I quite enjoy my work.
I get to travel a lot and I meet some very interesting people and the hours aren’t bad at all. I am but one of many who do what I do. I haven’t been at it for very long, at least as compared to some who have been on the job for a very long time indeed. I don’t think about my beginnings much. I was birthed in a gesture of kindness, a helping hand offered in a time of need, and I grew into an image painted or drawn or carved on wood or stone. I thrived upon and was given form by the written word and was empowered by belief that grew out of love, because words have power as do the beliefs shaped by them. 
I am a psychopomp, but for the living, not the dead, because the living are more often in need of help. I am guardian and guide. I am the mystery in the night, the seemingly random road taken that leads to wonder. 
I am the ghost of a smile.
Richard Logan looked up into the London sky, so bright and sunny just a moment before and now pelting large, cold drops of rain that would soon soak him to the skin. The pedestrians surrounding him on the narrow but busy street between the tube station and the British Museum were opening their umbrellas, but Richard, new to the city and not used to the sudden vagaries of London’s weather, wasn’t carrying one.
He was a dark-haired, serious-faced young man, not yet thirty, with long-fingered hands that looked like they belonged to an artist. And in a way, they did. He was an American surgeon on exchange with a London hospital and was on his way to take his first look at the British Museum when the sudden downpour hit. Pedestrians surged around him as he stood for a moment looking about and then his eyes lit on the small, unprepossessing shop before him. Inside its display window facing the street was an array of old, dusty books. The shop’s nature was confirmed by its window’s archaically ornate gold leaf lettering, so badly treated by time that he could barely read it: Old Books and Manuscripts.
Murmuring to himself, You never know, Richard went up the three stone steps that had been polished to a dull sheen by the footwear of centuries of customers and threw open the creaky door. A small bell jangled as he closed it.
He let his eyes adjust to the dimness as he stood in the entrance. It looked, Richard thought, much as he’d imagined an antiquarian London bookstore would look. Books crowded sagging wooden shelves, were piled in odd corners and upon random tables, filling every nook and cranny of the irregularly-shaped room. He took a deep breath and caught the scent of paper well-aged and imbued with the countless smells of the generations of their owners. Pipe tobacco of university dons, perfume of fine ladies. Lurking spices of near every type of national cuisine. Richard smiled as he moved through the room and caught a subtle whiff of marijuana wafting off a stack of vintage Rolling Stone magazines piled on an end table set beside a comfy leather reading chair whose upholstery had worn through on both arms
All this place needs, he thought, is a plump older gent dressed in baggy tweeds with a pince nez teetering on the tip of his nose.
“Can I help?”
He started at the voice. She’d come from an inner room as silently as a cat and he half turned, looking over his shoulder. He floundered helplessly for a moment, then gestured toward the street.
“Oh – I was just...the rain...”
He saw the immediate dismissal in her eyes and felt a sudden stab in his heart for the second time in moments.
They were, he thought, the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. Violet, with flecks of green jade and honied gold. She had long black hair and a fine-boned face. She turned from him and moved away through the cluttered room with feline suppleness.
“I mean.” He was suddenly desperate to regain her grace. “I collect books. Love them. Always have.”
She had gone behind the waist high counter and arced an exquisite eyebrow at him. Richard approached the counter, feeling like an idiot. He was by no means a player. He had a certain innate shyness, but mainly he never could find time for women. From less than an illustrious background, he’d had to work his way through college to supplement the scholarships he’d accumulated, because his single-parent mother had three other children and was in no position to help him with the bills. He also had no desire to start life a hundred thousand dollars in the red, so he’d lived frugally and concentrated on his goal of becoming a surgeon. He’d always loved fixing stuff, making things whole again. He’d focused on his career like a laser because to him there was no higher calling than mending people.
But he wasn’t lying to her about the books. They had been his friends all his life. A confirmed scrounger through old bookstores, he had the patience to browse through hundreds of volumes and the eye to sift the gold from the dross. It was the one hobby he allowed himself, and now that he was actually making real money he had deeper pockets to indulge his desires.
