Pamela Morsi (7 page)

“You’re incredible,” he told her. “I don’t want to scare you off by moving too fast.”

She couldn’t let him cool down. This was her night and there was no room for breathing space. D.J. smiled with all the enticement she could manage as she released him long enough to push his hands lower on her buttocks. “There is no such thing as ‘too fast’ for me right now.”

He stopped dancing. “Let’s get out of here.”

152.2 Perception, Emotions & Drives

I
t was more than his mother’s roast beef that had drawn Scott home for the evening. He told himself that it was important that he check out his mom’s new tenant. And he was always up for a home-cooked meal. But he’d heard enough talk in town about the new librarian that he was as curious as anyone else. His mom’s invitation simply made the introduction easier and more straightforward.

Without bothering to knock, he opened the backdoor screen and entered the bright, eat-in kitchen of his boyhood home.

He was surprised to be welcomed by the skittering sound of nails on tile. With only a couple of playful barks, an unexpected but enthusiastic ball of black fur rushed up to him, tail wagging and tongue hanging out.

“Well, hi there, puppy,” he said, squatting down to punctuate his greeting with some neck scratching. The little dog was cute and friendly. Maybe that’s why he was inside. As far back as Scott could remember, his mother had not allowed animals in the house. Even on the most bitter cold winter nights growing up, he’d had to sneak Blondie, his cocker spaniel, upstairs under his jacket. This terrier pranced around as if he owned the place.

He looked up to see his mother stirring something on the stove. Standing opposite her was a younger woman looking very much the librarian stereotype with her stiff expression, boring gray suit and hair bun.

“I assume this guy belongs to you,” he said, rising to his feet. He crossed the room in two steps and offered his hand. “I’m Scott, the son. If I know my mom, she’s already told you
way
too much stuff about me.”

From the wide-eyed look on the woman’s face, one would have thought that his mother had mistakenly given the impression that he was an ax-murderer.

Belatedly D.J. shook his outstretched hand. That was the moment when recognition sparked in him.

“Have we met somewhere?” he asked, looking at her more carefully.

Her cheeks seemed to flush slightly. “Huh?”

He took the two steps across the tile to plant a quick kiss on his mother’s upturned cheek.

“This is D.J., our new librarian,” his mom said. “She’s renting your bachelor apartment.”

“It’s not my apartment, Mom. It’s in your house.”

“Yes, but everything about it reflects your personality.”

Scott had merely tried to make himself comfortable while he was waiting to restart his life. He was pretty sure that if the apartment reflected anything, it was the numb loneliness that he’d tried to drive away by living there. However, he wasn’t willing to reveal that.

Instead he turned his attention back to the attractive young woman in the room.

“You look so familiar,” he said. “I’m thinking that we’ve met.”

“Uh...” She still hadn’t managed a proper sentence, and wore a deer-in-the-headlights expression.

“Did you grow up in western Kansas?”

“Wichita. I mean my parents lived in Wichita.”

Scott shook his head. “I haven’t spent much time there, though maybe I ran into you someplace.”

“No, no I don’t...I...”

“Are you a KU grad?” he asked. “I spent about six years eating pizza in Lawrence.”

“Uh...no, no.”

“She went to SMU,” his mother piped in. “Summa cum laude. And graduate school at Vanderbilt.”

“Wow, impressive,” Scott said. “So you wouldn’t have been hanging out among my scholastic shirkers group.”

“Nonsense,” Viv corrected. “Don’t let him try to fool you, D.J. He was president of his Rho Chi chapter, that’s the honor society for Pharmacy.”

He shrugged. “She’s my mom,” he teased in sotto whisper. “Bragging about me is a way of life.”

The woman didn’t crack even the smallest smile. Instead she sucked down the rest of the wine in her glass.

“I did do some traveling to national meetings and such,” Scott continued. “Maybe we ran into each other on neutral ground somewhere.”

That suggestion was met with an immediate, forceful response.

