THE EIGHTEENTH PAGE

The second apartment mentioned on the preceding page took the best and worst qualities of the old haunt.

The best qualities can turn out to be worst. Good sunlight is a joy to the city gardener, but to the booklover it brings disaster. A sun-faded spine is the great destroyer in the collection biz.

Worst qualities can turn out best. The incidence of murder, mutilation, pillage, plunder, and break-ins around the new neighborhood was heart-stopping. Ambulances vied with car alarms for aural attention all along Second Avenue. The safety I felt in my little place around the corner was gratifying because although my apartment was broken into and entered several times, no book was ever taken. A sad little note of frustration once left behind said simply: YOU BE CRAZY.

The scramble for shelf boards was more intense on the Lower East Side than the old West Side venue. Perhaps the craft was greater among downtown artists (thus carpenters) who were bringing in New Gentrification and driving out the immigrants to the Old Gentrification of the suburbs.

I needed more shelves. There was room for a single bed in one of the two bedrooms, but that room housed Fiction R-S-T, the portion of the alphabet most likely to expand most quickly in a proper fiction collection.