THE FORTY-FIFTH PAGE

Cormac McCarthy was missing!

I searched over the Mcs and Macs, which have always given me fits in alphabetizing, but the half-foot gap was clearly where his work had been housed between Macaulay, (Rose) and McCarthy (Mary).

If she had known what she was doing it would have been a rather clever bit of vindictive business. If she knew how much the books fetched in the first edition market and needed the money, it would have made sense. But she was too stupid for revenge and knew nothing of the antiquarian market.

Friends tell me that there is no greater sense of violation than having their apartments burgled. Shit--it’s not violation, it’s loss. Loss akin to death. I put my hand in the cavity as if trying to stop the bleeding from a wound, but it would not bring back my McCarthys.

With a heavy heart, I unpacked my Eastern acquisitions, but they could not make up for the loss. There were so many books she could have taken, and I would not have suffered their loss. She could have had the Wallers and the Clancy’s and the Cornwells; I gladly would have given them to her.But to take an author who many maintain cannot be read by the human eye? Why, why, why? Color of the binding? I was never to know.