Titles, Inc.

A Party at the Shop

Theoretically, book signing parties at the store are wonderful.  But actually, working up to that date is anguish.  Getting the publicity out, invitations.  And the worst, rearranging the store for the party. 

We have several tables.  They are showcases for books surrounded with book ends, chotchkas, little statuary, pretty books on pretty book racks, small books laid out attractively, flowers – real and otherwise. But all neat and tidy. 

We need three surfaces for a party.  First: my long table/desk which extends into the room, gets swung around and back to the wall with enough room for the designated bartender.  But we have to take everything off my desk to convert it into a bar, with the tablecloth and the wine accoutrements, glasses, and dessert tray.  Clean off my desk?  We fill bags, and I promise myself I will replace only the necessary detritus.  (Of course it all goes back.  There’s never time to make the decision – is this paper necessary or sentimental?  And why is sentimental of less value than “necessary”?)

Second, the table for the author and the books he will sign.  This is a smaller, round table at the back presently holding a favorite fashionable small figure, seated, elegantly holding her handbag, her pig head looking rather disdainful.  I seem to be the only one who finds her entertainingly charming.  Meaning, she still hasn’t sold.  She, along with the other art forms, small pictures, small books, kitsch, are swept into a carton.  The author’s new books, pen, receptacle for remittances will be set out.  This time the author is Goddard Graves, the book is Harmony Junction.   It has soft flexible covers with attractive graphics.  It is 8 ½ X 11, 688 pages, and weighs 5.04 lbs. Although fiction, it is about music, mostly classical music, composers, musicians, instruments, everything music.  And, Goddard says, philosophy.

The third table is lined with leather books in a long row, also handsome book ends embracing handsome books, a pair of phony but lovely small decorative plants enhancing some literature, small statuary here and there.  All now carefully removed into boxes.  The tablecloth is laid, and platters of food will cover the surface.

And this is what I was taught: Because the room is carpeted, use only white wine, colorless soft drinks.  Red wines and Cokes ruin the carpeting and there is always spillage.  Do not use any finger food.  No moist or greasy fingers touching the books.  Food should be cubed to be speared by toothpicks.  Meat, cheese, and fruit platters with nothing drippy.  Desserts and candy should be dry.  Plenty of napkins anyway.

Folding chairs and tiny tables brought up and arranged in seating areas.  My large leather chair and the leather chair for the visiting customer during business hours, now find other places in the room with small folding chairs for cozy groupings. 

The party room looks lovely.    

It does not reflect the huffing and puffing of us harried ladies pushing furniture around.  It doesn’t reflect the turmoil of hiding papers, and scissors, and personal photos, and receptacles holding  pens, pencils, clips, note paper, and other office paraphernalia, never mind books.

And it doesn’t reflect the fact that we have to reverse the whole procedure tomorrow. 

But the laughter, the gaiety, the hugs and kisses, the pleasure of the guest author successfully selling his book make it worthwhile.  I guess. Because we just finished this event and I have another scheduled a few months hence.  Chin up!

----Florence

Sleight Of Hand

He asked to see our magic books so Heidi climbed on our lightweight aluminum ladder to reach the top shelf.  If it had been a more frequent request the magic books would have been more accessible. 

He studied them and then put the four aside, tentatively keeping one in front of him.  No, he wasn’t a magician professionally, but he did occasional performances.  His interest was as a collector.  We chatted about magic – we both knew and respected, even loved, our Chicago celebrity magician, Jay Marshall, who was now deceased.  A loss, we both agreed.  He said when Jay had lost his eye to cancer, he incorporated his new glass eye into his showman patter. 

I said even when the trick behind the trick is revealed, I am thrilled to watch the dexterity.  OK, I know the coin was palmed, but even watching intently, I never see it happen.  I told him about a performance I found baffling.  As I remember it, someone called out a page in a book he was holding to magician David Meyer and David delivered the first line on the page, each time.  I insisted it was a miracle beyond a magic trick.  He smiled and riffled the pages of one of the books trying to locate it for me, but it was not in that book.  “Don’t tell me,” I begged, “I’d rather think of it as miraculous.”

