Jack had no small objections to the fact that Chelle had been invited to attend the library conference. For the next two weeks, he redoubled his efforts to nitpick at every little thing Chelle did, and it was like his eyes were on her from anywhere in the library whenever a patron approached her.
“You can point them to the restrooms and tell them what our hours are,” he snapped at her one day when she’d begun to help someone with the self-checkout machine he swooped in to take over. “That’s all, and don’t forget it.”
Naturally, Chelle was excited about the prospect of spending a couple of hours in the car with Jack on their way to the conference.
She tried to keep her head down and steer clear of him during her shifts leading up to the trip, but this crackdown on the rules was tempered by the fact that Mira would be right beside her during the conference. Chelle would be lying if she said that keeping her hands off Mira for the entire trip would be easy, especially after how close they’d become each night after the library closed. In addition to the prospect of finding a new career, Chelle was also holding out hope that there would be an opportunity or two at the conference to slip away from Jack seduce Mira all over again in a fancy hotel. That was what Chelle was most excited for as the three of them walked out of the library on the Thursday evening before the conference, overnight bags slung over their shoulders.
She had to admit that Jack’s objections to her coming with them weren’t completely unfounded – Chelle had looked over the program on the conference website last week and it was a blur of technical terms that meant nothing to her. Acquisitions. Collection management. Cutter numbers and MARC records and bibliographic records. She was already preparing to spend all day Friday in a state of bewilderment. But Mira thought this was a good opportunity for her, and Chelle loved the way her eyes lit up every time she talked about it in the past couple of weeks.
The three of them walked across the parking lot to the cluster of staff cars. Jack had insisted on driving, so they trailed him to the impeccably tidy Buick parked a few spots over from Chelle’s rusty old Mercury and Mira’s car beside it. Chelle climbed into the back seat, pushing her backpack in ahead of her while Mira walked reluctantly around to the front passenger seat.
“I’m gonna put the map there,” Jack objected as she opened the door.
“You’re using a paper map?” Chelle asked from the back seat, and he scowled at her.
“Not everyone likes to be reliant on technology,” he said, waving Mira away from the front seat. “Sit in the back.”
“Oookay,” Mira said with a slight roll of her eyes as she shut the door again. “Don’t you need someone to read the map for you?”
“I have it under control, Miranda,” Jack said, getting into the car and waiting rather impatiently for Mira to climb into the back seat.
“I have a smartphone,” Chelle offered as she pulled her bag down to the floor to make room for Mira. “We could use that if you’d rather-”
“If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have brought the map,” Jack snapped, glaring at her through the rearview mirror before pulling out of the parking space.
“-not get stuck in rush hour traffic and lost on detours,” Chelle finished her sentence under her breath, mumbling it low so that only Mira could hear.
Mira grinned, quickly smacking the side of Chelle’s thigh before pulling her hand back over to her side of the bench seat. The car descended into silence as Jack made it abundantly clear this wasn’t going to be a fun, sing-along kind of road trip, and as they pulled onto the street, Mira took her phone out of her bag and tapped at it.
A moment later, Chelle’s cell buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.
Don’t get him started. This would be the perfect opportunity to murder us and dump our bodies on the side of the road. – M
Chelle smirked, then wrote back.
Don’t worry, he’ll crash trying to read that map and drive at the same time long before he finds a suitable dump site.
She watched out of the corner of her eye and enjoyed the sight of Mira trying to suppress a laugh as she read the text.
The drive turned out to be pretty interminable – Westbrook was surrounded by miles of soybean fields, and the scenery beyond Chelle’s window quickly turned sleep-inducing. Since there was nothing she could think of to say to Jack, and nothing she could say out loud to Mira, they passed the time sending text messages in the back seat while Jack struggled with the map.
“Do you have it under control up there?” Mira asked as the sun set and Jack had to start periodically turning on the dome light to figure out the directions. “I’ve been to Granville a million times – all you need to do is keep going east on Route 30 for the next hour and a half.”
Jack held up his hand in a motion to silence her and she shrugged irritably. Chelle sent Mira a text to distract her from the fact that they just might die at the hands of a paper map-wielding lunatic who insisted on being both pilot and navigator.
What would you do if I reached over and took your hand right now?
Mira glanced at the text, then shot Chelle a horrified look, shaking her head and looking into the rearview mirror, where Jack’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead.
