“Can anyone else hear that?” Todd asked.

There was a shaking of heads.

“Right,” said Todd. “Sorry, I must be tired from the drive. Okay, here we go. I’m gonna read from Chapter Four, where—”

Now the noise was so loud Todd almost yelped. He tried to calm down. It’s just in your head, he thought. Ignore it and it’ll go away. He looked around the room.

“Nobody else can hear it?” he said. This was a mistake. Now the crowd was confused and unhappy. Having just fallen for the author of All My Colors, they very much did not want to learn that he was crazy.

“I’m sorry,” said Todd. “I get these bouts, these bouts of tinnitus.”

Relief in the room. Something they’d heard of, physical and containable. The guy wasn’t nuts after all.

Todd smiled, put both hands back on the sides of the lectern. Miraculously, the noise stopped, as though someone had twisted a key in the ignition. He paused to make sure it was gone, then said, “Nerves. That’s what brings it on.”

“You got nothing to be nervous about!” shouted a friendly voice.

“Oh come on!” Todd laughed. “In this room? Surrounded by all these books?”

He waved an arm expansively around the room. It did actually seem to Todd that the shelves were forming a kind of ring around him, their spines pushed out like rectangular shields to hem him in.

“All these names!” he cried, improvising wildly. “Jane Austen and Iris Murdoch and—”

Lost for names, Todd looked at the nearest shelf for inspiration. Staff Favorites, it said.

“Margaret Atwood! Ursula LeGuin!” he shouted. “Are there any guys on this shelf?”

More laughter as Todd walked over to the shelf and made a show of peering at it intensely.

“James Joyce! There we go! Anthony Burgess! Jake Turner!”

As the audience gave out its warm laughter again, Todd did a mental double take. Jake Turner? I know that name. He looked more closely at the books.

Ulysses.

A Clockwork Orange.

All My Colors.

Todd froze. He pulled the book out.

Rainbow cover. Hardback. All My Colors. By Jake Turner.

Todd opened the book. First published The Whitney Press 1966. The rights of Jake Turner to be identified as the author of this book are established.

“Are you all right, Todd?” Leah was at his side.

Todd slammed the book back into its place so hard that Ulysses almost rattled.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I just got carried away in a sea of literature!” he told the audience. “Please excuse me.”

He returned to the lectern.

“Chapter Four,” he said, and began to read.