CHAPTER TWO
THE DEALER
1.
When Bruce Cable was twenty-three years old, and still classified as a junior at Auburn, his father died suddenly. The two had been feuding over Bruce’s lack of academic progress, and things had gotten so bad that Mr. Cable had threatened more than once to cut young Bruce out of his will. Some ancient relative had made a fortune in gravel, and, following bad legal advice, had set up a scheme of misguided and complicated trusts that had strewn money over generations of undeserving kinfolks. The family had for years lived behind the facade of fine wealth while watching it slowly drip away. Threatening to modify wills and trusts was a favorite ploy used against the young, and it had never worked.
Mr. Cable, though, died before he made it to his lawyer’s office, so Bruce woke up one day with the promise of a quick $300,000, a beautiful windfall but not quite retirement money. He thought about investing it, and doing so conservatively might net him an annual return of between 5 and 10 percent, hardly enough to sustain the lifestyle Bruce was suddenly contemplating. Investing in a more daring way would be far riskier, and Bruce really wanted to hang on to the money. It did strange things to him. Perhaps the strangest was his decision to walk away from Auburn, after five years, and never look back.
Eventually, a girl enticed him to a Florida beach on Camino Island, a ten-mile-long barrier strip just north of Jacksonville. In a nice condo she was paying for, he spent a month sleeping, drinking beer, strolling in the surf, staring at the Atlantic for hours, and reading War and Peace. He’d been an English major and was bothered by the great books he had never read.
To protect the money, and hopefully watch it grow, he considered a number of ventures as he roamed the beach. He had wisely kept the news of his good fortune to himself—the money, after all, had been buried for decades—so he was not pestered by friends offering all manner of advice or looking for loans. The girl certainly knew nothing about the money. After a week together, he knew she would soon be history. In no particular order, he thought about investing in a chicken sandwich franchise, and some raw Florida land, and a condo in a nearby high-rise, and several dot-com start-ups in Silicon Valley, and a strip mall in Nashville, and so on. He read dozens of financial magazines, and the more he read the more he realized he had no patience for investing. It was all a hopeless maze of numbers and strategies. There was a reason he’d chosen English over economics.
Every other day he and the girl wandered into the quaint village of Santa Rosa, to have lunch in the cafés or drinks in the bars along Main Street. There was a decent bookstore with a coffee shop, and they fell into the habit of settling in with an afternoon latte and the New York Times. The barista was also the owner, an older guy named Tim, and Tim was a chatterbox. One day he let it slip that he was thinking about selling out and moving to Key West. The following day, Bruce managed to shake the girl and enjoy the latte by himself. He took a seat at the coffee bar and proceeded to prod Tim about his plans for the bookstore.
Selling books was a tough business, Tim explained. The big chains were deep discounting all bestsellers, some offering 50 percent off, and now with the Internet and Amazon folks were shopping from home. In the past five years, over 700 independent bookstores had closed. Only a few were making money. The more he talked the more somber he became. “Retail is brutal,” he said at least three times. “And no matter what you do today, you gotta start all over again tomorrow.”
Bruce admired his honesty but questioned his savviness. Was he trying to entice a buyer?
Tim said he made decent money with the store. The island had an established literary community, with some active writers, a book festival, and good libraries. Retirees still enjoyed reading and spent money on books. There were about forty thousand permanent residents, plus a million tourists each year, so there was plenty of traffic. What was his price? Bruce finally asked. Tim said he would take $150,000 cash, no owner financing, with the assumption of the lease of the building. Somewhat timidly, Bruce asked if he could see the store’s financials, just the basic balance sheet and profit and loss, nothing complicated. Tim didn’t like the idea. He didn’t know Bruce and thought the kid was just another twentysomething loafing at the beach and spending Daddy’s money. Tim said, “Okay, you show me your financials and I’ll show you mine.”
“Fair enough,” said Bruce. He left, promising to return, but got sidetracked by an idea for a road trip. Three days later he said good-bye to the girl and drove to Jacksonville to shop for a new car. He coveted a sparkling-new Porsche 911 Carrera, and the fact that he could simply write a check for one made the temptation painful. He stood his ground, though, and after a long day of horse-trading he surrendered his well-used Jeep Cherokee for a brand-new one. He might need the space to haul things. The Porsche could always wait, perhaps until he’d earned the money to buy one.
