A Book Signing

I may have told this book sto­ry here before, but since it hap­pened exact­ly thir­ty years ago…

In the spring of 1994, I was informed that I had won the Ari­zona state award for Noth­ing but the Truth. Would I come to Phoenix (I think that’s where it was to hap­pen) to accept the award and give a short speech? I was hap­py to say yes. The date was for ear­ly Decem­ber 1994.

At the time I was liv­ing in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island.

Short­ly after that call, I received anoth­er call. Some­how some folks in Col­orado learned of this award event and asked if I’d be will­ing to do a few school vis­its in the Den­ver area fol­low­ing my trip to Arizona.

Hav­ing an East Coast men­tal­i­ty about geog­ra­phy, I said yes. 

Some­time after that call came yet anoth­er call from the man­ag­er of a children’s book­store in Den­ver (where I had nev­er been). The caller knew about my Den­ver school vis­its and asked if I’d do a sign­ing at the book­store, some place called The Bookies. 

Sure.

Once I had flight arrange­ments set, the book­store man­ag­er would pick me up at Sta­ple­ton Air­port, I’d do the sign­ing, then I’d be tak­en to my school-des­ig­nat­ed hotel.

All good. Arrange­ments were made and the infor­ma­tion was passed on to all the nec­es­sary parties.

Some six months lat­er, on Decem­ber 4, I arrived at the old Den­ver air­port. No one was there to meet me. Such things hap­pen. So I went out to the curb and wait­ed. I wait­ed for about an hour.

Not know­ing what else to do, I called the book­store and reached the man­ag­er. She apol­o­gized and explained she was new on the job. The old man­ag­er (the one who set up the vis­it) had left, and this new one hadn’t been told I was to be picked up. She would come right out to get me.

Anoth­er forty min­utes passed before a bat­tered Grand Chero­kee pulled up. A skin­ny lady wear­ing a kilt popped out of the car. “Are you Avi?”

“I am.”

“Sor­ry about all this. I’m just two weeks into being the store man­ag­er and I had very lit­tle infor­ma­tion about your vis­it. I’ll get you where you need to be.”

I got in and we start­ed up. After a short while, she turned to me and said, “What were you going to be doing at the store?”

“A book signing.”

“Oh. I wasn’t told that, either. In fact, I don’t know any­thing about sign­ings. My last job was at IBM. They didn’t have authors com­ing there.”

Indeed, it soon became appar­ent that noth­ing had been done to set up the sign­ing, much less pub­li­cize it. The only kids that were in The Book­ies that after­noon were the new manager’s two kids. That meant there was noth­ing for me to do in this essen­tial­ly desert­ed store oth­er than to talk to this new manager. 

Hap­pi­ly (Lin­da was her name) was smart, inter­est­ing, and a very good con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist. I think we talked for two hours, at least. In fact, I was quite smit­ten with her.

The next day I made my first school vis­it. As it hap­pened, some of Linda’s kids were stu­dents at the school. I noticed that she was there.

I kept think­ing about her.

That next day, when I fin­ished up at yet anoth­er school and was back at my hotel, I called the book­store, reached Lin­da, and asked her to have din­ner with me the next night.

She agreed.

We did have din­ner and had a lot more talk. She brought me back to the hotel. We said good night, and I went to my room. She left.

As it hap­pened, she decid­ed she want­ed to talk some more and went back to the hotel. At the check-in counter, she asked if she could speak to “Avi.”

“I have no guest with that name,” said the clerk “What’s his last name?”

Lin­da looked at him. “I have no idea.”

Resource­ful, she grabbed the guest sign-in book, went down the list of names, found my last name, and called me. “Would you like to talk some more?”

So we did.

Was it love at first sight? Well, maybe sec­ond. Read­er, the key point is that I mar­ried her.

The thir­ti­eth anniver­sary of our first meet­ing is com­ing up.

Best book sign­ing I ever did.