“I’m sure I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

The last part of her statement was definitive to the point of denial. Scott had to take her word for it. Perhaps she merely looked like someone he knew.

“Well, whatever. It’s very nice to meet you today. And Mom’s roast beef is just a bonus.”

D.J. was still looking at him with an expression of near panic. He heard the rumor that Amelia Grundler was intent on spreading, that the new librarian was an old friend of Vern’s, thereby suggesting that she might be a lesbian. Maybe that was the uncomfortable vibe he was picking up. Of course, picking up those vibes had never really been a skill of his.

“Scotty, get D.J. another glass of wine,” his mother said. “And you two go in the living room and get acquainted.”

His mother never called him “Scotty” anymore but he hoped, for the scared librarian’s sake, that the diminutive made him seem less threatening. He had the distinct impression that she didn’t want to get acquainted, but he obeyed his mom, pouring them both a cool glass of sauvignon blanc. He allowed her to lead the way to the front of the house. As he followed he had a strange sense of déjà vu concurrent with two weird disconnected impressions, sexy and not tall enough.

He puzzled this craziness in his own mind. Not tall enough? Tall had never been a prerequisite to sexy. And anyway, D.J. did not strike him as sexy—and that had nothing to do with her height. It was the genuine coldness that radiated from her.

She ignored the comfy sectional couch in order to seat herself on his mother’s antique slipper chair. It was very low to the ground and, while beautiful, was not particularly comfortable. Scott sat down on the couch opposite and it was as if he towered over her.

Inexplicably, her face was an angry thundercloud.

Scott offered what he hoped was a conciliatory smile. Perhaps her first day on the job hadn’t gone so well. And maybe dinner with his mother had been received as more obligation than invitation. Viv was open and generous and extroverted. It would never have occurred to her that her roast beef might be viewed as an ordeal to be survived. Being a public employee in a small town was tricky on lots of levels, but especially so as a command performance by a well-meaning member of the library committee. So he pasted a curious but neutral expression on his face and waited for her to direct the conversation.

D.J. said nothing, but was practically chugging her wine. At this rate, she’d be drunk by dinner.

That should loosen her up, at least,
he thought.

As the silence lengthened, Scott took pity on them both and forged into the standby topic for uncomfortable conversants everywhere.

“There was lots of blue sky today,” he said. “Absolutely gorgeous, although I’m sure the farmers would love another rain before we get too close to harvest.”

She continued staring at him with an expression that suggested he’d just revealed an interest in dissecting kittens and serving up their livers with a nice Chianti.

He noticed her glass was now empty.

“Let me get you some more wine.”

Scott escaped the living room silence, making his way to the refrigerator.

His mom looked up expectantly. “She’s nice, isn’t she?”

Scott didn’t have the heart to disagree with her. “Yes, Mom, she’s great.”

“It’s so much fun having a new person in town,” she said. “I’m sure you two will have a lot in common.”

That hope was not particularly realized over the next painfully slow hour and a half. He found that even the taste of his mother’s cooking couldn’t seem to lighten D.J.’s black mood. As his conversation appeared to be unwelcome, he used his mouth for chewing and allowed Mom to carry the bubbly chatter. She was an expert at that and it worked well enough, but he would not have described Ms. Jarrow as being particularly sociable.

While they chatted, he used the opportunity to observe this woman that his mother seemed over-the-moon about. She was medium height, slim enough, well groomed and orderly. That was the word that came to his mind.
Orderly.
The business suit was neat, barely tailored and adequately disguised any curves in her figure. Her hair was pulled up in a knot on the back of her head that was more functional than attractive. She was probably wearing makeup, he thought, but not enough that he was actually sure. And her eyeglasses were standard bookworm issue. She looked, he decided, exactly how a librarian was supposed to look, almost as if she’d come from central casting. But there was something oddly familiar about her that he couldn’t seem to shake. She reminded Scott of somebody, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on who it might be.

