I slept in an illegal loft space above the bookstore. It was the only way my little business could stay in the black. Selling used books doesn’t have a very high profit margin, except for the reading pleasure. Some days the only customers brought in books to sell or barter. Other days I was the only patron, reading Don Quixote, Their Eyes Were Watching God, or some other great novel from sunup to sundown.

Mostly I sold westerns and mysteries and romances. But I rarely read those books. The women’s genre wasn’t written for a man’s sensibilities and popular men’s books were too violent.

“Let me in there, Paris,” a voice I knew better than any other called out.

“Fearless?”

“Yeah, man. Let me in.”

I hesitated a moment and a moment more.

“Paris.”

I opened the door and Fearless Jones strode in, wearing a green suit with a white shirt, no tie, no hat, and dark shoes. The tip of the baby finger on his left hand was missing, shot off in a gunfight that almost got us both killed, and he had the slightest limp from a knife wound he’d received saving my life in San Francisco many years before.

Fearless was tall and dark, thin and handsome, but mostly he was powerful. He was stronger than any man I’d ever known, and his will was indomitable. Fearless wasn’t a smart man. A twelve-year-old might have been a better reader, but if he ever looked into your eyes he would know more about your character than any psychiatrist, detective, or priest.

“I’m in trouble, Paris,” we said together.

Fearless grinned but I didn’t.

“I got to go to the toilet,” I said.

I walked back through one of the two aisles of bookshelves that made up my store. Fearless followed me into the toilet, unashamed and still talking while I relieved myself in the commode.