quietly, “but I always figured it was drugs.”

“Holy shit, Oliver! What?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “I thought maybe some of those books were full of cocaine.”

“And you never bothered to mention this?”

“It was just a theory.”

Oliver thinks I am being too liberal with our dwindling funds: “Don’t you think we should try to make the money last as long as we can?”

“Spoken like a true preservationist,” I cluck. “Money isn’t like terra-cotta. We can make more of it if we try. We have to try.”

So now we’ve got teenage wizards. We’ve got vampire police. We’ve got a journalist’s memoir, a designer’s manifesto, a celebrity chef’s graphic novel. In a nostalgic gesture—maybe a slightly defiant one, too—we’ve got the new edition of The Dragon-Song Chronicles, all three volumes. I also ordered the old audiobook edition for Neel. He doesn’t really read books anymore, but maybe he can listen while he lifts weights.

I try to get Penumbra excited about all of this—our nightly receipts are still just double digits, but that’s a whole digit more than we used to have—but he’s preoccupied with the Great Decoding. One cold Tuesday morning, he strolls into the store with a cup of coffee in one hand and his mystery e-reader in the other, and I show him what I’ve added to the shelves:

“Stephenson, Murakami, the latest Gibson, The Information, House of Leaves, fresh editions of Moffat”—I point them out as I go. Each one has a little shelf talker, and they’re all signed Mr. Penumbra. I was worried he might feel protective of his imprimatur, but he doesn’t even notice.