At least she’d switched to water when they sat down to the table. He’d begun to worry that the library committee had hired a lush, though despite the amount she’d drunk, she did appear coldly sober.

His mother was talking almost nonstop, mostly about him. This was, he imagined, not D.J.’s favorite subject, but she did manage to listen politely. Not once even did she cast a stray glance in his direction—which made it extremely easy for him to watch her.

She had very formal table manners. Neatly cutting her meat. Forking small, manageable pieces into her mouth. She was controlled. Scott added that word to his impression of the new librarian.
Orderly and controlled.

“There are not that many young, single people in town,” his mother was saying. “Scott will have to fill you in on what they do for entertainment.”

When the interminable meal was finally over, she tried to help with cleanup.

“No, no, no,” his mother insisted. “You’re my guest. Besides I prefer cleaning things up myself. You two young people run along.”

“Uh...well, I...” It was pretty clear that D.J. was grasping for an excuse.

“Scott, show D.J. the moonrise across the wheat fields. I’ll bet she’s never seen anything like it.”

“I’m not sure when exactly...” he began.

“8:46 p.m.,” his mother told them and then glanced at the kitchen clock. “Hurry up, I don’t want her to miss it.”

Scott felt he had no choice. He offered D.J. what he hoped to be a friendly, unthreatening smile though it felt stiff and uncomfortable. He gestured toward the door and then followed her out. He had to do what his mother expected of him tonight if he didn’t want to hear about it for days afterward. But the woman couldn’t have made it plainer that she’d taken an instant dislike to him. Maybe she simply didn’t like men. Or maybe he reminded her of some jerk who shot spitballs at her in third grade, but he was not sure that moonrise gazing was going to make it any better.

Outside it was fully dark and except for the sprinkle of stars overhead there was nothing to illuminate the path to the east side of the house. There was a real possibility of walking into something or stepping into a gopher hole. The librarian’s dog flitting around their footsteps only added to the problem.

Scott would have taken it slow, but D.J. marched ahead of him into the blackness as if pursued. Good manners dictated that he keep up. By the time they reached the side of the house where the vista of wheat filled the distance, his eyes began adjusting to the darkness. She stood mutely staring out over the field. Scott found a couple of lawn chairs, but she didn’t sit, so he didn’t, either.

The silence lengthened and he let it. There was something about being here in the dark with her that was unsettling. He felt sort of jumpy. Then he recognized that feeling as being turned on. He was here in the darkness with the unfriendly librarian and he was turned on.

Jeez, Scott, you have got to get out more,
he warned himself.
If this keeps up, you’ll be hitting on the mannequins in the store windows.

And then, as if desire weren’t an emotion bad enough to conjure up in this moment, he suddenly felt the familiar weight of loss and disappointment settle down upon him. Mostly he considered his life a good one, but it was not at all what he had planned. And sometimes he couldn’t help but miss that dream, that fantasy that he’d expected to be true for him.

From the far edge of a distant stand of ripening grain, a full moon as big and bright as a Hollywood searchlight eased its way into the night sky.

Scott’s throat tightened at the sight. He disguised his own sentiment with a forceful “Ahem.”

“It’s called the moon illusion,” he announced, as if he were the authoritative voice-over in a celestial documentary. “For years scientists thought that the atmosphere or the curvature of the earth formed some sort of magnifier that made the moon appear so large on the horizon. But they’ve taken measurements to show that it actually appears exactly the same size when it’s high in the sky. It’s our brains that perceive it as being so much bigger.”

“Yes, I know,” D.J. said.

Her tone was too sharp, efficiently jerking Scott out of the gauzy musings. Mawkishness was not particularly manly. And apparently she was unmoved by lunar beauty. Made of sterner stuff than he himself.

She turned to him. “I’ve had a long day,” she said. “Please thank Viv for a lovely dinner.” With that, the woman turned and walked away with a forcefulness that could accurately be described as stomping off, leaving Scott alone with the wheat and the moon and his own confusion.

