Life Between The Covers

Dan Zak: An order has come in from China. Someone in China is looking for an old book.

"Oh Edward, did you have energy left to hunt for one?" says Natalie Hughes.

"What was it?" her husband says, rising from his chair.

"I don't remember," Natalie says. "Let me look."

She squints at her computer, which is running slow.

"Come on, machine, wake up."

The title is "A Descriptive and Illustrative Catalogue of Chinese Bronzes Acquired During the Administration of John Ellerton Lodge." Brown cloth with gilt titling. It is somewhere among the 30,000 volumes in the Bookhouse, which is exactly what it sounds like: a 100-year-old house collared by ivy and packed with antiquated books, hidden on a side street off Wilson Boulevard in a strip-malled stretch of Arlington.

Edward, 91, heads to the stairs.