Gary's passion for books, always immense, has lately become something even more than that. He lives with his books as if they were intimate and inseparable companions.
Every evening, under the quiet light of his bedside-lamp, I find a book reposing on his pillow as if it were a fallen bird, vulnerable and wanting protection.
I pause and look at it, amused. And with a suspended heart. For me, it's as if the book were the branch of a tree.
