Chapter Three #4
“Have you given any further thought to what you’d like to do next? Run a branch? Work in reference? Administration?”
“I’m not sure.”
The admission sounded feeble to my ears, but Sue gave me a thoughtful look. “You know, when I retire in two years—”
Ding! Even in my despair, I tallied the mention of her favorite subject.
“—Alyssa will most likely take over this branch. But there are two other managers close to retirement, and I can see you running a branch someday. You have the right leadership skills.”
Sue was one of the few Black librarians of her generation in Colburn County. She’d had to work twice as hard to rise to her position, and she’d been the esteemed head of this branch for nearly four decades. Her staff and patrons loved her. I loved her. A compliment from Sue carried a lot of weight.
I smiled so that she could see my appreciation, not my uncertainty.
I had given a lot of thought to running a library—the idea of being in charge of a collection was admittedly seductive—but some mental block I didn’t understand prevented me from getting excited about it.
Maybe it was the inherent bureaucracy, though the rise of book banners didn’t help.
They weren’t our regular patrons, but postpandemic, we’d been coming into contact with them on a regular basis.
Their fury and ignorance were draining, so much so that our usual method of dealing with infuriating people—flipping them off underneath the desk while gritting our teeth in the approximation of a soothing smile—wasn’t enough.
A number of our fellow librarians had quit in the last year.
They couldn’t handle the abuse any longer, nor should they have had to.
I hadn’t set out to be a librarian. My first job in Ridgetop had been as a gift shop cashier at the Tamsett Park Inn, a sprawling historical hotel where Cory still managed the front desk.
I hadn’t enjoyed working exclusively with tourists—it had reminded me too much of Orlando—but thankfully, it hadn’t taken me long to find a new job at the Tick-Tock Bookshop.
The Tick-Tock was named after the magnificent grandfather clock that gave the store its heartbeat.
I loved working there and had stayed until it closed.
Len’s emphysema had forced him into retirement, and no buyers had been willing to take on his struggling business.
I had wanted to stay in the industry, but the only options in town were a handful of ragtag used bookstores with employees who never vacated their positions and the Christian bookstore by the mall.
I’d been facing a bleak reunion with the inn when the library job had appeared.
Now I’d been here nearly twice as long as I’d worked at the bookstore.
What I really wanted was my old job, but sometimes the best you could do was reach for the thing closest to your dream. This was the closest.
Still, when I returned to the desk, I couldn’t hide my misery.
“Whoa,” Alyssa said. She had yet to leave to repair the damaged books. I’d interrupted a conversation between her and Macon about his mother, who lived in town and had severe agoraphobia. He spent a great deal of time taking care of her. “What was that all about?”
Macon was watching me, too. His posture had grown tense and disquieted. Perhaps he was wondering if—or hoping that—I had just quit. I told them about my conversation with Sue.
“Jeez, don’t sound so excited,” Alyssa said.
“Just because I’m applying,” I said, “doesn’t mean I have to be excited.”
“You’re really applying?” Macon was surprised. He knew I’d been dreading it.
I shrugged in a way that said, I guess I have to .
“I liked it,” Alyssa said. She’d taken advantage of the reimbursement program immediately upon being hired.
“I didn’t.” Macon’s surliness had returned. Library school hadn’t been continuing education for him; he’d done it the first time around. But despite being as qualified as Sue and Alyssa, he’d never shown any interest in upward mobility.
“Yeah, but you hate everything,” Alyssa said.
“I do,” Macon agreed.
Although it didn’t seem to bother him, it bothered me when other people accused him of being a curmudgeon.
I often teased him about it, too, but Sue and Alyssa didn’t have quite the same faith in him that I did.
They didn’t seem to understand that a large portion of his crankiness was a wink, his sense of humor, and that his actions consistently revealed the truth: he was kind and thoughtful and generous, and people who actually hated everything were not.
It also bothered me that he’d been doing this job—this same job as me—for eleven years.
