She had worked at the Mysterious Bookshop for almost ten years, but only on Saturdays, when the owner was at his house in Connecticut, and the store’s full-time employees were scattered about various apartments throughout the city. Her job was simply to buzz customers into the store, answer whatever questions they asked, take their money, bag their purchases, then buzz them back out onto 56th Street. Almost no intellectual energy was required on Veronica’s part, and the small financial supplement her salary added to her “real job” as a freelance copy editor made it possible for her to buy books from other stores, along with an occasional dinner out, or perhaps a discount ticket to a Broadway show. The dinner and show might be enjoyed along or with one of her friends, someone like herself, who read good books and could articulately discuss them. As for romance, she’d more or less given up on that. Most men were little boys, needy and selfish, and none had ever struck her as worth the effort it took to dress up and preen and put on a happy face when she well knew that after the first few minutes she’d want only to hail a cab, return home, crawl into bed and open a book.
