Love Overdue Read online

  “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 it 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.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay.”

  “And thank you for pulling all the Books-By-Mail requests this morning.”

  “Okay.”

  “Being new to the library, I’m going to need the help of everybody on the team,” D.J. told him. If anything, his head hung lower, as if he wanted to make it disappear into his chest.

  “You’re part of my team, right?”

  “Yes. Yes. Okay.”

  James was nodding rapidly, but his body language screamed leave me alone!

  D.J. took pity on the guy and headed back to her office, but she was smiling. She had gotten three words out of him. That was surely progress.

  Eleven

  210.4 Natural Theology

  The long approach to Scott’s place would have been called a road by most standards. Certainly the county that graded it considered it that. But since his was the only building on it, and it ended abruptly at the edge of the river beside his house, many folks in town thought of it as his driveway.

  He kind of liked that. The imagery of it appealed to him in some way. As if a journey, his journey arrived at this home and saw no need to go any further.

  The truth was, of course, that the county had simply not wanted or needed to spend money on another bridge across Verdant Creek. So the county road stopped abruptly and then picked up again a couple of miles farther west.

  Friday was his afternoon off. He kept his cell phone close so that Paula could contact him in the case of an emergency prescription, but since he had to be open on Saturday, the busiest day of his week, he didn’t begrudge himself the break.

  Scott pulled into his usual parking place near the back door. Although he’d grown up in a house where locks were never used, he understood that leaving his house open could be abetting the worst impulses of the desperate or larcenous. Still, he was a trusting, rural guy at heart. He reached up above the door’s metal light fixture to retrieve his key, clicked open the lock and then returned it to the magnet that kept it at least sight unseen to would-be thieves.

  Inside he began peeling off his clothes immediately. He’d installed his washer and dryer in the mudroom. And living alone he found little need for the frills of domestic life like hampers and baskets. He put his laundry directly in the washer and when it filled up, he did the wash.

  Naked, he made his way to the front bedroom. The eighty-year-old one-story farmhouse retained much of the dated, retro appearance enjoyed by the former occupants. Scott had updated the kitchen and painted the exterior, but the bedroom still sported wallpaper with the faded pastel pressed-petals design. It was girly. Undoubtedly decorated for the daughter of the house. But he preferred the morning sun shining through the windows. And a few pink-and-yellow flowers didn’t threaten his masculinity.

  In fact, a little less masculinity might be helpful. As he pulled on his jeans, he glanced toward his rumpled bed as if it were an enemy. The last few nights he had been plagued by dreams. He couldn’t quite recall the erotic events involved, but he awakened achy and aching, hard as a rock.

  “You need a girlfriend,” he told his image in the mirror.

  Immediately he thought of Jeannie Brown. She was lonely and she liked him. That had him halfway into her bed already. He doubted she was any great shakes in the sack, but someone was better than no one, right?

  “Wrong,” he answered his own premise. “Someone is not be
tter than no one. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”

  The rhetorical tee was exactly the soft and nearly ragged one he pulled out of his chest-of-drawers, a reminder of some long-ago rock concert that he could barely recall. He dragged it over his head and tucked it in, more to get it out of his way than any need for neatness.

  At least all those early-morning, sexually frustrated runs freed up his afternoon for less strenuous exercise.

  On his way back through the house, he stopped at the fridge and drank a big slug of orange juice directly from the bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Both behaviors would have horrified his mother and disgusted his ex-wife. But if there was to be any consolation for the unplanned single life, it was that a man could be as uncivilized as he pleased.

  At the back door he pulled on his muck boots and a broad-brimmed straw hat. He stepped outside and made his way across the bare patches and buffalo grass that he euphemistically described as his lawn. On the north side was the drain field for the septic system. The grass was far greener there, but somehow the source of that lushness did not encourage him to linger.

  The south end of his acreage had been transformed into a garden.

  He’d bought the property, still known around town as “the old Paske place” along with the surrounding three acres between the house and the creek bank. At the time, he’d had no real plans for the land. If he’d considered it at all, it was as a buffer between the privacy he needed and those friends, family and neighbors who lived nearby.

  But it was more than that to him now. Scott gazed lovingly down the long rows of plants stalwartly growing out of the soil. The carrot tops looked pretty enough to put in a flower vase. The potato plants were already hardy, and the peas appeared vividly green against the grayish-brown color of the Kansas soil.

  From childhood, his parents had pressed him into service in the family garden. And like every rural teenager, he’d done his share of backbreaking farm labor. But he’d never really considered plants or cultivation as a hobby he’d ever care to pursue. Yet from the moment Scott had moved in, the need to plant something, to grow something, had been so strong in him he was unable to resist it.