Текст книги "Nameless"

Автор книги: Sam Starbuck

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I felt differently the next day, when the heavens opened at around seven in the morning and the rain came pelting down. I didn't mind a little wet, personally, but it was true that I liked my wet to stay firmly outside and away from my books. If I were a young man with a leaking roof, I would be frustrated not to have the proper tools.

So, I dug my umbrella out of the closet and hung up the closed sign on the door. I followed the main street south and then turned onto one of the residential roads, ambling along until I'd left the houses well behind. Halfway across the wide field that led from town to The Pines, the asphalt ended abruptly where Low Ferry's municipal authority did, and turned instead into a dirt road carved up with tire tracks. The cottage was just barely visible as a blot on the side of the hill.

The fields had long grass to catch some of the water; it might get my pants wet but it would mean avoiding the oil-slick mud on the road. I set out at an angle to the dirt track, heading directly for the hill and the small building clinging to the side of it.

I was almost at the incline when I realized there was a figure on the roof: Lucas, in a pair of thick-soled boots and several layers of clothing, kneeling on the shingles. He had a rope tied around his chest, the other end hitched to the chimney to keep him from breaking his neck if he slipped.

"Hi-ya!" I called, when I thought I might be close enough to be heard above the steady patter of the rain. He looked up and over his shoulder, curiously.

"Hi," he called back. "Are you lost?"

"Not at all! I've brought you some tools," I replied. The words were just barely out of my mouth when I decided it sounded kind of absurd, but Lucas didn't seem amused so much as grateful.

"Thank god," he answered, and untied the rope from around his chest. He walked carefully to one edge of the roof and, before I had time to be surprised, he dropped over the eave and was hanging with one hand on the guttering, measuring the distance down with a glance. The roof was only about fifteen feet off the ground to start with, and he fell into the soft soil below with hardly a grunt. It wasn't graceful, but he did land on his feet.

I held up the bucket by the handle. He let out a short, sharp bark of laughter, startling me.

"That's not what I expected," he said, and then blushed. "I mean, thank you. Would you – uh, come inside? Out of the rain?"

He gestured to the back of the house and I followed him, through a weather-battered door and into a bright yellow kitchen. We stamped the mud off our boots on the mat just inside and Lucas removed an enormous ragged coat, revealing a corduroy shirt buttoned up over a turtleneck underneath, the collar and wrists dark where they'd gotten wet. He threw the coat on a chair next to the little breakfast table and invited me with another spare gesture to set my umbrella out to dry.

The kitchen didn't look exactly lived-in. There was nothing on the walls but a few pans hanging on hooks, and no visible food on the counters. The only personal touch was a small planter box filled with green sprouts. They didn't look like they'd survive another week, let alone the winter. The door to what I assumed was the living room was closed tightly.

Lucas went to a high shelf at the back of the kitchen and took down two mugs, back turned to me as he spoke.

"I telephoned the shop to ask what I was missing," he said. "I was told someone would bring out what I needed. They didn't say you would do it."

"I volunteered. I wanted to see what you'd done here," I answered.

"Not much," he said, taking a pan off a hook and setting it on the stove. "I have cocoa or coffee."

"Cocoa?"

"Yeah. I...like cocoa?" he ventured.

"That's fine then."

He nodded and took a bottle of milk from the fridge, pouring it into the pan. "Sit down if you want."

I pulled out a chair and sat, stretching my legs towards a heating vent while he lit the gas on the stove.

"Live alone out here?" I asked.

"Yep," he answered shortly. He took a makeshift hammer out of his belt, a wooden mallet wrapped in leather, and set it on the counter, replacing it with the hammer from the bucket I'd brought. Next he studied the caulk-gun for a while, then picked up the tube of caulk and fitted it in with a single, efficient gesture and a soft snap.

"Not your first time fixing a roof?" I asked.

"Oh, yes it is," he answered. "It's not something I've run into a lot, in my life."

He disappeared into the living room and returned with a wide piece of thick cloth, wrapping it around the aluminum snips before shoving them in his pocket.

Is this the first time you've lived alone?" I asked. He stopped and looked directly at me.

It wasn't that he seemed particularly malicious. There was a touch of innocent surprise in his stare. At the same time, however, it was almost as if he were trying to look past me – searching for another version of me, another kind of Christopher who had asked a different question altogether and had gotten a much more satisfactory answer than I was likely to get.