He picked up the one book he wanted.  He said, “It’s priced too high.  You don’t have the dust jacket. With the DJ it would be the $50 you have on it.” 

“I could be wrong,” I said (not believing that possibility for a moment), “I’ll check it against all the others on the Internet.”  Not that many came up.  Yes, a few cheaper, but in shabby condition.   The Boy Magician was published in 1938 and saw a lot of handling by those boys who successively used it. My copy was Fine.  No wear, the printed color picture on the cover was bright. 

“See?” I showed him.  “Mine is the best copy, and look, here is the only one listed with a dust jacket and it’s a torn DJ.  $150!  I’m glad I looked it up again.  Mine is a great price at $50.  I will not change it.  I stick by my $50.”

He reluctantly put it down.  I said, “40.”  He said, “Sold.”  Whaah?  What?  What just happened?  Hypnosis?  I swear it was some kind of magic right there.  Was I possessed?  Did he throw his voice?  No, I recognized that Brooklyn accent that said 40.  He handed me his credit card, I staggered to the unit, ran his card – with tax, and bagged his book.  He thanked me kindly and walked out.

I have to look it up in the magic book he left behind.  How did he manipulate me without showing his hand? 

Boy, that’s a trick I’d love to use when I’m doing the shopping.

----Florence

Inheritance

The house was filled with art.  Art covering every inch of the walls, sculptures on every space on the floor, artifacts on shelves, from antiques to primitive to modern to outsider art.  Shelves and shelves of books mostly about art.  While I went through the books pulling out the ones I would like for the shop, I heard the interchange between the two sisters, and the repeated phone calls from the brother.

They were divvying up the treasures.  And unbelievably there was much they were going to dispose of through auction.  I would have clung to it all even if I had to stash it away in a warehouse like a miser.  It was hard to focus on the books with the distraction of the art.  One large wooden figure with its head curved back into a sharp point alarmed me since it was level with my back as I looked at the books.  I told the young lady I was afraid of being stabbed, so she obligingly moved it.

One phone call that I could not tune out was, “No.  No.  Absolutely not.  No way.  Forget about it.  It’s not gonna happen.”  She told me her brother wanted to barter an item he had selected for a piece she had chosen.  “He keeps doing that.  Everything I have suddenly looks better to him than what he picked.  I’m not swapping.  I’m keeping what I chose.”  I said, “It sounds like this might be disruptive to your family relationship.”  She said, “It already is.”

Since much of my book-buying is from homes of the deceased, I find this is not uncommon.  A lovely lady, the executor of the estate, told me that five of the siblings were compatible and helpful, but the sixth, a sister, following her lifelong pattern, was too busy to be on scene but tried to micromanage with her emails and phone calls.  This recalcitrant sister was also laying claim to everything she could remember in the house.  My friendly executor said she was reading an informative article about settling an estate, and it started with, “There will be one family member you want to kill, but don’t do it.”  She  thought, “Oh darn!”

I was discussing these problems with a friend who told me about two people she knew who were settling an estate.  One divides all the inheritance into two parts.  The other gets first choice.  I asked, “How is that fair?  If the other one gets first pick?” 

“It assures that the person dividing the property will carefully evaluate it so that the half he is left with will be as desirable as the half he will lose.”

Mighty clever, I thought, and related it as an anecdote later to someone else.  He said, “And if you are dividing among three people, there is another way to do it.  You have a drawing, 1,2,3.  The person who draws 1 chooses first, and so on.”  I considered it. “But the one who drew 1 always has the advantage.  That’s not fair.”  My friend said, “They could draw lots each time.”  I said, “Someone else had suggested everything should be appraised so that they come out with the same monetary value.”