With a new set of wheels, and money in the bank, Bruce left Florida for a literary adventure that he anticipated more with each passing mile. He had no itinerary. He headed west, and planned to one day turn north at the Pacific, then back east, then south. Time meant nothing; there were no deadlines. He searched for independent bookstores, and when he found one he decamped for a day or two of browsing, drinking coffee, reading, maybe even lunch if the place had a café. He usually managed to corner the owners and gently poke around for information. He told them he was thinking about buying a bookstore and, frankly, needed their advice. The responses varied. Most seemed to enjoy their work, even those who were wary of the future. There was great uncertainty in the business, with the chains expanding and the Internet filled with unknowns. There were horror stories of established bookshops driven out of business when large discount stores popped up just down the street. Some of the independents, especially those in college towns too small for the chains, appeared to be thriving. Others, even in cities, were practically deserted. A few were new and enthusiastically bucking the trend. The advice was inconsistent and wide-ranging, from the standard “Retail is brutal” to “Go for it, you’re only twenty-three years old.” But the one constant was that those giving advice enjoyed what they were doing. They loved books, and literature, and writers, the whole publishing scene, and they were willing to put in long hours and deal with customers because they considered theirs to be a noble calling.
For two months, Bruce drifted across the country, zigzagging aimlessly in pursuit of the next independent bookstore. The owner in one town might know three others across the state, and so on. Bruce consumed gallons of strong coffee, hung out with authors on tour, bought dozens of autographed books, slept in cheap motels, occasionally with another bookworm he’d just met, spent hours with booksellers willing to share their knowledge and advice, sipped a lot of bad wine at signings where only a handful of customers showed up, took hundreds of interior and exterior photographs, took pages of notes, and kept a log. By the time his adventure was over, and he was finished and tired of driving, he had covered almost eight thousand miles in seventy-four days and visited sixty-one independent bookstores, no two even remotely similar. He thought he had a plan.
He returned to Camino Island and found Tim where he’d left him, at the coffee bar, sipping espresso and reading a newspaper, looking even more haggard than before. At first, Tim did not remember him, but then Bruce said, “I was thinking about buying the store a couple of months ago. You were asking one-fifty.”
“Sure,” Tim said, perking up only slightly. “You find the money?”
“Some of it. I’ll write a check today for a hundred thousand, and twenty-five grand a year from now.”
“Nice, but that’s twenty-five short, the way I count.”
“That’s all I have, Tim. Take it or leave it. I’ve found another store on the market.”
Tim thought for a second, then slowly shoved forward his right hand. They shook on the deal. Tim called his lawyer and told him to speed things along. Three days later the paperwork was signed and the money changed hands. Bruce closed the store for a month for renovations, and used the downtime for a crash course on bookselling. Tim was happy to hang around and share his knowledge on every aspect of the trade, as well as the gossip on customers and most of the other downtown merchants. He had a lot of opinions on most matters, and after a couple of weeks Bruce was ready for him to leave.
On August 1, 1996, the store reopened with as much fanfare as Bruce could possibly drum up. A nice crowd sipped champagne and beer and listened to reggae and jazz while Bruce relished the moment. His grand adventure had been launched, and Bay Books—New and Rare was in business.
2.
His interest in rare books was accidental. Upon hearing the awful news that his father had dropped dead of a heart attack, Bruce went home to Atlanta. It wasn’t really his home—he’d never spent much time there—but rather the current and last home of his father, a man who moved often and usually with a frightening woman in tow. Mr. Cable had married twice, and badly, and had sworn off the institution, but he couldn’t seem to exist without the presence of some wretched woman to complicate his life. They were attracted to him because of his apparent wealth, but over time each had realized he was hopelessly scarred by two horrific divorces. Luckily, at least for Bruce, the latest girlfriend had just moved out and the place was free from prying eyes and hands.
