Page 5 of Checking Out the Librarian

Lots of stuff. Lots and lots and lots of stuff.

“It’s my turn to close, but I’ll be done at six.”

He’d almost forgotten Lily was in the room, still flipping through her magazine trove.

“Want to go out for a drink or something?”

“Oh, that would be nice.” He and Lily had coffee or cocktails away from work once a week, at least.

They were both single and liked a lot of the same things, like twisty murder stories with well-dressed characters, prickly succulents in tiny pots, human rights, pop divas with fabulous eyes, and clothes they could not afford. More importantly, they disliked the same things, which Jonathan believed was as solid a foundation for friendship as any piffling list of enthusiasms.

“I hear a but?”

That’s just me, thinking about a fantastic butt.

“I’m going to Portland.” He checked the wall clock that still hung in the staff room. “I need to leave as soon as I’m off.” On Fridays, he arrived an hour before the ten o’clock opening and lived out his childhood fantasy to be alone in the library shelving books, a schedule that meant he finished at four.

He’d wanted to hit the road earlier, or get a later dinner reservation, but the bistro he’d chosen only had tables at six thirty. He was new enough at the library that he wasn’t comfortable asking for an hour of comp time or promising to put in an extra hour on a different day, especially not for personal business. He’d filled his gas tank yesterday, because his timing would have to be impeccable to be ready by 6:30. It was going to be a very quick turnaround at the hotel.

Lily raised her eyebrows. “Big plans in Portland?”

“A show.”

“What?”

“Sorry?” He’d trapped himself; this was why he hated lying. His feet pushed into the floor. He’d have to be clever Jonathan. That version of himself was easy to adopt at work.

She smirked. “What show?”

“New musical. It’s called Nacho Business. Wherein a snippy young ingenue learns, through a series of dramatic events, to keep her questions to herself.”

“Ha!” She pointed action fingers at him; no wonder she too was single. “Sounds like a private viewing, my single dude friend. No shame in that.”

She swapped one lurid Eighties cover with a different magazine from the box and flipped pages while still talking. “I should probably do that instead of trying for date-dates like last night, ugh.”

She wasn’t annoyed. That was good. He could look back at his phone.

Crap, the iEros app had already locked itself for security and needed his code again.

“Hey, listen to this.” Lily began to read out loud. “Dear Editor, My name is Daphne and last night I dreamt I went to Miami again. It seemed to me I stood on the cracked pavement leading to the club stairs, and for a while I could not enter, for a Colombian barred the way. He wore a pastel jacket and a chain upon his chest. I called in my dream to the bouncer, and had no answer, and peering closer through the⁠—”

“It’s the opening of Rebecca!“ He couldn’t stop himself from raising his hand to his chest.

He knew it wasn’t Daphne du Maurier’s words, clearly, but he knew those lines, had once memorized the first three paragraphs to recite dramatically for his grandmother. The rhythms and schemes of her favorite book pulled emotion out of him the same way the notes of Me and the Sky and his other program music would take him right back to a different place in his life. One prompt, one cue, and feelings strummed in him without conscious thought, a flow he couldn’t stop even though he hadn’t heard a live voice speak those lines in almost a dozen years, not since Tammy had passed.

He reached for Lily and the magazine.

“Don’t you go making grabby hands. I found it.”

“These aren’t my grabby hands. These are my pleading-please hands. I love Daphne du Maurier.”

That was wholly inadequate to convey how much the book meant to him, whisking him away to the summer his parents had abandoned him in Palm Springs and Gammy had fed him crudités like he was one of her friends while they’d reclined on pool floats and talked about books. Together they’d combed thrift stores for cast-off designer clothes and romances she hadn’t read. She’d taught him to sew. And they’d read every afternoon on her aluminum-framed pool loungers. They’d read so much.

After that summer, he’d been skating almost every day, and only had snatches of time in Palm Springs with her. But he never forgot the summer of Gammy and Daphne du Maurier, the last time he’d been able to do nothing and yet be enough.

“Look at this.” She held the magazine up to show him the cover, which featured a giant pumpkin obscuring the not-safe-for-work parts of a clearly naked man. The colors and fonts did in fact look as cheesy as she’d previously described. “It’s some Halloween spoof issue, I think. Satire.”

“See this?” He unbuttoned the cuff of his white linen shirt and pushed the sleeve as high as it would go on his biceps. “This is a lilac and a copper beech and if that doesn’t get you to give me this magazine, then bitch, I will have to scratch you.”