“Yes.”
“Thank you,” Logan said, grabbing both my hands in a vise lock and shaking hard. “Look. This room here”—he pointed at the closed door—“Beatrice shut it down after it came into disrepair, and she stuffed all those books into other places or the storeroom upstairs, beside the kitchenette.” He reached into his wallet and fussed about for a moment before drawing out a business card. “This is the number to our local handyman. This guy always gives me a break on cost, and he’ll fix that room up in a jiffy.”
“Sure. I’ll call him today,” I said, taking the card.
“You have my number?” Logan asked.
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He handed me the ring of skeleton keys.
“Wait, Mr. Fields,” I said as he started to turn away. “How much time? Until the state decides whether to pull funding or not?”
“About a month.”
“Oh.”
Logan smiled, looking like a man brought back from the brink of death. “Godspeed to you, Christopher.” He saw himself out.
I stood in the middle of the library, listening to the nothingness. I unbuttoned my jacket after a moment and tossed it and my scarf over the back of the chair at the checkout desk. If I had so little time to put this place into working order again, and maintain my job as a result, there wasn’t a moment to waste. I didn’t have anywhere else to be, right? I picked up the landline phone and dialed the number on the card.
It rang a few times before a deep voice answered. “Hello?”
“Uhm, hi, is this—” I looked at the card. “—Miles Sakasai?”
“This is,” he confirmed.
“Good. Ah, my name is Christopher Hughes. Mr. Fields from the Board of Selectmen gave me your number.”
Silence.
“So… I’ve been hired to take over the library and was told to call you for repairs.”
“What do you need done?”
Excellent question. I moved around the desk, the phone cord stretching as I walked to the closed door. I tried the knob, but it was locked, so I sifted through my newly acquired keys.
“Mr. Fields said there was a room that was closed off.” I paused to shove the door open with my shoulder once I got it unlocked. The room was dark and smelled of dust andoldness. I coughed loudly and waved a hand. “Shit.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I replied. “I just got the door open. It looks like a lot of the shelves have broken on the bookcases built into the walls.”
“Are you going to be at the library all day?” Miles’s voice was a little rough-sounding. Gritty. I liked it a lot.
“Yeah, I’ll probably be here day and night, by the looks of the place.”
“I have no other jobs today. I’ll be over soon.” He hung up without another word.
I removed the receiver from my ear and stared at it. “Okay, then.” I shut the door so the odor wouldn’t permeate the rest of the downstairs, and walked back to the desk to set the phone down.
There was a staircase near the study room that was roped off, but I pulled it aside and went up. The stairs creaked and groaned loudly with their age, disrupting the beautiful stillness of the library below. I reached the second-floor landing and flipped a light switch on the wall. To the left was a tiny, open space turned into a break room. It had a minifridge, sink, two cupboards, and an old table with mismatched chairs.
The next room was the bathroom, where I paused to wash some of the dust from my hands. The mirror was old and tarnished with black spots, but the reflection was that of a happy man in his late twenties. Definitely happy against all odds. Something in my gut told me this was my small-town calling. Plus, to be surrounded by books all day?
Heaven.
Pure bliss!