Until Bruce arrived. The house, a baffling, cutting-edge pile of steel and glass in a hip section of downtown, had a large studio on the third level where Mr. Cable liked to paint when he wasn’t investing. He had never really pursued a career, and since he lived off his inheritance he had always referred to himself as an “investor.” Later, he’d turned to painting, but his oils were so dreadful that he’d been shooed away from every gallery in Atlanta. One wall of the studio was covered with books, hundreds of them, and at first Bruce hardly noticed the collection. He assumed they were just window dressing, another part of the act, another lame effort by his father to seem deep, complicated, and well read. But upon closer observation, Bruce realized that two shelves held some older books with familiar titles. He began pulling them off the upper shelf, one by one, and examining them. His casual curiosity quickly turned to something else.
The books were all first editions, some autographed by the authors. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, published in 1961; Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948); John Updike’s Rabbit, Run (1960); Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952); Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer (1961); Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus (1959); William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967); Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1929); Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965); and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951).
After the first dozen or so, Bruce began placing the books on a table rather than returning them to the shelves. His initial curiosity was overwhelmed by a heady wave of excitement, then greed. On the lower shelf he ran across books and authors he’d never heard of until he made an even more startling discovery. Hidden behind a thick three-volume biography of Churchill were four books: William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929); Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold (1929); F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920); and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929). All were first editions in excellent condition and signed by the authors.
Bruce fished around some more, found nothing else of interest, then fell into his father’s old recliner and stared at the wall of books. Sitting there, in a house he’d never really known, looking at wretched oils done by an artist with an obvious lack of talent, wondering where the books came from, and pondering what he would do when Molly, his sister, arrived and they would be expected to plan a funeral service, Bruce was struck by how little he knew about his late father. And why should he know more? His father had never spent time with him. Mr. Cable shipped Bruce off to boarding school when he was fourteen. During the summers, the kid was sent to a sailing camp for six weeks and a dude ranch for six more, anything to keep him away from home. Bruce knew of nothing his father enjoyed collecting, other than a string of miserable women. Mr. Cable played golf and tennis and traveled, but never with Bruce and his sister; always with the latest girlfriend.
So where did the books come from? How long had he been collecting them? Were there old invoices lying around, written proof of their existence? Would the executor of his father’s estate be required to lump them in with his other assets and give them, along with the bulk, to Emory University?
Leaving the bulk of the estate to Emory was something else that irked Bruce. His father had talked about it occasionally, without giving too many details. Mr. Cable was of the lofty opinion that his money should be invested in education and not left for children to squander. On several occasions Bruce had been tempted to remind his father that he’d spent his entire life pissing away money earned by someone else, but squabbling over such matters would not benefit Bruce.
At that moment, he really wanted those books. He decided to keep eighteen of the best and leave the rest behind. If he got greedy and left gaps, someone might notice. He fit them neatly in a cardboard box that had once held a case of wine. His father had battled the bottle for years and finally reached a truce that allowed him a few glasses of red wine each night. There were several empty boxes in the garage. Bruce spent hours rearranging the shelves to give the impression that nothing was missing. And who would know? As far as he knew, Molly read nothing, and, more important, avoided their father because she hated his girlfriends. To Bruce’s knowledge, Molly had never spent a night in the house. She would know nothing of her father’s personal effects. (However, two months later, she asked him on the phone if he knew anything about “Daddy’s old books.” Bruce assured her he knew nothing.)
He waited until dark and carried the box to his Jeep. There were at least three surveillance cameras watching the patio, driveway, and garage, and if anyone asked questions, he would simply say he was taking away some of his own stuff. Videos, CDs, whatever. If the executor of the estate later asked about the missing first editions, Bruce would, of course, know nothing. Go quiz the housekeeper.
As things evolved, it was the perfect crime, if, indeed, it was a crime at all. Bruce really didn’t think so. In his opinion, he should be receiving far more. Thanks to thick wills and family lawyers, his father’s estate was wrapped up efficiently and his library was never mentioned.
