Sold one “I Will Keep You Alive.”
The buyer was my former associate, one of the attendees at my boontz-lunch a few weeks before. (See previous “Adventure.”) She paid a surprise visit to the café, and we had a nice chat, involving Colorful Clients We Had Known, going back 40 years to the People’s Temple cases, which we’d worked on together. Then her husband’s two M.I.s came up and then Adele and my book.
The week’s other notable encounter came about because of my new sign. I’ve subbed out the S. Clay Wilson Checkered Demon’s “Buy Bob’s Books!” for a commissioned J.T. Dockery, based on an old “New Yorker” cartoon. A down-and-out wino, unshaven, frazzled cuffs, holes in his shoes, sits crumpled on the sidewalk, upturned hat between his legs, books beside him, a sign on the wall he leans against: MEET THE AUTHOR!
It has drawn its share of looks and smiles. “Wanna buy a book?” I asked one of these gawkers. “No,” the gentleman said. “But I can help you out with a couple bucks.”
“He must not have appreciated your eel skin boots,” Adele said, when I told her.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.