Every now and then an elderly couple would show up at our office carrying large shopping bags packed with hardbacks. The man had been a literary junkie. He bought novels religiously and wrote to the authors to have his books inscribed. Some writers, familiar with his regular correspondence, borrowed the man's unusual name for use as characters in their books. "To a great man with a great name!", read one inscription. My boss would buy the nicer things he had, but after a while the collection became exhausted of valuable items. Still, my boss would buy a couple books here & there out of kindness and respect.

Recently, the man died. Shortly thereafter his widow contacted my boss to offer anything of what remained of her late husbands collection. My boss reluctantly agreed to travel to her home to look at the books. He was sure there was nothing he wanted, but he went anyway. He returned full of consternation. My boss had known this man's books backwards and forwards, but on his visit he noticed there were quite a few titles he'd never been offered before. He said the signatures in these new books were obvious forgeries. He said nothing about them to the widow, but the discovery weighed heavy in his mind. He struggled with the ethical decision whether to inform her for a month. Finally he decided the right thing to do would be to tell her, especially before she offered them to another dealer. He did so in a personal letter, being careful not to imply that her or her late husband had created the fakes.

The first letter we received in reply stated plainly: My boss had planted those forgeries. He had smuggled them into her house in his coat. She also knew: while at the house he stole a number of other books. These were also spirited away in the bottomless coat. She wanted an apology and the return of her stolen property. We all read this and we all scratched our heads. In the most gentle and sympathetic way possible we informed her that her claims were untrue, that our business relationship was concluded and that we wished her the best of luck & healing.

In her next letter, she asked for specific titles to be returned that were stolen, in particular the book where her husband appeared as a character(a detective, no less) citing the sentimental value it held in the family.(This book had actually been sold to us in 2000 by her husband and we in turn sold it soon after.) She also detailed how she had exposed our "web of lies" employing the most absurd and retarded misuse of logic you ever heard(unless you are into modern politics). We were informed that the forgeries were heading to a forensics lab, where my boss's finger prints and coat threads surely would be discovered. Reading her letters was part hilarious, part baffling, part heart-breaking. Here was a woman whose husband had died and now she was losing her mind --- and letting us know in great detail.

Today we received a package. It was from the Black Widow. Inside were the books my boss had said were fake. Two John Irving novels(there were many more forgeries but my boss only notified her of two.) Also inside was a hand-written letter containing her latest revisions to her version of events and her radical deconstructions of our growing network of lies. I cracked open one of the Irvings and flipped to the title page. In in slow, shakey, deliberate ball-point pen was the barely legible name John Irving, written as if Irving was 100 years old. It looked so bad it made me gasp.