I understood not wanting the responsibility of running a branch or managing a staff, but Macon belonged at the reference desk at the main library.
The pay was better, and he’d be great at it.
Selfishly, I’d never encouraged him to apply.
Selfishly, I’d liked having him beside me.
If only I hadn’t been so selfish. Maybe then he still wouldn’t have been here, and I wouldn’t have made a move, and we wouldn’t have been at odds.
Normally I preferred the late shift. The library was quieter, and apart from the stressed schoolchildren and parents amassing sources for last-minute reports, the patrons tended to be friendlier and more relaxed.
But nobody was writing reports during the first week of January, and all the convivial patrons must have been doing something else that night.
It was too quiet and too empty.
The corduroy pants had been a bad idea. The swish of wale against wale was a constant signal of my presence.
I tried to stay still, but the silence was so uncomfortable that it verged on the profound.
Even without eye contact, I felt Macon observing me just as I was him, yet I still had no idea what he was thinking or how long we’d be able to keep this up.
It isn’t UNBEARABLE, I texted Kat. But it is unsustainable.
My phone was in hand because I was still waiting to hear back from Brittany.
The most reasonable conclusion was that Adam wasn’t interested in what he’d seen, which, fine, whatever.
(Not whatever.) Mainly I was mad at myself for not using the snow day to sign up for a dating app.
It was stupid to have put all my eggs in the Adam basket.
The monthlong clock was ticking: five days lost, twenty-six days left.
Macon stood so suddenly that I looked up. Mumbling something about plants, he vanished into the annex to grab the watering can. Thursday was his plant-watering night. At least this would give us a few minutes of relief.
Kat lit up my phone. Are you going to quit??
All the libraries had been closed during the early months of the pandemic.
The county had sent Sue to an outreach center for the unhoused, Alyssa to the food bank, and our previous page lost his job altogether because he’d only been part-time.
Macon and I were both sent to the 911 call center.
Initially, we—along with a handful of other librarians and some people from election services—had been intimidated, but then we realized during training that we’d only be fielding low-priority calls, things like rabid raccoons and violations of the stay-at-home order.
After that, we felt useful. This was something we could do to help.
But two weeks into it, the dispatchers got hit with a large-scale situation, and I was forwarded an actual emergency.
It was a domestic dispute. A woman was being followed by her ex-husband in a truck, and I had to stay on the line and build the call for the responding officer so they’d know what to expect when they arrived.
I had to keep the woman calm and ask questions about their location and whether it was possible he was armed.
The woman made it through, and I did, too, but I was still shaken up in the parking lot after work.
Macon had waited with me until I was steady enough to drive home.
“I’m glad we were both assigned here,” I said. The sidewalk was cold underneath my ass. We were perched on the curb, socially distanced at six feet apart. “I felt safer knowing you were there. Like, if I had messed up, I knew you could have stepped in and handled it.”
“You wouldn’t have messed up. You didn’t. Honestly, I think that’s why we were both sent here. We’re levelheaded.”
“You are,” I said.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“Still. I’m glad you’re here. I would have really missed you.”
It was the plain truth, and I hadn’t meant anything weird by it. But his ears reddened, and his words caught in his throat. “I would have missed you, too.”
My whole body grew hot in response.
Macon’s metal watering can clanked against the rim of a potted plant, jolting me back to the present. My body was burning again.
No , I texted Kat. Not yet.
She was right that quitting my job while my life was in upheaval wouldn’t be smart.
But it also didn’t feel safe. I needed the safety of this job and these coworkers, and Macon was the safest of all.
I promised myself that I would honor our past and do right by him: I would search for a new job in February so he could feel safe at his job, too.
I wouldn’t let this terrible silence hang in the air between us for so long that he’d be forced to quit first.
But I did need time. I did need this month.
My phone lit up again.
Adam wants to know if you’re free tomorrow night , Brittany said.