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Silence.
"Hm?" I said. "Oh. Yes. Thank you. . . ."
In motion pictures, when we've called somebody and they
hang up, we hear this long buzzy dial-tone on the line. But in real life, when the other person hangs up, the telephone just goes quiet in our hand. Awfully quiet. For as long as we stand there and hold it.
four
. FTER A while, I put the telephone back into its holder, picked up my bedroll and started walking.
Has it ever hap
pened, you've seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they've done, what they've given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you're happy to be a tiny part of a system that is rewarding those people with every ticket . . . the actors I see on the screen, they'll get twenty cents of this very dollar I'm paying now; they'll be able to buy an ice-cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone!
Glorious moments in art, in books and films and dance, they're delicious because we see ourselves in glory's mirror.
Book-buying, ticket-buying are ways to applaud, to say thanks for nice work. We're joyed when a film, when a book we love hits the best-seller list.
But a million dollars for me? Suddenly I knew what it was to be on the other end of the gift so many writers had given me, reading their books since the day I sounded out for myself: "Bam-bi. By Fe-lix Salt-en."
I felt like a surfer resting on his board, all at once some monster energy wells up, grabs him without asking if he's ready and there's spray flying from the nose of the board, from midships, then from way aft, he's caught on this massive deep power, the wind pulling a smile around his mouth.
There are excitements indeed, having one's book read by many people. One can forget, charging mile-a-minute down the face of a giant wave, that if one isn't terribly skillful, the next surprise is sometimes called a wipeout.
five
M. CROSSED the street, got directions from the drugstore to a place where I might find what I needed; followed can't-miss-its and Lake Roberts Road under Spanish-moss branches to the Gladys Hutchinson Memorial Library.
Anything we need to know, we can learn it from a book. Reading, careful study, a little practice, and we're throwing knives expertly, overhauling engines, speaking Esperanto like natives.
Touch all the books of Nevil Shute, they're encoded holograms of a decent man: Trustee from the Toolroom, The Rainbow and the Rose. The writer printed the person he is on every page of his books, and we can read him into our own lives, if we want, in the privacy of libraries.
The cool hush of the big room, books for walls, I could feel it trembling for the chance to teach me. I couldn't wait,
now, to plunge into a copy of So You've Got A Million Dollars!
Strangely enough, the title wasn't listed. I looked in the card catalog under So, under Million. Nothing. In case it was What To Do When You Suddenly Become Rich, I checked What, Rich and Sudden,
I tried a different reference. Your problem isn't that the volume you want is not in this library, said Books in Print, it's that it hasn't been printed.
Not possible, I thought. If I've fallen rich, so have a lot of other people, and one of them must have written the book. Not stocks and bonds and banks, those weren't what I needed to know, but what this is supposed to feel like, what opportunities beckoned, what little disasters growled near my ankles, what big ones like vultures might be diving for me this moment. Somebody show me what to do, please.
No answer from the card catalog.
"Excuse me, ma'am ..." I said.
"Sir?"
I smiled, asking her help. Not since fourth grade had I seen a date-stamper clamped to a wooden pencil, and here's one hi her hand this minute, today's date.
"I need a book on how to be a rich person. Not how to earn money. Something on what a person is supposed to do when they get a lot of money. Can you suggest. . . ?"
Clearly she was used to strange requests. Perhaps the request wasn't strange . . . citrus kings, land baronesses, all-at-once millionaires abound in Florida.
High cheekbones, hazel eyes, hair to her shoulders in waves the color of dark chocolate. Businesslike, reserved with those she hasn't known for long.
She looked at me as I asked, then up and to her left, the
