Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

But I have to start small, and with no customers to distract me, I work hard. First, I connect to the unprotected Wi-Fi network next door called bootynet. Then I go one by one through the local review sites, writing glowing reports of this hidden gem. I send friendly emails with winking emoticons to local blogs. I create a Facebook group with one member. I sign up for Google’s hyper-targeted local advertising program—the same one we used at NewBagel—which allows you to identify your quarry with absurd precision. I choose characteristics from Google’s long form:

• lives in San Francisco

• likes books

• night owl

• carries cash

• not allergic to dust

• enjoys Wes Anderson movies

• recent GPS ping within five blocks of here

I only have ten dollars to spend on this, so I have to be specific.

That’s all the demand side. There’s also supply to think about, and Penumbra’s supply is capricious to say the least—but that’s only part of the story. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is, I have learned, really two stores in one.

There’s the more-or-less normal bookstore, which is up front, packed in tight around the desk. There are short shelves marked HISTORY and BIOGRAPHY and POETRY. There’s Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Trevanian’s Shibumi. This more-or-less normal bookstore is spotty and frustrating, but at least it’s stocked with titles that you could find in a library or on the internet.

The other bookstore is stacked behind and above all that, on the tall laddered shelves, and it is comprised of volumes that, as far as Google knows, don’t exist. Trust me, I’ve searched. Many of these have the look of antiquity—cracked leather, gold-leaf titles—but others are freshly bound with bright crisp covers. So they’re not all ancient. They’re just all … unique.

I think of this as the Waybacklist.

When I started working here, I assumed they were just all from tiny presses. Tiny Amish presses with no taste for digital record-keeping. Or I thought maybe it was all self-published work—a whole collection of hand-bound one-offs that never made it to the Library of Congress or anywhere else. Maybe Penumbra’s was a kind of orphanage.

But now, a month into my clerkship, I’m starting to think it’s more complicated than that. You see, to go with the second store, there’s a second set of customers—a small community of people who orbit the store like strange moons. They are nothing like North Face. They are older. They arrive with algorithmic regularity. They never browse. They come wide awake, completely sober, and vibrating with need. For example:

The bell above the door will tinkle, and before it’s done, Mr. Tyndall will be shouting, breathless, “Kingslake! I need Kingslake!” He’ll take his hands off his head (has he really been running down the street with his hands on his head?) and clamp them down on the front desk. He will repeat it, as if he’s already told me once that my shirt is on fire, and why am I not taking swift action:

“Kingslake! Quickly!”

The database on the Mac Plus encompasses the regular books and the Waybacklist alike. The latter aren’t shelved according to title or subject (do they even have subjects?), so the computer assist is crucial. Now I will type K-I-N-G-S-L-A-K-E and the Mac will churn slowly—Tyndall bouncing on his heels—and then chime and show its cryptic response. Not BIOGRAPHY or HISTORY or SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, but: 3-13. That’s the Waybacklist, aisle 3, shelf 13, which is only about ten feet up.

“Oh, thank goodness, thank you, yes, thank goodness,” Tyndall will say, ecstatic. “Here is my book”—he will produce a very large book from somewhere, possibly his pants; it will be the one he’s returning, exchanging for KINGSLAKE—“and here is my card.” He will slide a prim laminated card across the table, marked with the same symbol that graces the front windows. It will bear a cryptic code, stamped hard into the heavy paper, which I will record. Tyndall will be, as always, lucky number 6WNJHY. I will mistype it twice.

After I do my monkey business on the ladder, I will wrap KINGSLAKE in brown paper. I will try to make small talk: “How’s your night going, Mr. Tyndall?”

“Oh, very good, better now,” he will breathe, taking the package with shaking hands. “Making progress, slow, steady, sure! Festina lente, thank you, thank you!” Then the bell will tinkle again as he hurries back out into the street. It will be three in the morning.

*   *   *

Is this a book club? How do they join? Do they ever pay?