The shelf was at eye level, and when he pulled the three books together, they left a considerable hole. Normally he would have moved on, but as he was in no hurry he noticed another book in the shadows, somehow wedged behind the others. Hoping it might be Seaplanes of the Twenties, he pulled it forward.
No such luck. Wasn't even a flying book: Winston's Encyclopedia of Stage Entertainers.
Yet, struck by the title, he flashed back to Long Beach, California, the Lafayette Hotel, and looked up the only stage entertainer he'd seen in person:
SAMUEL BLACK, AKA BLACKSMYTH THE GREAT
American stage hypnotist (1948–1988). Through the mid-1970s, Black is said to have had no equal on the circuit.
“What if we believed we were chained by something that doesn't exist?” he asked a Variety interviewer. “And what if the world around us is the perfect mirror of whatever we believe?”
Black left the stage in 1987, at the height of his popularity.
Journal entries recorded that he was exploring what he termed “different dimensions,” and that he had made “. . . some discoveries greatly interesting to me, and I have decided to leave my body, and return to it, while in excellent health.” (Los Angeles Times, 22 June, 1987)
He was found dead of no apparent cause on 12 November of that year.
Black is survived by his wife Gwendolyn (b. 1951), a hypnotherapist.
Jamie Forbes set the three flying books on the bookstore counter, feeling guilty at the price on Brimm and Bogess, then handed the encyclopedia to the clerk, whom he suspected might own the place.
“This was in Aviation. It's Stage Entertainers.”
“Thank you. Sorry about that, I'll restack it.” He set the book aside. “That'll be three dollars each for these two, and four dollars for the Nevil Shute. Does that sound good?” As though he were willing let them go for less.
“Sounds fine. He's a terrific writer.”
“The Rainbow and the Rose, Round the Bend, Trustee from the Toolroom,” said the clerk, with a grin at their shared good taste. “He wrote twenty-three books, you know. Everybody remembers him for On the Beach, but it wasn't his best book, I don't think.”
He was the owner, all right.
“You know your Brimm and Bogess is way underpriced,” said Jamie. “I'm taking advantage of you, that price.”
The man waved his hand, dismissed the thought. “That's the way I priced it. I'll charge more next time.”
They chatted for a while about Nevil Shute Norway, the writer all at once alive and with them in the bookshop, whose stories erased the distance between two folks he'd never lived to meet.
Jamie left half an hour later with the Brimm and Bogess, Slide Rule, and two other Nevil Shute books, paperbacks that needed rereading, and decided to stay the night in Ponca City.
Is it cheating, he wondered, to pay a store's asking price for books?
No, he decided, it isn't.
CHAPTER TEN
That evening, still happy for meeting old friends on old pages, Jamie Forbes went down for dinner in the motel restaurant.
“Welcome to Ponca City,” said the waitress, with a smile that earned a lavish tip before ever she heard his order. She handed the menu and whispered a secret: “We've got great salads.”
He thanked her for that, scanned down the list when she left. There was a lot to read, and the salads did look good.
“Hot chocolate and toast, I suppose.”
He startled up from the page to a different smile.
“Miss Hammond!”
“Hallock,” she said. “Dee Hallock. Mister Forbes, are you following me?”