Chelle sent another text.
It’s dark. He’s oblivious.
Mira shook her head again, a little more subtly this time.
It’s too risky. – M
But Chelle’s hand was already beginning to crawl across the space between them on the seat. She could see Mira’s breath hitch in her throat, and for all her protestations, she looked just as thrilled as Chelle felt when their fingers touched.
Chelle brushed her index finger along Mira’s palm, and with her free hand she typed with some difficulty:
That’s part of the fun.
Then she felt Mira’s fingers interlacing with hers, and butterflies took flight in her stomach.
***
Jack managed to get the three of them to Granville in one piece, even if his navigation of the city’s heavy traffic was a bit anxiety-inducing, and as he pulled up to the hotel that was attached to the conference center, Mira slid her hand out of Chelle’s. They’d spent almost half of the trip exchanging text messages that got steamier by the mile, and now that the spell of being alone in the back seat was broken, Mira felt flushed and embarrassed at how carried away she’d gotten with it.
In a rare show of chivalry, Jack let Mira and Chelle out at the curb in front of the hotel and then went to park the car at the back of the full lot – that, Mira thought, or he just wanted the two of them to get a jump start on waiting in line at the check-in counter. Either way, she and Chelle headed inside with their overnight bags slung over their shoulders.
The hotel was large, and the lobby buzzed with activity as dozens of librarians bustled back and forth, in various stages of checking in and finding their way up to rooms on the second and third floors. Mira and Chelle got in line, and by the time they’d inched up to the counter, Jack was squeezing his way through the crowd to the irritation of those waiting behind them.
Mira used the library’s credit card to pay for their rooms, then passed them each a room key. “Three fifteen, three sixteen, and three seventeen. Let’s go upstairs and put down our bags, and then we can come back downstairs for the pre-conference social hour. I told a couple of friends from library school I’d find them there.”
So the three of them fought their way back through the crowded lobby toward the elevators. Mira thought that if she happened to lose Jack in the crowd and didn’t find him again until after the last session let out, it would be a perfect conference. She was really looking forward to introducing Chelle to some decent librarians so that she’d see how different Jack was from the majority of her peers, and as they waited for the elevator to come, she looked around for familiar faces.
She didn’t see any, though, and in her distraction she almost missed the elevator. The doors were sliding shut when she heard Chelle call her name to get her attention, and then she caught Mira off guard as she reached out and grabbed her hand. A giggle bubbled up in Mira’s throat, the physical contact bringing her mind back around to all the dirty things Chelle had been texting her in the car as she yanked Mira into the elevator.
The doors slid shut and suddenly all the noise from the lobby was gone.
Mira’s giggle rang through her hears like an echo, and she wondered if anyone else could still hear it. Her cheeks went red as she looked around the small space – there were a few other passengers in the elevator car with them, and Jack had been squished into one corner by a silver-haired older woman with a full-sized suitcase. Mira was standing shoulder to shoulder with Chelle, and even though there was nowhere to go, she tried to take a step away from her as Jack fixed her with a pointed look.
It was like her heart had stopped beating entirely as the giggle continued to echo through her head and she replayed the unguarded moment over and over again. How telling had that laugh been, and how much of it did Jack see?
The elevator seemed to take forever to rise to the third floor, and Mira tried to tell herself that such a small amount of physical contact was nothing to worry about – Jack couldn’t possibly make a federal case of it. But it wasn’t the fact that Chelle had grabbed her hand. It was the way Mira reacted – her response was undeniably familiar, like they’d touched a hundred times before.
When the doors finally opened, Mira’s heart finally resumed beating and she practically leaped out of the elevator. Looking at the numbers on the nearest rooms, she gestured down the hall. “Looks like we’re down this way. Come on, you two.”
***
After they put down their bags in their respective hotel rooms, Mira, Chelle, and Jack all headed back down to the first floor. Mira stood as far as possible from Chelle in the elevator, and they weaved silently through the crowded lobby toward a pair of oversized double doors that led to the conference center.
They walked down a short hall and came to a big, open anteroom outside of a large ballroom. Linen-covered bar tables were arranged in a horseshoe shape all the way around the perimeter, and librarians wandered through the room, splitting off into two groups – those who were after the free booze at the bar, and those who were more interested in the table of hors d’oeuvres on the other side of the room.