“Do you have anything special?” he asked suddenly.
“Special?” She seemed doubtful. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know. Unusual. Scarce.” He didn’t want to say expensive. No, definitely not that. He could withstand the indifference in her gaze, but he never wanted to see contempt in it.
She looked at him for a moment, then slowly nodded. She gestured to the glass counter behind which she stood.
Richard looked down, eye ranging over a couple of old, mostly battered volumes given the honor of being kept under glass. His gaze glided over them for a moment, then stopped, came back, and rested on the red cloth cover with the faded embossed gilt oval illustration centered by three additional lines of gilt along the cover’s margins.
“Can I see that?” he asked, pointing.
She looked at him, momentarily frowning, then shrugged. He wondered at her brief hesitance, but she took the volume out and laid it on the counter before him and as he flipped it open he stared in disbelief.
First, the signature. Clean, flowing in a fluid, looping style, in the purple ink the author favored: “To My Friend Jennifer, yours always, Lewis Carroll.” Then Richard’s eyes flicked to the bottom of the page to see “MacMillan and Co.” and below that the year “1866.”
“ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ,” Richard said in a soft voice like Galahad stumbling upon the Holy Grail. “A first edition.”
But, of course he knew that it really wasn’t. It was the first unsuppressed edition. The real first had been published the year before, but John Tenniel, the artist, had been bitterly disappointed by the quality of the printing and had Charles Dodgson—the author’s real name—recall the entire run and make the publisher issue another. Very few copies of that true first run had somehow made it out into the world—twenty-two still existed. For all practical purposes the second printing was generally accepted by collectors as the first. And that edition was by no means common, having had a run of only a few thousand copies, most of which had vanished over the years. Few of the survivors were still in the original binding state. Even fewer had been signed by Dodgson. And fewer yet had been signed by him as “Lewis Carroll.”
“Jennifer must have been a child,” Richard murmured.
“How do you know that?”
He looked up into her eyes, which were regarding him intently.
“When Dodgson signed copies of Alice for adults he always signed as Best Regards or Best Wishes or Whatever, from the author . Unless he knew the owner well, in which case he used his real name. He only signed as ‘Lewis Carroll’ for kids.”
She nodded slowly, and Richard felt that he had scored some obscure points in an even obscurer game that was being played between them.
“She was my grandfather’s great grandmother,” she said. “I was named for her.”
“Jennifer.” He was a bit taken aback by this. “It’s been in your family that long?”
She nodded.
“And you’re selling it?”
“It’s what we do here,” she said.
He looked back down at the book.
“It’s in terrible condition,” she said, not exactly employing the hard sell.
Richard nodded. He’d noticed that right off, even before he’d opened it, but the thrill of discovering the signature as well the date had driven that from his mind. It looked as if it had gone through a conflagration. The front cover was in decent condition for a book that was a hundred and fifty years old and the beginning pages were all right. But the last third had been damaged by both fire and water, with the destruction growing worse throughout. Richard inspected it gingerly. Some pages were touched by damp, some singed by fire. Near the end only a few lines of the last few page survived. The back cover was only a charred fragment.
“It happened during the Blitz,” she explained. “My grandfather’s house got hit by a German bomb.”
Richard looked at her.
“Everyone survived, but,” she shrugged, “they lost much of their collection. They salvaged what they could.”
“What do you want for it?” Richard asked.
“Three thousand pounds,” she said steadily.
“Done.”
He could not read the sudden look in her eyes.
It had been a month since Jennifer Barnstable had sold Alice and there was still an empty place inside her. She wondered how long it would last. She suspected that it would be there forever.
She’d been stunned by his quick acceptance of the price she’d quoted. It was certainly high, given the volume’s condition. But there was the signature. And the personal attachment. She was almost furious that the young fool had accepted her outrageous price without a murmur of protest, but then she realized that her anger was actually directed at herself. Yes, it was a bookstore. Yes, they sold books. Yes, that book was on the shelf. But she’d never expected someone to come in off the street and whisk it away like that. She cursed her stupid self-confidence, because deep down she knew that she’d thought that he’d never pay that price, that she was playing some kind of mysterious game of truth and dare with him. And he’d won it. An offer accepted is an offer to be honored, no matter the cost or the remorse after the fact.