"This is the first place that's been mine," he said finally. He jerked the pan's handle lightly and the milk hissed as it slapped against the hot dry sides. He turned off the heat and added spoonfuls of dark powder to the mugs before pouring precisely half the milk into each. He passed me one and leaned on the counter nearby, hip hitched just over the edge, blue light through the window picking out shine in his wet hair.

"The leaks don't seem to be serious," I said, to make conversation. "Did you need to be up there fixing it in the rain?"

"They aren't so bad," he allowed. "They'll rot the ceiling, though, and they come through here and there." He opened a cupboard by way of example. Water was dripping from the top of it down into a bowl on the highest shelf.

"Rain can't last that long, though," I answered. "You could have waited until it was clear, couldn't you?"

"It's better to do it this way. At least then I know if I've actually stopped the leak or not," he answered.

"And have you?"

"Stopped the leaks? Two so far. Some need sealing from the inside."

"You didn't climb up to the roof to begin with, then."

"There's a trap-door into the attic, and a gable-window on the far side lets out onto the shingles. I would have come to get the tools, you didn't need to bring them all this way," he continued. He seemed more confident, in his own kitchen and on relatively solid factual ground. "That could have waited until the rain was over."

"I like the rain," I said.

"Who's minding your shop?"

"Nobody. I closed it before I came."

"Will you lose business?"

"I doubt it. It's the middle of the day, and it's raining. There's hours until school lets out."

"The children like you," he said.

"They like my comic books."

"I need to give you money," he said, taking a sudden conversational swerve. "For the woman at the hardware store."

"She'll put it on account for you. I mean, she does know where you live," I said, "Or she'll...hold your change," I continued, even as he was pressing a few battered bills into my hand.

"I like to pay promptly," he said.

"Then Paula will like you," I answered, tucking the cash into a pocket. "Do you want some help with the roof?"

"No, there isn't much more to be done," he said. "You're welcome to stay if you want, until the rain stops. It'll only be muddier going back. But you have your shop," he added, more to himself than to me. "You'll want to get back to your shop."

"I'm used to the mud," I said. "I don't mind it. Sure you don't want help?"

"No, thank you," he said, and set his empty mug in the sink. "I'll walk you down to the field."

He left me at the base of the hill, in rain that was softening from vicious to merely steady. It isn't wise to ignore where one is going, walking across a muddy field, but I turned around every so often to see if he had gone back to his repairs yet. By the time he returned to his patching, I was halfway home and his coat was a dark speck on a distant roof.

When I arrived back at the shop I changed out of my muddy clothes, padding around the ground floor in clean socks and ancient blue-jeans while I waited for the mud on my boots to dry. The boy who was so curious about Lucas was there again with his friends, but he had wandered away from the table where they were doing their homework (or at least where they were folding their homework into paper airplanes to throw at each other). He ducked one particularly well-aimed shot and leaned his elbows on my counter, hoisting himself up a little and then dropping down again.

"Have you gone to see Lucas today?" he asked.

I set down my sorting and looked across at him. "Yes, I have – how did you know?"

"I saw your boots," he replied. "Has he patched his roof yet?"

"You're quite the Sherlock Holmes," I said.

"That's the sort of thing people tell me when they think they shouldn't have to answer me because I shouldn't know enough to ask," he said solemnly.

"I'm sorry," I said, a little taken aback. "He was patching it when I left. He'll do better now that he has a real hammer."

"That's good. Are you going to buy firewood for winter?"

"Probably," I said. "Why?"

"Dad's got some split and seasoned cords for sale. Give you a half-cord for credit."

I raised an eyebrow. "What's your dad say about that?"

"He wants to shift it. He says I can sell to you for credit and it'll make me read more."

"Do you think it will?"

The boy grinned. "More comic books, anyway."

I laughed. "Done deal."

He offered a hand and I shook it.

"Do you think Lucas needs some?" he asked.

"I'd think so. He might not know he does, though. You're a salesman, sell him some."

"Okay, I will," he said, and went back to his friends, ordering them imperiously to be quiet.

Chapter TWO

I was pleased with the progress I was making on Jacob's bookbinding commission, as slow as it was. I could've worked on it during the day, but I also had a shop to run and shelves to stock. Even when nobody was buying there was always someone stopping by to say hello.

"Halloooo, Christopher!" Charles called, banging the glass door behind him as he entered. I put my head through the doorway from the storeroom.

"Just a minute, Charles," I replied. "Make yourself at home!"

