“The sense of profound estrangement from the material world,” Giles said, nodding. “In the Middle Ages, people who experienced it would give away all they had to join a convent.”
“Or, in the nineteen-sixties, a commune,” Michael added. “Having a yard sale’s the twenty-first-century equivalent. Much less extreme.”
“But much less satisfactory,” I said. “At least when the police interrupt it less than halfway through, before even a fraction of what we need to get rid of has been sold.”
“If only I’d stayed home,” Giles muttered.
“And miss all those bargains?” Michael exclaimed.
Giles laughed ruefully, and I looked at Michael with a frown. I wasn’t sure he was kidding. I’d heard of sane people who developed gambling fever after a trip to Vegas. What if Michael developed an unhealthy obsession with yard sales as a result of ours? I had a sudden vision of him coming home weekend after weekend, covered with dust and smelling of book mold, bearing random objects that had caught his wandering eye. Faded plaster garden ornaments. Ramshackle bits of furniture that he would announce needed only a bit of work to make them good as new. Quaint vintage grocery tins and bottles, still reeking pungently of their original contents.
No. I was thinking of Dad. Not Michael.
Though I’d long since deduced that one thing I loved about Michael was that he shared some of Dad’s more charming enthusiasms and eccentricities, without going overboard on them.
Yet. Was he going to age into Dad-hood? I suddenly felt a rare surge of sympathy for Mother.
I shook myself and returned to the conversation. Or the lack of conversation. Giles and Michael were both staring into their sherry.
“Poor blighter,” Giles muttered.
He sounded rather melancholy. Perhaps even sad. How ironic that the only person who seemed the least bit sad over Gordon’s murder was the one Chief Burke had arrested for it.
But then, underneath Giles’s irritation with Gordon, I sensed that they shared a deep love of books. That was one of the reasons I’d kept trying to work with Gordon when I was selling the valuable books to dealers. Every so often something—maybe just the way he’d touch an old, rare volume—would remind me that the man really did love books.
Of course, the next second he’d do something that proved his love of books took second place to his lust for money, so I’d eventually given up trying.
For that matter, the love of books was one of the reasons I kept trying to get to know Giles better—that and the fact that Michael liked him. So, despite my impatience, I followed their example, and sipped my sherry in silence for a few moments.
Giles was looking around his study, as if memorizing it.
“I shall miss all this,” he said, finally.
“What do you mean, miss all this?” Michael asked.
“They won’t want me around,” Giles said, taking a rather large sip of sherry—more like a gulp. “You know how they are about any kind of notoriety.”
“Tell me about it,” Michael said, gulping his sherry as well. Michael’s brand of notoriety was to appear on national television every week, wearing tight black leather pants and a black velvet robe in his role as Mephisto, the lecherous sorcerer on a cheesy television show. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it paid a lot better than being an assistant professor. I suspected the administration might almost prefer a nice respectable murderer.
At least now I could feel reasonably sure that worry over tenure, not anything I’d done, was causing Michael’s down mood.
“But Giles, you’re tenured,” I said aloud.
“They’ll find a way,” Giles said, staring into his sherry. “Put me on administrative leave. Assign me all the eight A.M. freshman survey classes. Force me into retirement.”
“No, they won’t,” Michael said, reaching over and clapping Giles on the shoulder. “We’ll find some way to prevent it.”
“Chief Burke’s the one who could prevent it,” I said. “If he’d just hurry up and find the real killer, instead of wasting time on Giles.”
“So we’ll find the killer instead,” Michael said.
“How?” Giles asked.
“I’m sure Meg will think of something,” he said.
From we to me, I thought. I was tempted to say something sarcastic, but Giles reached over and grasped my hand.
“Thank you,” he said. “If you knew how much … I mean, I can’t possibly explain … I mean.”
“Please, you don’t have to thank me,” I said. And I wished he’d stop trying. Much as I’d wanted to break through his dry exterior, I found I didn’t enjoy seeing normally taciturn Giles struggling with the unfamiliar task of expressing an emotion. What should have been moving only felt horribly embarrassing for both of us.