176.6 Ethics of Recreation & Leisure

B
olstered by coffee, D.J. arrived at work the next morning bleary-eyed. She had spent the night tossing and turning. She’d felt like pacing, but was afraid her downstairs landlady might hear...and might suspect.

For the zillionth time her brain screamed,
Why him? Why here?

Like the Humphrey Bogart line from
Casablanca,
the unlikely coincidence was unwelcome.

She had been so shocked by the sight of Scott, she’d hardly been able to speak.

He was the
guy
.
That
guy. The hot guy.

Sometimes she’d almost been able to convince herself that the incident had never happened. And in those times when the memories were too vivid to be denied, like whenever she’d see the moon on the horizon, she’d shaken off her feelings with a water-under-the-bridge analogy. In the category of youthful mistakes, hers had been short-lived, relatively harmless and with minimum consequences. She’d accepted her lessons and her regrets and moved on.

Unfortunately, she’d unwittingly moved into her mistake’s hometown, his backyard, his childhood bedroom.

D.J. groaned aloud as she climbed the circular stairs to her office.

“Our librarian sounds a little grumpy this morning.”

Suzy was seated on the floor, books and papers all around her.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorting out all my monthly reports,” she answered. “Amelia tells us all the time that bookmobiles are dinosaurs. I figure you’re going to want to look at cost/service analysis and decide for yourself. So I thought I’d have it ready before you ask.”

“Uh...great. Good idea,” D.J. said, impressed at Suzy’s initiative, though not necessarily prepared for it so early in the morning. “Try not to worry. A lot of libraries have given up on bookmobiles. But for some areas, there is nothing more appropriate.”

Suzy sighed heavily. “I think that, too,” she said. “I guess I just need the numbers to prove it. It’s times like this that I wish I’d listened more in math class.”

“If you can get the raw data together, I can help you with the interpretation.”

“Would you? That’s so sweet. I was really worried. I heard you were on the warpath about Books-By-Mail and I thought maybe you were for that program and maybe anti-bookmobile.”

“The two are completely different,” D.J. told her. “The services complement each other more than compete. And if anything is threatened, it’s Books-By-Mail. With digital download lending, it’s been made practically obsolete.”

Carefully toeing her way around Suzy’s paper piles, D.J. made it to her desk, which was inexplicably cluttered. She set her laptop bag on the chair, as it was the only space available.

“What’s all this?”

“It was there when I came in,” Suzy answered.

D.J.’s first, uncharitable thought was that Miss Grundler had been going through her desk and had left a bunch of evidence on top. When she looked closer, however, she saw that each book had a request neatly tucked inside.

“Did Amelia stay late?”

“She left before I did,” Suzy said. “Aren’t you the one who locked up?”

D.J. had been.

“She must have come back to work later,” she told Suzy. “These are the Books-By-Mail requests. It looks like all of them. All caught up in one day.”

“You’re kidding? Grundler hates that stuff. I can’t believe she’d work overtime to do it.”

Suzy had risen to her feet and went to examine the books atop the desk.

“Oh, wow,” she said.

“Oh, wow, what?” D.J. asked.

“It wasn’t Amelia. It was James,” she said, pointing out the messy handwriting on the slips. “He must really, really like you.”

“I haven’t really even met him,” D.J. pointed out.

“Well, something made him spend time doing this.”

“Maybe he’s like you getting your statistics together,” D.J. said. “He wanted to take the initiative on something. A quick way to impress the new librarian in charge.”

Suzy shook her head. “James is not a ‘take the initiative’ kind of guy. He’s, like...strange. What is the word they use? It sounds like artistic...”

“Artistic? You mean autistic?”

“That’s it. Autistic not artistic. Duh. Sometimes talking to me is a brain-free zone.” Suzy giggled. “James was, like, ‘special’ before ‘special’ was cool. But he knows every book in this library and can put his hand on anything in no time flat.”

“Good qualities to have,” D.J. agreed. “A lot of people with Asperger’s Syndrome choose library science.”

