Some time around 1963 or so, in the Spring, I was in New York City, and on my own in the Scribner’s book store on Fifth Avenue. I had heard about the James Bond books; I very carefully assembled a complete set and brought them to the cash register. The clerk was an older woman, tall, and very beautiful, and as I put the neat stack of books on the counter, she leaned over, smiled, and with slightly raised eyebrows said, “You’re going to have fun with these.”
On the same trip, on a day following, in the book department of a large store, I found Alligator, a Harvard Lampoon Parody of James Bond; I saved it for last.
It makes me smile to know we patronized the same bookstore in my home borough a decade or so before we met.
And it amuses to see you recall or reconstruct a memory that endures across a century or so of “an older woman, tall, and very beautiful,” I have no doubt she was,