Lyall

After a dark and gloomy day at work, after the dreadful meeting with Belle, Rose stopped in at Wolf’s. She hadn’t been there in a long time. He was alone, typing titles into the computer. He sold books online to supplement his income.

Did you decide to move in with me? is that why you’re here?

Rose laughed. No. I’m still happily married. I’m here to buy a book. I need a book after a meeting with Belle today.

Belle? Is she still around? How is her financial group doing?

All right, I guess. She wants an urban location as well as a suburban location now. And she wants a woman architect. Believe it or not, I am her choice.

Rose Underwood, urban woman architect.

Exactly.

I hate her. I hate all your friends. I wonder why I like you.

Sometimes I wonder, too, she said wearily. Could it be that we both love books?

A lot of people love books.

They say they love books. Clinton says he has 5,000 books in his home in Westchester County, enough to keep him for a year.

She and Wolf both laughed.

Or--let’s see--at 50 books a year, maybe several years.

Do the math, Wolf.

Both of them shuddered. They were mathphobes. They had grown up in the liberal arts age.

Rose found an advance reader’s copy of Margaret Drabble’s novel THE SEA LADY. She was delighted. She also found a used copy of Ted Bishop’s RIDING WITH RILKE: REFLECTIONS ABOUT MOTORCYCLES AND BOOKS, a new book she had read about in a free pamphlet that came with a book review publication.

These are exorbitantly priced, Wolf.

The Drabble isn’t out yet. That’s a UK edition. And the Bishop is brand-new.

Up with the UK! she said. Up with motorcycles!

That was a joke. Rose hated the gray weather in the UK. She had taken a motorcycle trip through the UK with Ben. Rain, rain, nothing but rain. It had been dismal. They had gone to Ireland to escape the rain, though it also rained there, and rented a freezing cottage with a wood stove. Both of them had caught bad colds and flown home early. That was the story they told when they got back to the east coast.

How could I live there? And yet they’re the most charming people in the world, she said.

Wolf laughed. Did you read the Sarah Lyall in the New York Times?

Of course.

Sarah Lyall, who often wrote about British writers for the New York Times, had written about the art of conversation. The question posed was which was better, British or American conversation? Gwyneth Paltrow had started the argument after she was quoted as saying that “the English are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans” and “talk about more interesting things at dinner.” Afterwards, she denied that she had said it.

You didn’t need Gwyneth Paltrow, an actress who had only been in one good movie, to write an interesting essay about conversation (though the New York Times cartoon of Paltrow, which she had tried to find in vain online to illustrate her blog, was good). American and English writers and professors and a few expatriates had weighed in.

It was fun to read. It made her want to move to the UK immediately.

She paid for her books. It was pitch-dark out. Wolf offered to give her a ride home.

She accepted.

I’ll see you at RICHARD III next weekend.

She sighed. Will I?

I’ll bet you’ll both be glad when it’s over.

I’m very tired of Richard. Ben’s not, though.