"I already have," he said, and I heard him shuffling through the papers on my counter. "Had breakfast yet?"

"Ron ran toast and bacon over from the cafe this morning, and I had some of the eggs Jacob brought me a few days ago," I replied, tossing the last of the shipping boxes in a corner and studying the troubling books on the storage shelf, hands on my hips. "Was that an invitation?"

"Well, I can talk here just as well as I can there," he replied, as I emerged. "You look annoyed."

"My seller mixed up an order," I said.

"What happened?"

"Sure you want to know?" I asked. "I have twenty anthologies of erotica when I should have thirty-five assorted True Crime."

He grinned. "Six of one, half dozen of the other."

"I hate to think what your wife would say to that."

"It's all voyeurism, is what I mean," he explained.

"I'm shocked a church elder even knows that word."

"Oh, you kids think you invented sex and atheism!"

"Not concurrently."

Charles is a large man with a barrel chest, and when he laughs he scares flocks of birds miles away.

"I assume sex and atheism aren't what you came here to talk about," I continued, when the sonic boom had died away.

"Just thought I'd drop in. Keeps me out of trouble and the missus doesn't get suspicious."

"Ah! I'm an alibi."

"Well, no. But I was over at the hardware store buying saddle soap and some liniment – "

I held up a hand. "I want you to stop and think about what you just said."

"What? I was at the hardware store."

"Saddle soap and liniment. You're such a farmer."

"Oh, big city boy! Do you want to hear my story or not?"

"I want to hear your story, Charles," I said, in my best humble voice.

"That's better. So I was at the hardware store and I heard from Paula that you'd said Sandra and Michael – at the bank?"

"Yes, I know who Sandra and Michael are."

"Well, you'd said they were an item and I wanted to know your sources."

"Is this going to be a lecture about telling tales out of school?" I asked.

"No, but Sandra's parents'll hear about it, and I thought I'd set you right, because Cassie is talking about them. But everyone else says that Nolan's sister says she never said she saw anyone kissing on the loading dock."

"Oh, I heard it was the safety-deposit vault."

"See? My point is, Nolan's sister doesn't like the way Sandra's treating him, so she might not have told the whole truth."

"Sandra and Nolan?" I asked, surprised.

"That's only what I hear."

"But I always thought he was..." I hesitated.

"Was what?"

"Well, you know. Closeted."

"Come again now?"

"I'm sure we young whippersnappers didn't invent homosexuality, Charles."

"Oh! Nolan, do you think?"

"It's only a personal opinion," I said hurriedly.

"He was in the Navy..." Charles looked thoughtful.

"Now that kind of thinking is why people say we're backwards out in the country," I said, shaking a finger at him.

He shrugged. "Anyway, Michael's not going to boast but he's probably not going to deny it if someone asks him, even if it isn't true. I'd be careful who I tell."

"I'm going to need a chart for this soon," I remarked.

"Well, make sure you take a poll on Nolan."

"Charles! I'm not going to poll Low Ferry about Nolan's sex life. You sure Nolan's sister isn't just embarrassed she told Cassie and Cassie told the whole world?"

"It's possible. You'll keep your ear to the ground, won't you?" he asked.

"Of course. I promise you'll be the first one I tell if I find out Cassie's lying."

"Then I'll check in when you know more," he said, putting his hat back on. "See you on Sunday?"

"See me sleeping in on Sunday."

"Heathen."

"Evangelist. Have a nice day!" I called after him as he left. I returned to the back room, and to my dilemma.

I was sure that plenty of people in Low Ferry would be interested in dirty books, but none of them would admit to it and certainly none of them would ever come to Dusk Books asking for it. There were three or four people in town I could mention them to, on the sly, but that kind of activity could give all kinds of wrong ideas. Besides, some bookstore out there, probably in Chicago, was looking for them.

I could call the supplier, but that would be an endless parade of "please hold" and "press four for more options". I could package them up and ship them back, but I didn't want to pay postage for someone else's mistake.

Or...I could call Marjorie. She knew everything. She'd know exactly who to talk to, and any excuse to call Marjorie was a good one, anyway.

"Eighth Rare Books, Marj speaking," she answered when I called. I heard the clacking of her pencil against her newspaper in the background.

"Marjorie, this is the exile," I said.

"Christopher!"

"Country mouse reporting in."

"Why do you break an old woman's heart, Christopher? I haven't heard from you in weeks," she said.

"Mea culpa, Marj. I've been busy."

"So, you've had two whole customers this week, you don't have time for me?"

