“We have too many books,” I told Charlie. It was true, the apartment was being taken over by books that had been bought at second-hand bookshops and charity stores. They filled the shelves and were now stacked in corners. ”It’s time to get rid of some of them.”
He looked at me with disgust. “They are collectible,” he cried. “These books will increase in value.”
We had a routine, like an old married couple. We would go to affluent parts of the city looking for rare books that people had no use for anymore. Intellectuals lived here, and there was a chance that we might stumble upon old art and photography books. “You will not find a Katie Price autobiography in these shops,” Charlie explained. “These places are full of lost treasures. Remember that book you bought for ten pounds and is now worth a fortune?”
Charlie was referring to Germaine Greer’s The Boy that we’d later seen in an antiquarian bookshop for one hundred pounds. “A very controversial book,” he’d said. “It is almost paedophilic.” Except that Charlie’s French had difficulty translating it and made me smile, and this allowed him to think that I was confirming his opinion.
I secretly admit to enjoying these days out, and then retiring to a favourite cafe – the one that sold fish finger filled croissants – and examining what we’d bought. Charlie would carefully display the books on a table alongside cups of coffee with flowery patterns in the froth and take a photo that he posted on Instagram.
“I think that you have become a bibliomaniac,” I told him.
“That word sounds French,” he replied, “but I do not understand it.”
It means that you are an addict, and one day the floor of our apartment will collapse under the weight of the books.”
There was another point I wanted to make, but chose not to, because it would end in an argument. Charlie had a habit of starting novels and never finishing them, and I repeatedly found bookmarks after thirty pages or so. He denied this, but I had yet to see him read a book from beginning to end.
Charlie believed I had more books than him. This might have been true once, but I had learned to thin them out. I’d started putting them in the recycling, because it was a quick fix, but this always felt unacceptable. And then I chose charity shops to dispose of them, the same ones that we visited now. The drawback was that my friends shopped in them as well, and often gave the same books back to me. But no, I’d decided, Charlie had more books than me.
“We need to categorise the books,” Charlie explained, as if this was a compromise. “We can put art books together, likewise photography books, and so on. Then our visitors will realise how sophisticated we are.”
“There might be a short term solution,” I joked. “Levi is moving out soon, and we could turn his bedroom into a library.”
Charlie looked doubtful. “I had thought that we might rent the room out again.”
“I didn’t think that you liked anybody else living here, and I remember the fuss that you made when Levi moved in.”
“That was different,” he replied, “I didn’t know him, but now I will miss him when he is gone. And besides, the extra money is useful.”
This was a point of contention because somewhere along the way, Levi’s rent money had found its way into Charlie’s bank account, and had yet to confront him about it.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 