I hopped around on one foot, trying to dislodge the sleet from my boot. How had it gotten there in the first place? Let me go back a few hours.
It was actually a beautiful spring day when I stepped out my front door. I was wearing a new pair of fashion boots that went beautifully with a skirt I had picked up for a song at the same store. I use the term fashion boots loosely here. I guess they were more like booties than boots. Not that I didn’t like the knee high things that made you look a step away from a magazine spread, and not that I didn’t have a pair. I did. They were in the back of my closet. After wearing them once, and then again to prove to myself my ankles could take the punishment, I silently admitted I would never be a step away from a magazine spread. I would be a block away at least, and that was if I was a distant relative of someone who worked there – which I wasn’t. My relatives worked at unglamorous places like recycling centers and school buildings and discount stores. I, myself, was on my way to my job at the local library. And I was pretty thrilled due to my new skirt and the boot(ie)s that matched. Camel brown. I never said I was a flashy dresser.
I’d arrived to the accolades of my fellow librarian – she knew how to flatter, believe me, having access to Roget’s College Thesaurus on a regular basis – and settled into another uneventful day behind the desk by the door. Polly (the aforementioned co-worker) had the jitters today. Since it was a quiet day (librarian humor), I sauntered over to the stacks where she was replacing returned books to their proper alphabetical home in between tapping her fingers on the cart, and asked her how it was going. There was no doubt she’d tell me what made her jumpy the minute I took a step into the aisle. She did not disappoint.
“See that guy over there?”
She nodded in the direction of a table near the back.
I raised my eyebrows. No one ever sat in the back. The folks who came to our library were starved for anything that looked remotely like friendship, which included people who walked past their table nodding hello.
“Why do you think he’s back there?”
“Who is he?” I answered helpfully.
Polly shrugged and returned to tapping her fingers on the library cart.
The man began gathering his things at the table, so I scooted back to the front desk in case he planned to check something out.
“Hi,” I smiled as friendly as I could when he approached the desk.
He nodded, and put a couple of books in front of me.
“Would you like to get a library card?”
To my surprise he shoved one in front of me. He’d clearly been here before, though neither Polly nor I had any idea who he was.
I tried to look disinterested as I checked out his books. He grabbed them and hurried out.
Polly rushed over.
“Well?”
“Stuart Demone.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Me neither. He checked out How to Build a Compost and Autolysis.”
Polly’s sharp intake of breath told me she knew what it meant and it wasn’t good.
“Body decomposition! Body decomposition!” she whisper-shouted. “Go! Go!”
“What?”
“Follow him to see where he goes!”
“And what if he sees me?”
“Tell him . . . tell him you want to know if he needs a book about worms,” she said pushing me out the door.
I should’ve known that wouldn’t be a good excuse.
to be continued . . .
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