"Three," I said.

"Oh, well, never mind then," she answered with a chuckle. "How are you, sweetheart?"

"You know me, I'm always fine. And you? Eighth Rare is thriving?"

"Christopher, I've been running this store for thirty years. If it failed now it wouldn't be my fault."

"What if a Borders moved in across the street?"

"Wouldn't matter. I don't sell to the Borders crowd. My books don't smell like boiled coffee and cardboard pastries."

"I hear they sell aromatherapy kits now," I teased.

"Bite your tongue."

"You could always move out here with me and live the simple life."

"No thank you, dear, I'd know I was old, then."

"I'm not old, and I live here."

"You are older than you know, Christopher. Anyway, what's on your mind? It's early for a social call."

"I have a botched delivery."

"Oh?"

"They sent me porn, Marjorie."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

"What were you trying to get, Christopher?"

"True Crime. And it's not funny."

"Of course not, sweetheart. We wouldn't want your patrons' delicate eyes damaged by the concept of free sexual expression." Marjorie came of age in the sixties. "What kind of pornography, dear?"

"Literotica anthologies. Classy stuff, but not really our bag here in Low Ferry, prime export corn and dairy, population six hundred and thirty-four."

"It was six hundred and thirty-two the last time you called."

"The twins are due in a few months."

"Oh my god, Christopher."

"It's been three years, Marj, you should be used to me telling you these things by now."

"And yet," she said drily. "All right. True Crime, you said? I think Anna said she got a bad shipment yesterday."

"Anna, Anna...owns the Lesbian bookstore on Clark?"

"As if there's only one? And no, she has a little place out in Oak Park. Bored suburbanites and horny teenagers," she added. "Yes, here we go...I meant to call about that. Tell you what, let me talk to Gary in shipping, he'll give you both postage credits and you can just ship them to each other. Do you know Anna? She's great. Pack up the erotica and I'll have her call and give you her address. Do you have an address, or should I just have her ship it to Nowhere, Illinois?"

"You're a gem, Marj," I said. "I owe you."

"I know. Which reminds me," she said. "Some of your friends came by to see me yesterday."

I was sure I'd heard her wrong, and also that she wouldn't spring that kind of thing on me. "What?"

"The crowd you ran with here. They come by sometimes." Well, wrong on both counts. "They always buy something. I suppose that's their price for information."

"They ask you about me?" I asked.

"No, they ask me about the economic status of Japan. Yes, about you."

I fingered the edge of the leather cover for Jacob's father's book. "What do they say?"

"They want to know how you are."

"Please don't lie. I'm not stupid, Marj."

"Nobody said you were, sweetheart," she replied, which made me feel like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. "They ask about you, they say you should come back. They think three years is more than enough time to find yourself or whatever it is you're doing in the boondocks."

"And what do you tell them?"

"That they should say that to you, not to me. Do they ever call you?"

"No, not really."

"Not 'really'?"

"Well," I said, wishing I hadn't asked her not to lie to me, "even in the boondocks we have caller ID. I don't pick up, usually."

She sighed. "Christopher."

"Because they probably would say that to me, and I don't want people to tell me I'm an idiot on some kind of...Kerouacian quest. Bad enough they think it."

She was quiet.

"Marjorie?" I asked.

"Did you just say Kerouacian?"

"Marj!"

"Christopher, child of my heart," she said. "I'm not going to carry messages back and forth for your friends. All I'm saying is that they come here and ask about you, and I thought you'd like to know."

"Do you agree with them?"

"I don't pretend to know whether I should. I think you could come back. If you wanted. You know I'd help you."

"And do what?"

"What do you do there? Sell books, do some binding on the side. There are a few places around here that are looking for someone to buy them out."

"Not in the city. It's too cutthroat there."

"Big fish in a little pond, eh?" she asked.

"Something like that."

"Well, the offer stands, there's no expiration date. I won't mention it again. Do you suppose they ever read the books they buy from me?" she added lightly.

"They might. I should go, Marj."

"Ah yes. Your bustling clientele. I'll have Anna send you the address for the naughty books. Though if I were you I'd consider nailing some of the interesting parts to the church door."

Marjorie always knows how to end a conversation on a high note.

"I knew you'd come through for me, Marj. Have a good day."

"Look after yourself, Christopher. Bye," and she hung up.

I tossed the phone back in its cradle and leaned against the counter, rubbing the bridge of my nose. Headache coming on – and no doubt more upset than I should be. Not Marjorie's fault.

