Page 29 of Checking Out the Librarian

Made it to Powells Books

Everything makes me think of last night

Photos flooded his screen. The Overstory by Richard Powers. Entrances and Exits by Seinfeld’s Kramer, aka Michael Richards, and Shakespeare’s Richard The Third.

Jonathan didn’t have to struggle to understand the trend. And then of course a photo of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick, which made Connor’s theme unmistakable.

His hand looked bigger than Jonathan remembered as he held a yellowed vintage paperback by Dick Francis called Proof.

BatsAndBalls

Hope you like the Dick pics!

The last photo reminded Jonathan of the battered paperbacks that had crammed his grandmother’s shelves in her Palm Desert bungalow. That was the second time this week he’d remembered the times he’d found refuge at her book-filled bungalow, and the missing hit hard.

He was a librarian because of Gammy.

She would have hooted over a guy who sent photos of books instead of the traditional dick pic. She’d enjoyed her romances, decades’ worth double-stacked on her shelves, all the way back to those stalwarts of the Eighties like Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Jude Deveraux.

He couldn’t remember the title or author, but there had been one particular cover with a male model standing naked in the wilderness, body concealed only by the flowing dress and hair of a kneeling heroine. That had rocked teen Jonathan’s world.

He and Lily should definitely put together an Eighties-themed display.

He moved to a more central bench where the sun warmed his shoulders and head, making him feel slower than he usually did.

Relaxed, that was the word.

Surrounded by roses and sunshine and thankfully very distant yapping dogs, it was something he didn’t feel very often, but right now, reading texts from a guy who spammed him with book porn, even though he didn’t know Jonathan was a librarian, he could examine that feeling and use its proper name.

On Saturday, June 14, at one in the afternoon, he, Jonathan Park, felt relaxed.

He looked at his phone and reread the messages. It was laughably clear that playing along with the Dick-but-not-a-dick-pic game wouldn’t alienate Connor, but maybe it would be better to wait.

He looked at the photos and texts again.

A steady voice inside his head that, as usual, sounded like his former New York therapist asked him to consider what could realistically happen in the scenario where he went ahead and sent a text now. Not everything that could possibly go wrong, but what could go wrong here in this situation, and did that matter.

No, of course it didn’t matter.

And anyway, Connor had sent him a total of eight texts since they’d said goodbye so realistically Jonathan should assume Connor would be happy even with a solitary gif.

A quick phone search informed him that there was a rose named St. Richard of Chichester which was a deep velvet red with a superfluous number of petals.

Connor wouldn’t know that the particular red rose in front of Jonathan’s bench was something else entirely, some disease-resistant, long-lasting whatevermajig, because even though Connor liked elderflower cocktails, “borrowing” classy moisturizer, and being ordered around, the nuances between deep red roses were certainly too much for ninety-nine-point-nine percent of twenty-something year-old men, gay or not.

Axel1998

I’m at the rose garden.

I met the glorious Saint Richard of Chichester.

He’d give it a moment, since he was suspicious that Connor was closely monitoring the app because, please, he was so fabulous the man had already spammed him this morning.

BatsandBalls

A doggo? Please say St Richard is a puppy!

Suspicions confirmed.