“Asperger’s Syndrome?”

“High-functioning people on the autism spectrum. It’s a different way of relating to the world, that can lend itself to be very good at some things that the rest of us are not that good at.”

“Oh,” Suzy said. “Well, I guess it’s good to know that he’s not just simply weird.”

D.J. sighed. It would take some time to get used to the blunt way people spoke in this small town.

Focusing on the pile of books on her desk, she managed to get all of the requests into mailers and waiting for the postman by opening time. Amelia waltzed in five minutes late, a deliberate look on her face, as if to say “I dare you to do anything about it.”

D.J. had already figured out what to do about it. She was seated in Amelia’s chair at the circulation desk. And she made no move to relinquish her position. Miss Grundler had few options. She could go back into the shipping and receiving area. She could hang out in the break room. Or she could wander around aimlessly looking for something concrete to do.

D.J. chose the latter for her. From the bottom shelf, she handed the woman the library’s ancient feather duster. Book dusting was the lowest form of library care. While actual janitorial work was contracted out, no commercial service would actually go through and swish the cobwebs from the uncirculated tomes.

Amelia looked at the duster as if it were a snake.

“I should take this opportunity to pull the Books-By-Mail requests,” she said.

“All done,” D.J. replied.

The woman frowned. “The night return?”

“James took care of it,” she said. “Everything was checked in and reshelved before I showed up this morning.”

Ms. Grundler took the duster, but she was clearly not happy about it.

D.J. savored her little victory in stoic silence. Winning over the reluctant staff member was not the same as scoring a few points against her, she reminded herself. She was still hopeful that Amelia would find a way and a reason to be part of the team.

Having downloaded the library’s budget to her laptop, D.J. intended to spend any free time at circulation familiarizing herself with how much everything cost and how monies were currently being appropriated. This was the kind of thing that she considered herself very good at. But her sleepless night, coupled with the anxiety she was harboring about running into...him...made the figures in front of her as incomprehensible as a rune cipher. Fortunately, interaction with patrons was at least as important as comprehending financial resources. So she gave herself up to meeting, smiling and chatting with all those who came by for a look at the new librarian.

Books that had been overdue for years were being reunited with their fellow shelf sitters. Although five-cents-per-day fines were still technically enforced, D.J. magnanimously granted amnesty to every person she met. Getting the books back and getting people inside the building felt like victory enough. However, there did seem to be a lot more visiting than book browsing. She met a few more women-of-a-certain age. A number of harried housewives with toddlers in tow. The firemen from across the street. And the old grandpas that hung out at the barbershop.

“I can’t see a dang thing inside this place,” one older fellow confided. “I make a special trip out to the bookmobile to find my reading material. But I wanted to lay eyes on the new librarian and I have to say, I like the cut of your jib.”

D.J. appreciated the compliment, but worried about the lighting. Giant rows of fluorescents hung from the ceiling at great expense, but somehow they couldn’t overcome the atmosphere of shadowy gloom.

D.J. had only meant to usurp Amelia’s place for a few minutes. But the entire morning zoomed by with her still sitting at the main desk. She handed it over as she announced she was leaving for her lunch break.

Miss Grundler’s brow was drawn down on her face angrily, but her response was perfectly respectful.

“Of course. Go on with your schedule.”

D.J. carried her laptop and the few notes that she’d made on the budget up the narrow circular stairs to her office. She dug out the lunch that Mrs. Sanderson had packed for her and spread it out on her desk.

“You don’t need to do this,” she’d told Viv that morning when she’d flagged D.J. down as she was getting in her car.

“Of course I don’t need to. I want to,” Viv had assured her. “And don’t worry about Melvil Dewey today. He and I will take a nice walk down to the creek before he gets too warm.”

She had wanted to nix that. Dew belonged to D.J. and he should be going on his walks with
her.
But while she was working, poor Dew had nothing to entertain him but a basket full of chew toys and the TV left on. It was selfish to deny him a bit of extra companionship because she was feeling a little jealous.