They probably weren't reading the books they bought from her. Nobody has enough time in a city to do everything, after all, so we'd always neatly divided up our duties, and reading had been my job. The friends I'd had in the city might attend a lecture with me or ask my opinion about a book, but they didn't read much. To be fair, I didn't listen to a lot of music of pay any attention to fashion or politics, outside of what they told me. Splitting up our culture saved our own most precious resource in the city: time.

The thing is, time is thick on the ground in small towns, where there's so much less need for meticulous expertise. There were no readings, nightclubs, or jazz concerts in the village. That makes it sound boring, but I didn't care. There's something to be said for having the time in which to become truly experienced in a discipline, instead of merely knowing a little about all of them, passed on second-hand over cocktails.

In the end, the friends I'd had in the city didn't have much in common with me, or even with each other. What we'd shared there was just...geography.

****

"Mr. Dusk! Mr. Dusk!"

They never show up during business hours.

I could have happily stayed curled up in my chair, working on the Farmer's Guide, except that the lights were on in my apartment, which meant people knew I was there. The shop technically closes at five, but when you live where you work there's always the hazard of latecomers. You can't just ignore people when everyone in town knows you.

The boy was calling up from the street, and when I glanced out the window I saw he was standing on the back of a pickup truck laden with wood. The truck was Phillip MacKenzie's, but the wood must have belonged to the boy's father.

He saw my face at the window and gave me a broad grin and two thumbs up, then bent to speak to Phillip through the window. The truck made a lurching turn and pulled around the building next door, heading for the little loading alley in back.

"You're my last delivery today," the boy said, hauling small bundles of wood from the back of the truck's bed to the gate, where Phillip was offloading them into the sheltered back porch. "You want 'em here?"

"Sure," I said, emerging barefoot onto the porch. "Hi, Phil."

"Christopher," Phillip said, nodding to me as he stacked another bundle next to my door.

"Hope the kid's paying you for all this."

Phillip grinned. "Gas, labor, and I get to keep all the tips. Beats kicking cows around the pasture this late in the year."

"I can imagine. Business booming?" I asked the boy.

"Yes sir. Would have been here sooner but we had to drive out to The Pines and you know the roads ain't great."

"Lucas bought some wood from you, then?"

"Yep," the boy said. "Gave him a good deal too."

"Oh?"

"Like yours," he said, offhand. "My dad says I gotta do better in school, so he's gonna tutor me."

"Who, Lucas?" I asked, baffled. "Is he a teacher?"

"No, but he knows a lot. I said, what'll you gimme for the wood, and he said he didn't have much money on him, and I said he could do my homework for me, as a joke."

I chuckled. "I bet he took that well."

"Well, he said he'd show me how to do it myself. He knows a lot," the boy added. "About history and stuff. And I don't."

"Aren't you interested in history?" I asked. "You buy books about it, don't you? I'm sure you have."

"That's interesting history," the boy replied.

"Oh, well, interesting history," I agreed, passing a tip to Phillip, who doffed his ball cap and climbed back into the truck, dusting splinters and wood chips off his hands. I circled around to the truck's gate and crooked my finger at the boy until he crouched at the edge and regarded me with quick, sharp eyes.

"What's he like around you?" I asked. "Lucas, I mean."

"What do you mean, like?" the boy asked back.

"You know. Is he shy? He seems shy around most people."

"Nope, not really. Trick is not to care," the boy replied.

"Why would I care?"

The boy beamed. "Exactly. See you 'round, Mr. Dusk. Give you my invoice tomorrow!"

I stepped back to let the truck pull out into the alley, then went inside and out to the front to watch it pull away, the boy sprawled comfortably on a pile of tarps in the back.

The cafe was looking interestingly busy, and I hadn't really eaten dinner, so I closed up for an hour and ran across to get a bite to eat. Besides, I wanted to see if anyone else had heard the gossip about Lucas tutoring the boy.

Instead, when I stepped inside the bustling restaurant, I found Lucas himself. He was seated at the window table I usually claimed, studying a menu while the rest of the cafe studied him. He looked jumpy, and he was at my table, so I took a menu from the rack near the door and rested my hand on the chair across from him.

"Evening," I said, and he looked up. "Mind if I sit down? Room's a little scarce right now."

"Oh, well, no – I don't mind," he said, inching backwards as if his legs might be taking up too much room under the table. "Are you sure?"

