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store now. But Benny had given Romei my number; maybe it was time I bought myself some books.

8
    BILLBOARD ARTIST OF THE HEART

    Inside People of the Book, a green-haired girl wearing a child’s tartan, a happy-face T-shirt (but not a happy face), and a Stop & Shop nametag that said “Hello, I’m Lila!” advised me that Benny was out. She wouldn’t look me in the eye: she needed all her concentration, apparently, for the Daily News Jumble.
    I wasn’t surprised: Benny was probably at one of the rabbi gigs he took to support his literary habit (performer of interfaith marriages, virtual mohel for parents who want the celebration without the slice). Or he might be in his apartment two floors above the store, but I wasn’t about to ring the bell.
    I found Romei’s books in Benny’s Great Wall of Poetry. Handsome and pricey, they’d been reissued by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on the occasion of the Great Man’s sojourn to Stockholm. His by-now-famous face, in different poses, filled the back covers: salt-and-pepper goatee, more salt than pepper. Straight brown hair, a centimeter too long. Pale, plump cheeks, pouchy eyes. Simple wire-rimmed glasses. Yankees baseball cap.
    I brought the books to Benny’s folding-table café (one table, reserved for Friends of Benny), drank the organic ginger beer Lila brought me grudgingly from out back.
    The store hadn’t changed in the year since I’d visited last: unpackedboxes still blocked aisles and Marla, Benny’s Persian, still held court in her book box. I went over to pay obeisance. She tolerated my head scritch, but withheld her purr, which she reserved for Benny.
    How I’d missed this place! Over by the cash register, where bestsellers should have been stacked in attractive pyramids, stood that smallish bookcase holding issues of Gilgul and other literary magazines. What passed for impulse purchases among People of the Book.
    I couldn’t resist: I left my table to browse the bookcase, returned to find the table gone, my books gone. Irritated, I got new copies and asked Lila if I could leave Benny a message.
    Sure, she said, opening The Anxiety of Influence and handing me a pen. Go for it.
    Just then, Benny appeared, trotting down the steps from his mezzanine office, ritual tzitzit fringes flying from the four corners of his garment.
    Benny was six and a half feet tall; before he became a rollerblading vegan he’d looked like a dark-haired Santa, with full beard and even fuller cheeks. At his poorest, he’d nearly sold himself to Macy’s, but didn’t—bad faith like that couldn’t be atoned for in a single lifetime, he said. Also, he wouldn’t tuck in his tzitzit , which Macy’s thought might confuse the kiddies.
    That was years ago. Now Benny was lean and suntanned: he said his morning prayers while gliding through the park in a cherry-red bodysuit—the only time he dressed without tzitzit .
    Shir chadash! he sang out (his psalmic name for me: “new song”).
    Rabbi! I shouted.
    Why didn’t you tell Marie to come get me?
    Marie?
    Benny looked tired. More tired than usual. His owl eyes sagged, there was a softness to his patrician cheekbones, his eyebrows were turning a patchy gray.
    Uh, I said, looking at Marie-cum-Lila, who looked me in the eye now, though blankly. I figured you were busy.
    Don’t mind her, he whispered, pecking at my cheek. She’s brilliant but moody.
    All Benny’s protégées were brilliant but moody, which was whyhis store was such a mess. The manic ones invented new shelving systems, the depressed ones watched as towers of dictionaries toppled onto not-so-politically-correct children’s books. Given the state of the store, I guessed his latest beauty was of the latter affliction.
    Benny led me to the back of the store, where he found the folding table and opened it in front of the section marked Victimization Manuals (books you and I might call Self-Help).
    She’s a graphic artist, he said, still whispering. Works exclusively on