This was a habit if not a calling. His store did two and sometimes three signing events each week, and by the time an author arrived Bruce had read everything he or she had published. He read voraciously, and while he preferred novels by living authors, people he could meet, promote, befriend, and follow, he also devoured biographies, self-help, cookbooks, histories, anything and everything. It was the least he could do. He admired all writers, and if one took the time to visit his store, and have dinner and drinks and so on, then he was determined to be able to discuss his or her works.

He read deep into the night and often fell asleep with an open book in the bed. He read early in the morning, alone in the store with strong coffee, long before it opened if he wasn’t packing and unpacking. He read constantly throughout the day, and over time developed the curious routine of standing in the same spot by a front window, near the biographies, leaning casually on a full-sized wood sculpture of a Timucuan Indian chief, sipping espresso nonstop, with one eye on the page and the other on the front door. He greeted customers, found books for them, chatted with anyone who wanted to chat, occasionally helped at the coffee bar or front register when things were busy, but always eased back to his spot by the chief, where he picked up his book and resumed his reading. He claimed to average four books per week and no one doubted this. If a prospective clerk did not read at least two per week, there was no job offer.

At any rate, Noelle Bonnet’s visit was a great success, if not for the revenue it generated, then certainly for its lasting impact on Bruce and Bay Books. The attraction was mutual, immediate, and intense. After a quick, even abbreviated dinner, they retired to his apartment upstairs and enjoyed one hell of a romp. Claiming to be ill, she canceled the rest of her tour and stayed in town for a week. On the third day, Bruce walked her over to the Marchbanks House and proudly displayed his trophy. Noelle was overwhelmed. For a world-class designer/decorator/dealer, the presentation of eight thousand square feet of empty floors and walls behind the facade of such a grand Victorian was breathtaking. As they drifted from room to room, she began having visions of how each should be painted, wallpapered, and furnished.

Bruce offered a couple of modest suggestions, such as a big-screen TV here and pool table over there, but these were not well received. The artist was at work, suddenly painting on a canvas with no borders. Noelle spent the following day alone in the house, measuring and photographing and simply sitting in its vast emptiness. Bruce tended the store, thoroughly smitten with her but also having the first tremors of a pending financial nightmare.

She cajoled him into leaving the store over the weekend and they flew to New Orleans. She walked him through her stylish, though cluttered, store, where every table, lamp, four-poster bed, chest, chaise, trunk, rug, commode, and armoire not only had rich origins in some Provençal village but was destined for the perfect spot in the Marchbanks House. They roamed the French Quarter, dined in her favorite local bistros, hung out with her friends, spent plenty of time in bed, and after three days Bruce flew home alone, exhausted, but also, for the first time, admittedly in love. Damn the expense. Noelle Bonnet was a woman he could not live without.