Page 72 of Bookworm
“Wonderful. Thank you so much! We’ll be in touch.”
We both hung up the zoom call and I sighed, looking down at my nearly empty cup of coffee and the books I’d brought with me to the cafe.
I’d been ambitious thinking I could get a little preliminary work done on some of these out in public at a coffee shop. But I’d just been feeling so cooped up in the apartment and library constantly. Sure, the library was my happy place. But the rare books room can be a pretty dark, dank place after a while.
“Is that an old copy ofCarrie?” A girl asked as she exited the coffee shop.
I blinked, looking up at her a little dazed for a moment. “Um, yeah, it is.”
She was young, college-aged, with dark curly hair twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck and wide black plastic glasses dangling precariously on the edge of her dainty nose. “Wow. I’ve never seen a copy with the dust jacket.”
“Yeah, it’s not super common.”
“May I?” She asked, gesturing to the empty chair across from me.
“Sure.”
She took the seat and lifted the copy of the book, turning it over in her hands. Her nose scrunched, causing her glasses to scoot higher up her nose. “It’s ripped. And it looks like there’s a coffee stain or something on the pages.”
I waved a hand. “Oh yeah. I can fix those in a couple of hours.”
She blinked, wide eyed at me from behind her glasses. “You can?”
“Oh yeah. It’s easier than you’d think.”
She paused for a moment, then handed the book gingerly back to me. “Why don’t they teach us how to do that?”
I shrugged. “It’s a specialized program. I studied at Oxford for restoration of rare books.”
“Sure. I’m not saying Dartmouth should offer a degree in it, but a few classes about rare books and restoration would be pretty cool for the lit department.”
I chewed my lip. “Huh. That would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?”
“I mean, we have a library science program. Why not include it under that?”
I looked down at the other books I brought. “You’d really be interested in taking a class like that as an elective?”
“Oh my god, yes. It’d be so fun. Especially if we could be hands on with some books. They don’t have to even be rare to learn how to use the tools, right? We could just grab some crappy books from a thrift store and work on restoring them.”
“And you think other students in your department want this too? Not just you? I only ask because I was always an outlier. I wanted things and I was the only one?—”
“I mean, I can’t speak for my whole department of course, but yeah, I think people would be really interested in this.”
I chewed my bottom lip, deep in thought. “What was your name?”
“Anna. Anna Jorney.” She held out her hand across the table which I shook firmly.
“Anna, if you’re serious, I’d love your help in developing a proposal. In exchange, I’ll give you a couple private lessons on restoration.”
Her eyes went wide. It was a win-win. “Deal.”
Thirty minutes later, I had Anna’s information in my pocket as I exited the elevators to go home.
Well, Adam’s home.
Mine for the next two weeks.
I entered the apartment and was immediately greeted by Verne, wiggling his butt around my legs. “Hey buddy. Did you miss me?”
