I pay the cretin and leave, happy to be heading home, where I can relieve myself, eat, and begin reading this hard-won book. The headache has miraculously disappeared. I checked out several other bookstores the next day, one of which had a salesperson with vast knowledge of Dr. Thompson, and we had a delightful chat. Besides, there's something special about carrying around a beat up paperback from the era that it was created in. My search will continue into the unforseeable future, because I will not allow little crumpled books with crackly yellowed pages to beat me.
Nothing has yet.
I thought this story was over. And I was very, very wrong. Maybe the weekend I described above was an aberration, or perhaps this current weekend is. Driving home from work the other day, I noticed a small bookstore that I hadn't seen before, even though it's only a few miles from my house. I stopped in and searched around.