“…no soap, sorry…”
“This is a recorded announcement. The number you have dialed is not in working order. Please hang up and…”
“…nope…”
Sandy really upset now. Glaring, gathering debris.
“…who reads Morgenstern today?…”
Sandy going, going, gorgeous, gone.
Bye, Sandy. Sorry, Sandy.
“…sorry, we’re closing…”
1:55 now. 4:55 in New York.
Panic in Los Angeles.
Busy.
No answer.
No answer.
“Florinese I got I think. Somewhere in the back.”
I sat up in my lounge chair. His accent was thick. “I need the English translation.”
“You don’t get much call for Morgenstern nowadays. I don’t know any more what I got back there. You come in tomorrow, you look around.”
“I’m in California,” I said.
“Mashuganuh,” he said.
“It would mean just a great deal to me if you’d look.”
“You gonna hold on while I do it? I’m not gonna pay for this call.”
“Take your time,” I said.
He took seventeen minutes. I just hung on, listening. Every so often I’d hear a footstep or a crash of books or a grunt—“uch—uch”
Finally: “Well, I got the Florinese like I thought.”
So close. “But not the English,” I said.
And suddenly he’s yelling at me: “What, are you crazy? I break my back and he says I haven’t got it, yes I got it, I got it right here, and, believe me, it’s gonna cost a pretty penny.”
“Great—really, no kidding, now listen, here’s what you do, get yourself a cab and tell him to take the books straight up to Park and—”
“Mister California Mashuganuh, you listen now—it’s coming up a blizzard and I’m going no place and neither are these books without money—six fifty, on the barrel each, you want the English, you got to take the Florinese, and I close at 6:00. These books don’t leave my premises without thirteen dollars changing hands.”
“Don’t move,” I said, hanging up, and who do you call when it’s after hours and Christmas on the horizon? Only your lawyer. “Charley,” I said when I got him. “Please do me this. Go to Fourth Avenue, Abromowitz’s, give him thirteen dollars for two books, taxi up to my house and tell the doorman to take them to my apartment, and yes, I know it’s snowing, what do you say?”
“That is such a bizarre request I have to agree to do it.”
I called Abromowitz yet again. “My lawyer is hot on the trail.”
“No checks,” Abromowitz said.
“You’re all heart.” I hung up, and started figuring. More or less 120 minutes long distance at $1.35 per first three minutes plus thirteen for the books plus probably ten for Charley’s taxi plus probably sixty for his time came to…? Two hundred fifty maybe. All for my Jason to have the Morgenstern. I leaned back and closed my eyes. Two hundred fifty not to mention two solid hours of torment and anguish and let’s not forget Sandy Sterling.
A steal.
They called me at half past seven. I was in my suite. “He loves the bike,” Helen said. “He’s practically out of control.”
“Fabbo,” I said.
“And your books came.”
“What books?” I said; Chevalier was never more casual.
“The Princess Bride. In various languages, one of them, fortunately, English.”
“Well, that’s nice,” I said, still loose. “I practically forgot I asked to have ‘em sent.”