Bruce Cable’s unplanned entry into the world of rare books was off to a fine start. He plunged himself into the study of the trade and realized that the value of his first collection, the eighteen taken from his father’s house, was around $200,000. He was afraid to sell the books, though, afraid someone somewhere might recognize one and ask questions. Since he did not know how his father had gained possession of the books, it was best to wait. Allow some time to pass, for memories to fade. As he would quickly learn in the business, patience was imperative.
3.
The building was on the corner of Third and Main Street in the heart of Santa Rosa. It was a hundred years old and originally built to house the town’s leading bank, one that collapsed in the Depression. Then it was a pharmacy, then another bank, then a bookshop. The second floor stored boxes and trunks and file cabinets, all laden with dust and utterly worthless. Up there Bruce managed to stake out a claim, clear some space, throw up a couple of walls, move in a bed, and call it an apartment. He lived there for the first ten years Bay Books was in business. When he wasn’t downstairs peddling books, he was upstairs clearing, cleaning, painting, renovating, and eventually decorating.
The bookstore’s first month was August 1996. After the wine-and-cheese opening, the place was busy for a few days, but the curiosity began to wear off. The traffic slowed considerably. After three weeks in business, Bruce was beginning to wonder if he’d blundered badly. August saw a net profit of only two thousand dollars, and Bruce was ready to panic. It was, after all, the high season for tourism on Camino Island. He decided to begin discounting, something the majority of independent owners advised against. Big new releases and bestsellers were marked down 25 percent. He pushed the closing time back from seven to nine and put in fifteen hours a day. He worked the front like a politician, memorizing the names of the regular customers and noting what they bought. He was soon an accomplished barista. He could brew an espresso while hustling to the front to check out a customer. He removed shelves of old books, mainly classics that were not too popular, and put in a small café. Closing time went from nine to ten. He cranked out dozens of handwritten notes to customers, and to writers and booksellers he’d met on his coast-to-coast adventure. At midnight, he was often at the computer, updating the Bay Books newsletter. He wrestled with the idea of opening on Sunday, something most of the independents did. He didn’t want to, because he needed the rest, and he was also afraid of possible backlash. Camino Island was in the Bible Belt; one could easily walk to a dozen churches from the bookstore. But it was also a vacation spot and almost none of the tourists seemed interested in Sunday morning worship. So in September he said to hell with it and opened at 9:00 a.m. Sunday, with the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune hot off the press, along with fresh chicken biscuits from a café three doors down. By the third Sunday, the place was packed.
The store netted four thousand dollars in September and October and doubled that after six months. Bruce stopped worrying. Within a year Bay Books was the hub of downtown, by far the busiest store. Publishers and sales reps succumbed to his constant badgering and began to include Camino Island on author tours. Bruce joined the American Booksellers Association and immersed himself in its causes, issues, and committees. In the winter of 1997, at an ABA convention, he met Stephen King and convinced him to pop over for a book party. Mr. King signed for nine hours as fans waited in lines that wrapped around the block. The store sold twenty-two hundred copies of his various titles and grossed seventy thousand dollars in sales. It was a glorious day that put Bay Books on the map. Three years later it was voted Best Independent Bookstore in Florida, and in 2004 Publishers Weekly named it Bookstore of the Year. In 2005, after nine hard years in the trenches, Bruce Cable was elected to the ABA Board of Directors.
4.
By then Bruce was quite the figure around town. He owned a dozen seersucker suits, each a different shade or color, and he wore one every day, along with a starched white shirt with a spread collar, and a loud bow tie, usually either red or yellow. His ensemble was completed with a pair of dirty buckskins, no socks. He never wore socks, not even in January when the temperatures dipped into the forties. His hair was thick and wavy, and he wore it long, almost to his shoulders. He shaved once a week on Sunday morning. By the time he was thirty, some gray was working itself into the picture, a few whiskers and a few strands of the long hair, and it was quite becoming.
Each day, when things slowed a bit in the store, Bruce hit the street. He walked to the post office and flirted with the clerks. He went to the bank and flirted with the tellers. If a new retail shop opened downtown, Bruce was there for the grand opening, and he returned soon afterward to flirt with the salesgirls. Lunch was a major production for Bruce, and he dined out six days a week, always with someone else so he could write it off as a business expense. When a new café opened, Bruce was first in line, sampling everything on the menu and flirting with the waitresses. He usually drank a bottle of wine for lunch and slept it off with a little siesta in the upstairs apartment.