The friend said, “Monetary value sometimes is not as important as sentimental value.”  He laughed, “I remember fighting with my brother over who gets a box.”  “A box of what?” I asked.  “It was where all the Christmas ornaments were stored.”  “So why couldn’t you just divide the Christmas ornaments?”  “Oh,” he said, “the Christmas ornaments were long gone.  My mother had given them away.  It was the empty box we were fighting over.”  Seeing my bewildered look, “Sentiment,” he explained.

Just today, a friendly customer told me that she had visited an antique store and was dismayed to see a fine embroidered piece for sale that she, herself, had long ago stitched.  The manager checked and told her whom he had bought it from.  She recognized the name as a customer at the house sale of her deceased sister.  The house sale people had put forbiddingly high prices on the best pieces and when the items didn’t sell, they called in a dealer who carted everything away at a distressed price, a payback scam.

She told me that, beginning with the death of her beloved sister, there had been such mis-handling of the estate by the other survivors, that it caused a painful rift between her and her remaining sister and extended family.  Again, even with a will, the settlement had been a disaster.  Rampant raging greed.

A lawyer once said it, “You can’t rule from the grave.”  You leave a will carefully assigning your estate impartially, lovingly, and while you are peacefully up in Heaven, all Hell breaks loose below.

Good gracious, all this melancholy because I bought books out of a marvelous art-laden house.

----Florence

Crazy For Birds

One of Art’s collectors invited us to dinner at his house.  As we drove up the street I was peering at house numbers, some seemingly non-existent.  We drove slowly until we found the hidden number on a pretty blue and white frame house.  I grumbled, “Why didn’t they just say it is the blue and white house.” 

My crankiness dissipated as soon as I met the delightful family.  The house was a little art gallery.  The walls were covered with gorgeous bird prints.  Interspersed were Art Shay gritty Chicago street scene photographs.  Sounds incongruous but it worked.    Our host knew birds.  He had pictures and books and sculptures.  I admired his collection, and he said, “I have one more.”  He rolled up his tee shirt sleeve to reveal the tattoo on his arm -  a bird.  Unexpected, but logical.   

We sat down to a meal I can’t describe.  The food had familiar names but the taste was certainly not familiar.  It was dee-licious.  Our host was the cook, one of the two young daughters scurrying in and out of the kitchen with the surprise courses.  Even the mid-meal grapefruit sorbet was homemade.  Mom had made the grand finale, the apple rhubarb pie. 

We talked about birds, about food, about our hostess being Swedish, with a simple name that you have to be Swedish to pronounce correctly.  (My Swedish sister-in-law pronounces her name Beargeeetttah, but my closest pronunciation doesn’t quite match - so sorry, Bageeda.)   The husband, of Irish heritage, talked about his father who had been a champion welterweight boxer.  I noted that his own biceps were bulging, although he didn’t box.

We were chatting about the elder daughter’s activities in high school.  She was involved in several organizations.  I didn’t recognize one that had a J in its initials.  “What’s that?” I asked.  She spelled it out as a Jewish group.  “How come?”  I asked, puzzled.  She said, “My great grandma was Jewish.”  “That makes you 1/8 Jewish, you would have been in the camps,” I inappropriately murmured.  She said, “Yes, I know.”

I turned to her father, “How come you had a Jewish grandma?  That generation didn’t intermarry, they hardly met each other.”  He said, “They were Communists.”  “Ah,” I said, “That’ll do it.”  “We were Irish Catholics through the successive generations,” he said. 

We talked about jobs.  He was in finance and liked his work and workplace, except for one character who, he said, drives him crazy.  He said, “I’d like to pick him up by his heels and shake him.”

I was alarmed by his passion.  “Don’t do that,” I warned.  “Frighten him by coming to work one day in a tank top showing off your boxer’s biceps.  Flaunt your tattoo.  That should scare him.”  He pulled up his short sleeve and we all looked at the pretty bird. 

We laughed and laughed.

----Florence