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place we look when we're remembering old knowledge. Up and to the right (I learned it from a book) is where we look when we are searching for new.
"I can't recall . . ." she said. "How about biographies of rich people? We have a lot of Kennedy books, a Rockefeller book, I know. The Rich and the Super Rich, we have."
"Not exactly it, I don't think. Something like How to Cope with Sudden Wealth?"
She shook her head solemnly, thoughtfully. Are all thoughtful people beautiful?
She touched an intercom on the desk and spoke softly into it.
"SaraJean? How to Cope with Sudden Wealth. Do we have a copy of that?"
"Never heard of it. There's How I Made Millions in Real Estate, we've got three copies. . . ."
I wasn't getting through. "I'll sit over here for a while and think about it. Hard to believe. There's got to be this book somewhere."
She looked at my bedroll, which at that moment happened to be in some rather spotty, dirty light, then again at me. "If you don't mind," she said quietly, "could you leave your laundry-bag on the floor? There's new upholstery everywhere . . ."
"Yes, ma'am."
Surely, I thought, in these shelves of books there must be one written about what I'm supposed to do now. The only immediate advice I could think of without a book was that fools and their money are soon parted.
When it comes to slipping a Fleet biplane down to land in a little bit of a hayfield, I was second to few; but at that moment in the Gladys Hutchinson Library I thought that
when it comes to herding a fortune I might be second to none at all, I might be an unmatched disaster. Paperwork has always caught and torn in my mind, and I doubted that would suddenly go smooth with money.
Good, I thought. I know myself, and I know for sure- my weaknesses won't change and neither will my strengths. A minor thing like a bank account cannot possibly transform me from the casual, easygoing flyer I've always liked to be.
After ten minutes submerged again in the card catalog, driven at the last to Luck-Good and even Luck-Bad, I gave up. Not believable! There was no such book as the one I needed!
Lost in doubt, I walked outside into the sun, felt photons and beta-particles and cosmic rays bounce and ricochet at lightspeed, silently zing and whiz through the morning and through me.
I was nearly back to the cafe part of town when I realized my bedroll was gone. With a sigh, I turned and walked all the way back to the library, ever warmer in the sun, and went to retrieve the thing at the foot of the card catalog.
"Sorry," I said to the librarian.
"I was hoping you hadn't forgotten," she said, and she said it with such relief that she wouldn't have to store this guy's laundry-bag in Lost and Found that I knew that she was telling me true.
"Sorry," I said again.
With all the books we have, so many still waiting to be written! Like fresh deep plums way up in the treetops. Not much fun to climb up some teetery ladder, snake through the branches going way out on limbs to pick 'em, but how delicious they are when the work is over.
What about the television, is that delicious? Or would doing publicity for the book aggravate my crowdophobia? How do I escape when I don't have a biplane waiting to lift me over the trees and away?
I headed toward the airport, the one place in every strange town where an airplane pilot feels at home. I found it by watching the landing pattern, the invisible tracks that small aircraft leave on the way to and from the ground. I was practically under the base-leg-to-final-approach turn, so the airport wasn't much of a walk.
Money is one thing, but crowds, and getting recognized when you want to be quiet and alone, that's something else entirely. Isn't that celebrity, isn't that fame? A little bit might be fun, but what if you can't turn it off? What if you do these television things and everywhere you go, somebody says, "I know you! Don't tell me . . . you're the guy who wrote that book!"
People drove by, people walked by in the near-noon daylight, not looking. I was barely this side of invisible. They didn't know me beyond I was somebody walking toward the airport carrying a neatly tied bedroll, somebody with the freedom to do that without stares.
When someone decides to go famous, they give up such privilege. But a writer doesn't have to do that. Writers can have their books read by a lot of people, they can have their names be known, yet stay unrecognized everywhere. Actors can't. Newscasters can't. Writers can.
If ever I became a Personality, would I be sorry? I knew instantly: Yes. Some other lifetime, perhaps, I had tried being famous. It is not exciting, it is not attractive, that life warned; go on television and you will regret it.
There was the beacon. The green-glass-white-glass spot-
light that turns round by night to mark the airport. Perking down final approach flew an Aeronca Champion, & 1946 two-seat paint-and-fabric trainer with a tailwheel at the back instead of a nosewheel in front. I liked the airport without having seen it yet, just from the Champ in the pattern.
What would getting to be slightly famous do to the search for my love? The first answer shot by so fast I never saw the blur: Kill it. You'll never know whether she loves you or your money. Richard. Listen. If you want to find her, do not, ever, become a celebrity, of any kind.