Often, with Bruce, there was a fine line between flirting and stalking. He had an eye for the ladies, as they did for him, and he played the game beautifully. He hit pay dirt when Bay Books became a popular stop on the author circuit. Half the writers who came to town were women, most under forty, all obviously away from home, most of them single and traveling alone and looking for some fun. They were easy and willing targets when they arrived at the bookstore and stepped into his world. After a reading and signing session, then a long dinner, they often retired to the apartment upstairs with Bruce for “a deeper search for human emotion.” He had his favorites, especially two young ladies who were doing well with erotic mysteries. And they published every year!
Despite his efforts to carefully groom his image as a well-read playboy, Bruce was at his core an ambitious businessman. The store provided a healthy income, but that was not by accident. Regardless of how late his night had been, he was at the store before seven each morning, in shorts and a T-shirt, unloading and unboxing books, stocking shelves, taking inventory, even sweeping the floors. He loved the feel and smell of new books as they came out of the box. He found the perfect spot for each new edition. He touched every book that came into the store, and, sadly, every book that was re-boxed and returned to the publisher for credit. He hated returns and viewed each one as a failure, a missed opportunity. He purged the inventory of stuff that didn’t sell, and after a few years settled on about twelve thousand titles. Sections of the store were cramped spaces with saggy old shelves and books stacked on the floors, but Bruce knew where to find anything. After all, he had carefully placed them all. At 8:45 each morning, he hurried upstairs to the apartment, showered, and changed into his seersucker of the day, and at precisely 9:00 a.m. he opened the doors and greeted his customers.
He rarely took a day off. For Bruce, the idea of a vacation was a trip to New England to meet antiquarian book dealers in their old dusty shops and talk about the market. He loved rare books, especially those by twentieth-century American authors, and he collected them with a passion. His collection grew, primarily because he wanted to buy so much, but also because he found it painful to sell anything. He was a dealer for sure, but one who always bought and almost never sold. The eighteen of “Daddy’s old books” he’d filched became a wonderful foundation, and by the time Bruce was forty years old he valued his rare collection at two million dollars.
5.
While he served on the ABA Board, the owner of his building died. Bruce bought it from the estate and began expanding the store. He shrunk the size of his apartment and moved the coffee bar and café to the second floor. He knocked out a wall and doubled the size of his children’s section. On Saturday mornings, the store was filled with kids buying books and listening to story time while their young moms were upstairs sipping lattes under the watchful eye of the friendly owner. His rare book section received a lot of his attention. On the main floor, he knocked out another wall and built a First Editions Room with handsome oak shelves, paneling, and expensive rugs. He built a vault in the basement to protect his rarest books.
After ten years of apartment living, Bruce was ready for something grander. He’d kept his eye on several of the old Victorians in historic downtown Santa Rosa, and had even made offers to purchase two of them. In both cases he failed to offer enough, and the homes quickly sold to other buyers. The magnificent homes, built by turn-of-the-century railroad magnates and shippers and doctors and politicians, were beautifully preserved and sat timelessly on streets shaded with ancient oaks and Spanish moss. When Mrs. Marchbanks died at the age of 103, Bruce approached her daughter, age 81 and living in Texas. He paid too much for the house, but then he was determined not to lose a third time.
Two blocks north and three blocks east of the store, the Marchbanks House was built in 1890 by a doctor as a gift to his pretty new wife, and had been in the family ever since. It was huge, over eight thousand square feet sprawled over four levels, with a soaring tower on the south side and a turret on the north, and a sweeping veranda wrapped around the ground floor. It had a roof deck, a variety of gables, fish-scale shingles, and bay windows, many of which were adorned with stained glass. It covered a small corner lot that was lined with white picket fences and shaded by three ancient oaks and Spanish moss.