"That I want dinner? Yes," I said, giving him a friendly smile. "I'm pretty sociable, but if you want me to leave I can."

"No, I don't mind. I'm not much of a conversationalist," he added.

"You don't have to be. I talk enough for both of us."

"Seems everyone here does," he murmured, bending back to his menu. "What do you talk about?"

"Oh, farm business and the weather, the Sunday sermon, whatever's been featured in the magazines this month. Patching leaky roofs," I said, and he smiled faintly.

"You eat alone, though, sometimes," he said. "I've seen you. With a book. And people come up to talk to you."

"Well, I've lived here for a while. And I own the only source of printed material for miles around."

Carmen was on that night, and she appeared at my elbow with two glasses of water. Around us, people were watching even more intently than they had been, and I felt a certain amount of pride in being the one to actually go and sit with Lucas.

"Know what you want yet?" Carmen asked, looking from me to Lucas and back again. "Dinner's on me, Christopher. Payback for Clara's book."

"Hope she likes it," I said, as Lucas practically hid behind the menu.

"She loves it. I think because she stole it."

"Better curb that young, or she'll be boosting cars before you know it."

"Ah, glory days," Carmen winked at me. "Takes after me."

"Then she'll do fine. Have you tried the soup, Lucas?" I asked. He flicked his eyes up.

"No, not yet."

"You should. I think I'll have that, Carmen."

"It's good tonight, split-pea with ham," she said. "And you?"

"Um," Lucas stammered. "Soup too please. Thank you. Thank you," he repeated, when she took his menu. She gave him a small smile, then gave me a what the hell? look and walked off.

"I always worry I won't like something when I come here, and the cook will notice and be offended," Lucas said. "I've seen him, I think he lives on the road I take into town."

"If it helps, he's used to people insulting his food, we all tease him about it," I said. "That's the price you pay for living in a little place like this. It's hard to be anonymous. Everyone learns what you like and dislike, after a while."

"I hadn't thought about that when I moved here."

"You came from the city," I said.

"Pretty obvious," he said.

"Yep. You're not one of the summer crowd, and you might've noticed that the faces don't change much around here."

"But you haven't lived here always, have you?"

"No. Three years."

"Why'd you move here?" he asked, then blushed. "If I can ask."

"I needed a break," I said, and sipped my water so I wouldn't have to talk further. He just watched me, a growing desperation in his eyes to fill the silence. I set my glass down.

"Listen, we don't have to talk," I said. "Ever eaten dinner with a farmer? Total silence. I'm used to it."

Relief filled his face. "Is it that easy?"

"Do you mind if I talk?"

"That's fine."

"Good," I smiled, and then immediately came up blank with anything to say. He glanced out the window, and I grasped the first thing that came into my head. "It's starting to cool down out. Won't be long before winter this year. Should have snow before Halloween."

"I look forward to it. The start of winter, I mean," Lucas said. "Thank you," he said again, as Carmen put two bowls of soup down in front of us and added a dish of fresh hot rolls. He buttered one neatly, not spilling a crumb, while I dug into the soup.

"So you like long winters?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied eagerly, then stammered a little. "I like snow."

"You won't like it after three months of it," I predicted.

"That's what they always say in the city, too. I don't like storms," he added, making spirals with the back of his spoon in his soup.

"Exciting, though."

He looked up and a rueful look crossed his face so quickly I nearly missed it. "They don't say that in the city."

"It's quieter here. Less excitement to begin with. You must like quiet, though, living all the way out at The Pines."

"It's all right. I've only ever lived in apartments. Houses just seem vulnerable after living in a building with other people all your life. You're so much more of a target."

"A target?" I asked, laughing a little.

"Well, you know. In an apartment building, if someone breaks in, they might pick someone else's apartment to rob. If someone breaks into a house, it's just you."

"You have lived in the city too long," I said. "The last theft we had was – oh, two years ago, someone stole a few bicycles the feed store was trying to sell."

"Did they catch them?"

"No – we guess it was an out-of-towner."

He laughed a little. "So the last theft you had was two years ago and it wasn't even someone who lives here?"

"I have a theory if you want to hear it."

He gestured with his spoon, so I continued.

"Small towns have a maximum capacity. The ratio of people to jobs is pretty steady – I didn't even open a new bookstore, just renamed the old one. When there are more people than the town can support, some go away. Chicago's a big temptation. People only steal when they can't afford something, or when they're discontented and think whatever they steal is going to make them happier."