I hung the book by the covers and let the pages flip open. Nothing fell out. I sighed. I'd have to go through the whole damn thing.
"I'm going back to your ship and read in comfort," I told Rene.
"You're no help here anyway," he said, putting the lunch packages in a large plastic bag he'd found somewhere. "No use letting these go to waste."
I didn't tell him I had the clue to Uncle Isadore's fortune in my hand. He didn't know Uncle Isadore, so he wouldn't have believed me.
Nothing is more uncomfortable than reading an antique book. There is no way to lie back and flash it on a screen or run the tape over your reading glasses while you lie prone and relax. You have to hold it. If you try to hold it lying down, your arms get tired. If you put it down on a table to read, your neck gets tired from bending over. And the pages keep flipping and make you lose your place.
Still, I read it all the way through. It wasn't too bad. Not like Edgar Guest, of course, who was the only ancient author I liked in General Studies. But I found there was a sort of Grilch Hop beat to it that reminded me of the Footlooses I used to go to in Middle School. I grinned. It was funny to think of now.
I found no clues in the book. The only thing to do was read it again, more carefully.
I noticed there was one poem with a real Grilch Hop beat. I thought suddenly of Sally, my regular partner at the Footlooses. She was very blonde and she affected a green crestwave in her hair, pulled over her forehead with a diamond clip. She was a beauty, all right. But she was a little silly. And she had that tendency to overdress.
No, I sighed, she wouldn't have done for a studs and neck clasp man. But I couldn't help wondering where she was now and what she was like now. Did she remember me, and did she think about me when she heard that song we used to dance to, because it was about a girl named Sally?