Bruce found the interior depressing, with its dark wood floors, even darker painted walls, well-worn rugs, sagging, dusty drapes, and abundance of brown-brick hearths. Much of the furniture came with the deal, and he immediately began selling it. The ancient rugs that were not too threadbare were moved to the bookstore and added decades to its ambience. The old drapes and curtains were worthless and thrown away. When the house was empty, he hired a paint crew that spent two months brightening up the interior walls. When they were gone he hired a local artisan who spent another two months refinishing every square inch of the oak and heart pine flooring.
He bought the house because its systems worked—plumbing, electrical, water, heating, and air. He had neither the patience nor the stomach for a renovation, one that would virtually bankrupt a new buyer. He had little talent with a hammer and better ways to spend his time. For the next year, he continued to live in his apartment above the store as he pondered the furnishing and decorating of the house. It sat empty, bright, and beautiful, while the task of molding it into his livable space became intimidating. It was a majestic example of Victorian architecture and thoroughly unsuited for the modern and minimalist decor he preferred. He considered the period pieces fussy and frilly and just not his style.
What was wrong with having a grand old home that stayed true to its origins, at least on the outside, while jazzing up the interior with modern furniture and art? Something was not right with that, though, and he became handcuffed with ideas of a decorating scheme.
He walked to the house every day and stood in every room, perplexed and uncertain. Was it becoming his folly, an empty house much too large and complicated for his uncertain tastes?
6.
To the rescue came one Noelle Bonnet, a New Orleans antiques dealer who was touring with her latest book, a fifty-dollar coffee-table tome. He had seen Noelle’s publisher’s catalog months earlier and was captivated by her photograph. Doing his homework, as always, he learned that she was thirty-seven years old, divorced with no kids, a native of New Orleans, though her mother was French, and well regarded as an expert on Provençal antiques. Her shop was on Royal Street in the Quarter, and according to her bio she spent half the year in southern and southwest France scouring for old furniture. She had published two previous books on the subject and Bruce studied both of them.
This was a habit if not a calling. His store did two and sometimes three signing events each week, and by the time an author arrived Bruce had read everything he or she had published. He read voraciously, and while he preferred novels by living authors, people he could meet, promote, befriend, and follow, he also devoured biographies, self-help, cookbooks, histories, anything and everything. It was the least he could do. He admired all writers, and if one took the time to visit his store, and have dinner and drinks and so on, then he was determined to be able to discuss his or her works.
He read deep into the night and often fell asleep with an open book in the bed. He read early in the morning, alone in the store with strong coffee, long before it opened if he wasn’t packing and unpacking. He read constantly throughout the day, and over time developed the curious routine of standing in the same spot by a front window, near the biographies, leaning casually on a full-sized wood sculpture of a Timucuan Indian chief, sipping espresso nonstop, with one eye on the page and the other on the front door. He greeted customers, found books for them, chatted with anyone who wanted to chat, occasionally helped at the coffee bar or front register when things were busy, but always eased back to his spot by the chief, where he picked up his book and resumed his reading. He claimed to average four books per week and no one doubted this. If a prospective clerk did not read at least two per week, there was no job offer.
At any rate, Noelle Bonnet’s visit was a great success, if not for the revenue it generated, then certainly for its lasting impact on Bruce and Bay Books. The attraction was mutual, immediate, and intense. After a quick, even abbreviated dinner, they retired to his apartment upstairs and enjoyed one hell of a romp. Claiming to be ill, she canceled the rest of her tour and stayed in town for a week. On the third day, Bruce walked her over to the Marchbanks House and proudly displayed his trophy. Noelle was overwhelmed. For a world-class designer/decorator/dealer, the presentation of eight thousand square feet of empty floors and walls behind the facade of such a grand Victorian was breathtaking. As they drifted from room to room, she began having visions of how each should be painted, wallpapered, and furnished.
Bruce offered a couple of modest suggestions, such as a big-screen TV here and pool table over there, but these were not well received. The artist was at work, suddenly painting on a canvas with no borders. Noelle spent the following day alone in the house, measuring and photographing and simply sitting in its vast emptiness. Bruce tended the store, thoroughly smitten with her but also having the first tremors of a pending financial nightmare.