Jennifer stood behind the counter and looked down at the empty spot in the glass case that she hadn’t the heart to fill. It might, she thought, remain empty forever.
The bell above the door jangled as someone came into the shop. He paused in the doorway, closing his lowered umbrella. It was raining, just like that day a month ago, just like it had seemed to be every day since she had given Alice away.
“This time,” he said as he collapsed his black umbrella, “I came prepared. I’m getting used to your weather.”
It was him, Jennifer realized. Richard Logan. She remembered the name on the black Amex card. Doctor Richard Logan.
She tried to conjure up some resentment toward him in general, toward this unexpected reappearance specifically, but found herself unable to do so. After all, it wasn’t his fault. He was just a random customer, with the innocent face of a blameless puppy and eyes that…
Jennifer looked down at the brown paper wrapped package he’d laid on the counter.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Open it,” he said, with, Jennifer thought, more than a trace of smugness.
Frowning, she removed the wrapping with deft hands and when the first bit of red cover appeared through a final layer of tissue paper, she knew instantly. It was Alice . But Alice whole and well again. Not new looking. She recognized every slight imperfection of the front cover and quickly, though carefully, turned the pages. It wasn’t tarted up in buckram or red morocco with fine marbled end papers and raised bands across the spine. The new parts of the book were mated perfectly with the old. The repairs were seamless. If Jennifer hadn’t known where they began she couldn’t have spotted them. The back cover matched the front perfectly and had the same moderate signs of aging.
“Do you like it?” he asked her.
Jennifer could only stare for a moment. Then she asked, “You did this?”
He laughed, a little self-consciously. “Good lord, no. I actually do dabble in book repair, but I wouldn’t trust that book to these hands.” He held them up. “I mean, I know my way around the human heart pretty well, but I found an old bindery in Bath to restore this particular patient.”
“It must have cost a fortune,” Jennifer said, half to herself.
He shrugged. “It’s what I do. I fix things. But I know to call in specialists when they’re needed.”
He looked quite pleased with himself, Jennifer thought. As well he should. She felt momentary jealousy that he could afford to do something she and her family never could, but quickly got over any resentment. That was the way of things, wasn’t it?
“Well,” Jennifer said, slowly, touching Alice gently on the cover, “thank you for showing me this. I’m happy that—”
Suddenly she couldn’t go on.
His face changed expression and he shook his head. “No—you don’t...It’s for you,” he said. “It belongs here, to you. I just...fixed it. You see, we don’t own things like this. We’re their custodians. When the time comes, we pass them on. To your children, perhaps.”
Jennifer was stunned. “I can’t take this from you.”
He seemed genuinely bewildered. “Why not?”
“Well—I don’t have any children.” The utter absurdity of it hit her. “I don’t even have a boyfriend.”
The look in his eyes suddenly changed again and Jennifer felt them catch hers and hold. “Someday,” he said, “you may. Have both.”
They looked at each other for a long moment that stretched and held and then Jennifer saw something move on his face. His eyes widened and there was such a look in them—
Jennifer realized that his gaze had flickered fractionally away from hers, over her shoulder and past her. She glanced in the mirror that was situated at the end of the counter that allowed her to see most of the room behind her, put there as a half-hearted gesture to ward against shop lifters. And she saw it, too.
There, sitting atop a dusty bookshelf, well towards the shop’s rear, was a large, fat, orange and white striped cat, smiling a huge impossible smile, and as they watched for a moment that seemed to last almost forever, it gradually faded until it was just that smile, and then that too drifted away on the dusty air.
I am a psychopomp for the living. I furnish the ticket that can take you to your heart’s desire, but you have to figure out how exactly to use it. I am the road unexpected. The mystery in the night. The ghost of a smile.
I do quite enjoy my work. 
For Joseph and Nicole, with all imaginable good wishes, from (to borrow a phrase), the Author.