That seemed uncharitable to Lily, but I would not let my pique peak.

“I will stop calling,” I said calmly. “And while I will never allow myself to be banned from the Strand, I promise not to seek information when you are sit ing at that particular desk, and if you are ever working the cash register, I will make sure to maneuver so that you are not the clerk who rings me up. Will that suf ice?”

“There’s no need to snarl,” Mark said.

“That wasn’t snarling,” I pointed out. “Not even remotely. If you’re planning to make it in the bookselling arena, I would advise you to learn to make the distinction between a snarl and a well-placed bon mot. They are not one and the same.” I took out a pen and of ered him the inside of my arm.

“Just write down the address and we’ll be squared away.”

He took the pen and wrote down an address on East Twenty-second Street, pressing down a lit le too hard on my skin.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, reclaiming the boot. “I’ll be sure to put in a good word with Mr. Strand for you!” As I exited the aisle, I felt a treatise on American naval misadventure shot-put past my head. I left it on the ground for the shot-put er to reshelve.

I will admit: There was a part of me that wanted to wash my arm. Not because of Mark’s handwriting, which was the kind of chicken scratch more associated with death row convicts than bookstore clerks. No—it wasn’t the handwriting I was tempted to erase, but the information it conveyed. Because here was the key to meeting Lily … and I wasn’t sure I wanted to put it in the lock.

Sofia’s words were nagging at me: Was Lily the girl in my head? And if she was, wasn’t reality bound to be disappointing?

No, I had to reassure myself. The words in the red Moleskine were not writ en by the girl in your head. You have to trust the words. They do not create anything more than themselves.

When I rang the doorbell, I could hear it chime throughout the brownstone, the kind of intonation that lets you believe a servant will be answering the door. For at least a minute, there was a responding silence—I shifted the boot from hand to hand and debated whether to ring again. My restraint was a rare victory of politeness over expediency, and I was rewarded eventually by a shu e of feet and a maneuvering of locks and bolts.

The door was answered by neither a butler nor a maid. Instead, it was answered by a museum guard from Madame Tussauds.

“I know you!” I sput ered.

The old woman gave me a long, hard look.

“And I know that boot,” she replied.

“Yes,” I said. “There’s that.”

I had no idea whether she remembered me from the museum. But then she opened the door a lit le wider and motioned for me to come in.I half expected to be greeted by a waxwork statue of Jackie Chan. (In other words, I expected her to have taken some of her work home with her.) But instead, the foyer was an antechamber of antiques, like suddenly I had stepped back into a dozen decades at once, and none of them were later than 1940. Next to the door was a stand llled with umbrel as—at least a dozen of them, each with its own curved wood handle.

The old woman caught me staring.

“You’ve never seen an umbrel a stand before?” she asked haughtily.

“I was just trying to imagine a situation where one person would need twelve umbrel as. It seems almost indecent to have so many, when there are so many people who don’t have any.”

She nodded at this, then asked, “What’s your name, young man?”

“Dash,” I told her.

“Dash?”

“It’s short for Dashiell,” I explained.

“I never said it wasn’t,” she replied flatly.

She led me into a room that could only be called a parlor. The drapery was so thick and the furniture so cloaked that I half expected to nd Sherlock Holmes thumb-wrestling with Jane Austen in the corner. It wasn’t as dusty or smoky as one expects a parlor to be, but all the wood had the weight of card catalogs and the fabric seemed soaked in wine. Knee-high sculptures perched in corners and by the replace, while jacketless books crowded on shelves, peering down like old professors too tired to speak to one another.

I felt very much at home.

following a gesture from the old woman, I set led on a set ee. When I breathed in, the air smelled like old money.

“Is Lily home?” I asked.

The woman set led down across from me and laughed.

“Who’s to say I’m not Lily?” she asked back.

“Well,” I said, “a few of my friends have actually met Lily, and I like to think they would’ve mentioned if she were eighty.”

“Eighty!” The old woman feigned shock. “I’ll have you know I’m not a year over forty-three.”

“With all due respect,” I said, “if you’re forty-three, then I’m a fetus.” She leaned back in her chair and examined me like she was contemplating a purchase. Her hair was fastened tightly in a bun, and I felt fastened just as tightly into her scrutiny.

“Seriously,” I said. “Where’s Lily?”

“I need to gauge your intentions,” she said, “before I can allow you to dill ydally with my niece.”

“I need to gauge your intentions,” she said, “before I can allow you to dill ydally with my niece.”

“I assure you I have neither dill ying nor dall ying on my mind,” I replied. “I simply want to meet her. In person. You see, we’ve been—” She raised her hand to cut me o . “I am aware of your epistolary irtation. Which is all well and good—as long as it’s well and good.