She cajoled him into leaving the store over the weekend and they flew to New Orleans. She walked him through her stylish, though cluttered, store, where every table, lamp, four-poster bed, chest, chaise, trunk, rug, commode, and armoire not only had rich origins in some Provençal village but was destined for the perfect spot in the Marchbanks House. They roamed the French Quarter, dined in her favorite local bistros, hung out with her friends, spent plenty of time in bed, and after three days Bruce flew home alone, exhausted, but also, for the first time, admittedly in love. Damn the expense. Noelle Bonnet was a woman he could not live without.
7.
A week later, a large truck arrived in Santa Rosa and parked in front of the Marchbanks House. The following day, Noelle was there directing the movers. Bruce walked back and forth from the store, watching with great interest and a touch of trepidation. The artist was lost in her own creative world, buzzing from room to room, moving each piece at least three times, and realizing she needed more. A second truck arrived not long after the first one left. Bruce, walking back to the store, mumbled to himself that there could be little left in her shop on Royal Street. Over dinner that night, she confirmed this, and begged him to leave for France in just a few days for another shopping adventure. He declined, saying he had some important authors on the way and had to tend to the store. That night, they slept in the house for the first time, in a wrought-iron contraption of a bed she had found near Avignon, where she kept a small apartment. Every stick of furniture, every accessory, every rug and pot and painting had a history, and her love for the stuff was contagious.
Early the following morning, they sipped coffee on the back porch and talked about the future, which, at the moment, was uncertain. She had her life in New Orleans and he had his on the island, and neither seemed suited for a long, permanent relationship that involved pulling up stakes. It was awkward and they soon changed the subject. Bruce admitted he’d never been to France and they began planning a vacation there.
Not long after Noelle left town, the first invoice arrived. It came with a note, handwritten in her beautiful script, in which she explained that she was forgoing her usual markup and basically selling the stuff at cost. Thank God for small miracles, he mumbled. And now she’s headed back to France for more!
She returned to New Orleans from Avignon three days before Hurricane Katrina. Neither her store in the French Quarter nor her apartment in the Garden District was damaged, but the city was mortally wounded. She locked her doors and fled to Camino Island, where Bruce was waiting to soothe and calm her. For days they watched the horror on television—the flooded streets, the floating bodies, the oil-stained waters, the frantic flight of half the population, the panicked rescue workers, the bumbling politicians.
Noelle doubted she could return. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Gradually, she began to talk of relocating. About half of her customers were from New Orleans, and with so many of them now in exile she was worried about her business. The other half was spread throughout the country. Her reputation was wide and well known and she shipped antiques everywhere. Her website was a success. Her books were popular and many of her fans were serious collectors. With Bruce’s gentle prodding, she convinced herself she could move her business to the island and not only rebuild what had been lost but prosper.
Six weeks after the storm, Noelle signed a lease for a small space on Main Street in Santa Rosa, three doors down from Bay Books. She closed her shop on Royal Street and moved what was left of her inventory to her new store, Noelle’s Provence. When a new shipment from France arrived, she opened the doors with a champagne-and-caviar party, and Bruce helped her work the crowd.
She had a great idea for a new book: the transformation of the Marchbanks House as it filled up with Provençal antiques. She had photographed the home extensively as it sat empty, and now she would document her triumphant renovation. Bruce doubted the book would sell enough to cover its costs, but what the hell? Whatever Noelle wanted.
At some point the invoices had stopped arriving. Timidly, he broached this subject, and she explained with great drama that he was now getting the ultimate discount: Her! He might own the house, but everything in it would be theirs together.
8.
In April 2006, they spent two weeks in the South of France. Using her apartment in Avignon as home base, they roamed from village to village, market to market, eating food that Bruce had only seen photos of, drinking great local wines not available back home, staying in quaint hotels, seeing the sights, catching up with her friends, and, of course, loading up with more inventory for her store. Bruce, always the researcher, thrust himself into the world of rustic French furniture and artifacts and could soon spot a bargain.
They were in Nice when they decided to get married, right then and there.