But,
oh!
How she didn’t want him getting attached to the mother of the hot guy.

D.J. bit into the meat loaf sandwich, hardly tasting it. She’d really thought she’d put that stupid, idiotic, temporary insanity of her twenty-first birthday well behind her.

But Scott was, without a doubt,
the
hot guy. And he was here.

For what felt like the millionth time, she shook her head. It was so hard to believe. Or maybe she should have expected it. The bad penny always shows up. Or as the chaplain at Hockaday might have said, “Be sure your sins will find you out.”

The more D.J. thought about it, the angrier she became.

How dare he be from my new hometown!

Thank God he doesn’t remember me.

How dare he not remember me!

She promptly lost her appetite, so she rewrapped her sandwich, stuffed it back into the brown paper bag and threw all of it in the trash.

She opened the budget file on her laptop, but the little lines and squares and numbers jumbled together and she couldn’t make sense of it all. She began tapping her pencil nervously against the desk.

With a growl of annoyance at herself, she rose to her feet and began looking around for something more physically demanding. As she headed downstairs, the front door of the library opened and a very loud boisterous group of seniors came parading in. The group, here on a day trip from Pine Tree Nursing Home, apparently visited on a regular schedule. D.J. was obliged to open up the door to the library’s nonpublic area to allow wheelchair access to the building.

She had a lot more experience with older people than most young women her age. Her parents had been in their mid-forties when she had inexplicably come into being, so D.J. was accustomed to the peculiar bluntness that seemed to come with old age. This group, however, seemed particularly cranky.

“I hate this place,” one woman told her, punctuating her words with a stomp of her cane. “The bookmobile goes to the center where my sister lives. But because we live in town, it’s as if we get penalized.”

“But you have so many more books here in the main library,” D.J. countered. “There is so much to choose from.”

“Well, you can’t choose if you can’t see,” she snapped. “This place is as dark as a cave. I have to select titles by feel.”

The man beside her, one of the few males in the group, spoke up. “You should switch to reading biographies like I do. They’re all shelved next to the windows.”

“I want to read fiction,” the woman told him. “I don’t happen to like biographies.”

The man chuckled. “I don’t read them because I like them. I read them because I can see them.”

He did have a point. The stacks were dark. And short of having everyone carry a flashlight, she wasn’t sure how to brighten them up.

Instead she spent the afternoon doing one-on-one service. Questioning the Pine Tree patrons about their interests and then bringing them selections from the shelves. Many of the regulars had already read much of the collection. So by the time they began loading back on the bus to leave, huge piles of books were everywhere. Amelia ignored the mess, but that was okay with D.J. An introvert by nature, after a couple of hours of chatty human interaction, she welcomed the peace of sorting and shelving.

As she loaded up a cart, she thought again about the problem for those with low vision and what she might be able to do about it. Maybe instead of pulling particular books for the patrons after they arrived, she could set up a table with a sampling of things that might interest them. Of course, setting up a table was problematic, as well. The only real space was in the open area in front of the circulation desk. But the light was only marginally better. She remembered what the man had said about biographies. She noticed that most of them did have sun-damaged spines. Maybe there was a usable space next to the windows.

She walked around the ranges of shelves to the aisle area between the adult collection and the outside wall. A half dozen tall oversize windows were spaced at staggered intervals. The afternoon light poured through them. But there was neither sufficient depth for a square table nor length for a rectangular one. D.J. was disappointed. But at the same time, something niggled her brain. She stood staring at the wall for a long moment, trying to figure out what it was that stood out so strangely to her.

Behind her she heard a squeak of wheels and turned just in time to see the book cart she’d loaded disappear behind a range of shelves.

“James?”

The cart stopped moving but the guy didn’t show himself. She hadn’t so much as caught a shadow of him all day.

D.J. peeked around the corner. He was standing there, but his head hung down, unwilling to meet her eyes.

“Are you going to put these up for me?” she asked.