“I was hoping for jewels, or furs,” said Sara. “But I guess a book will do. I’m joking,” she added to Timothy. “I love books.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” said Timothy. He made a decision. “This may not be the Great Library of Alexandria but to me it is the finest repository of books in all the world.”

“Isn’t that wonderful?” said Sara, clearly possessed of a bullshit detector of her own.

Timothy decided to ignore the cow.

“Did you have a particular book in mind, sir?” he asked mock-genteelly.

“Yes,” said Todd.

“Here we go,” Sara said. “The books men buy for women. Fear of Flying. The Joy of Sex. Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”

“All classics of their kind,” said Timothy, who would have gone under in 1972 without Jonathan Livingston Seagull. “May I enquire as to your own tastes?”

Sara was too wise to fall for this. “Oh, I have no tastes,” she said. “Or taste. Right, Todd?”

She laughed, but Todd wasn’t laughing back. Instead he was standing beside her, an old hardback in his hand.

“Where the heck did that come from?” said Timothy.

“I found it on the cart,” said Todd.

“Old stock,” said Timothy. “All that stuff is destined for the dumper.”

“Not the goodwill?” said Sara. “Not the old folks’ home or the prison library?”

Timothy, who was actually going to sell his old stock as a job lot at auction next month, suspected he might actually hate Sara.

“Good idea, miss,” he said in his kindly old fucker voice. “I might just do that.”

“Well, if you’re giving your old stock away,” said Sara, with just a hint of a smile in her voice, “you should let Todd have this one for nothing.”

Timothy almost swallowed his own tongue in anger.

“Another good idea!” he cried, feeling bile mingle with saliva in his mouth. “And Mr. Milstead’s been such a good customer over the years that I’m sure the gods of literature won’t begrudge him one small—”

“Thank you,” said Sara, cutting Timothy off mid-flow.

“Thanks, Timothy,” Todd said, sounding as though he meant it, too. He handed the book to Sara. “It’s old, I know, and it’s been around the block, and—let me finish, please—and I’m sure you’ve read it, be a bit weird if you hadn’t, but this is the book that made me want to be…”

He stopped. “—well, it’s an important book. To me, anyway.”

Sara looked at the book.

“The Catcher in the Rye,” she said. “Wow, I haven’t read this since high school. Thank you, Todd.”

She kissed him. Then she opened the book.

“It’s a first edition,” she said to Timothy. “Lucky Todd saved it from the dumper.”

“I couldn’t possibly give it to you, I’m afraid,” Timothy began.

Sara’s face fell.