George treasured a copy of My Bondage and My Freedom inscribed by Frederick Douglass to the woman who bought his freedom, but he sold the volume to a small bright-eyed Stanford professor. He might have considered donating some of his acquisitions to deserving libraries, but he preferred playing the open market, and spurned research institutions. More than once at auctions, he broke librarians’ hearts, only to flip his purchases to other private dealers.

Perhaps George was too attuned to profit. Or perhaps he was just fickle, and could not give himself fully to possessing lovely things. Presumably if he had gone into therapy he’d have learned the answer to these and other questions. Old girlfriends seemed to find the notion irresistible, but he was the independent, rumpled sort, and refused ironing out. Some found his refusal irresistible as well.

Yorick’s was not always the kind of adventure George wanted. Good help proved elusive. Graduate students, budding novelists, future screenwriters, manic-depressive book thieves—he’d seen them all. With a kind of gallows humor he had printed up a questionnaire that he distributed to those seeking employment. When Jess had turned up, inquiring about a part-time job, he showed her the dark crammed store, the thicket of history, philosophy, and literary criticism in the center, fiction all along the walls and trailing into the back room where random stacks cluttered the floor. Then he returned to his desk and handed her his printed list of questions.

“Could I borrow a pen?” Jess asked, after digging in her backpack and turning up a handful of change and a warped chocolate bar. She was young. She had the clear-eyed beauty of a girl who still believed that, as they used to say, she could be anything she wanted to be. Of course she would not consider herself a girl. The word was offensive, but she had a girl’s body, delicate shoulders, and fine arms, and like a girl, she had no idea how fresh she looked.