“I haven’t had dinner,” Chelle said, eyeing all the finger sandwiches and appetizers that the people passing by them were carrying.
“Let’s get some food, then,” Mira said, making sure that her voice carried a tone of utmost professionalism. “It’s all included in the price of the conference.”
“I like library conferences already,” Chelle said with a laugh.
Jack rolled his eyes and headed for the bar instead, and Mira was relieved to see him go. She’d expected him to veer off from them the moment they got checked into their rooms, and the fact that he’d stuck to her side up til now made her worry that she wouldn’t get any relief from him for the duration of the conference. After what happened in the elevator, she was especially worried that he was growing suspicious of her and Chelle and he was planning to keep an eagle eye on the two of them throughout the conference.
But he must have simply been waiting for the lure of free alcohol because he went straight for the open bar and left Mira to follow Chelle over to the snack table. Still, she kept her distance just to be safe, and while Chelle was piling a plate with every kind of appetizer and finger food imaginable, Mira noticed a familiar face waving from across the room.
She smiled and waved back at a pair of women standing at one of the bar tables.
“There are my friends from grad school,” Mira said to Chelle, pointing them out. “Let’s go talk to them and I’ll show you what a good reference librarian looks like.”
Chelle grabbed one more tiny chicken sandwich to top off her plate, then they went over to the table where Mira’s friends were sipping a couple of cocktails.
“Chelle, I want to introduce you to Ruby Satterwhite and Maxine Saddler,” Mira said. They were both smiling and friendly, a concept that was indeed foreign after her experience with Jack. Mira added, “I’ve known Max for ages, and we both met Ruby in grad school. Now we’re all on the library association’s LGBT round table together.”
“Nice to meet you,” Chelle said, setting down her plate to shake hands with the women. Ruby was tall and thin with flawless ebony skin, and Max stood proudly and somewhat stoically beside her, shaking Chelle’s hand almost mechanically although her expression was warm enough.
Mira went on. “Chelle has been working for me as a page, and I suggested that she might want to come to the conference to get a taste of what librarianship is all about.”
“Oh, fresh meat,” Ruby said with a wink to Chelle. She turned to Max and said, “We’ll have her converted by the end of the night, won’t we, honey?”
“Don’t scare her off,” Mira said, reaching across the table and taking a playful swipe at Ruby.
“So what exactly does a round table do?” Chelle asked, picking up one of the little sandwiches and taking a bite.
“It’s a special interest group,” Max said, almost as if she was reciting from a pamphlet. “Basically a club within a club. There are about a dozen different round tables within the library association that you can join based on your interests, and the purpose is to meet like-minded colleagues and share ideas. The LGBT round table mostly focuses on how we can make everything from queer fiction to advocacy resources accessible in our communities.”
“Mm-hmm,” Ruby nodded, taking a sip from her drink. Then she added, “If you’re interested, we’re doing a session on outreach services for at-risk LGBT youth tomorrow afternoon. That’s what I’ve specialized in since grad school and it’s our first time presenting at the conference.”
“And we’re all so proud,” Mira said, reaching over and tousling Max’s cropped hair. She shot Mira an irritated look and immediately pulled a comb out of her pocket to set it right again.
“That sounds really cool,” Chelle said, and then looked a bit helplessly to Mira as she added, “I just wish I knew what half of it meant.”
All four of them laughed, and Mira said, “Don’t worry about the jargon. Just focus on the big picture stuff while we’re here and I’ll explain what it all meant when we get back to Westbrook.”
“Oh yeah, life in the small town,” Ruby said. “How’s that going, bigshot library director?”
“Not the greatest,” Mira admitted, glancing around the room in search of her nemesis. He wasn’t at the bar anymore, and she hoped that meant he’d had enough mingling and went back upstairs to his room.
She told Max and Ruby about her managerial challenges with Jack and the Internet filter boycott, laughing the whole time because it was either that or cry, and by the end she was feeling much better about her situation. It didn’t seem to loom so large after she’d said it all out loud, and until now the only person she had to vent all of it to had been Liv, but as a Trustee she wasn’t exactly impartial.
The conversation turned to the work Max and Ruby were doing, a collaboration between Ruby’s youth services department at Lisbon Public Library and the nearby community college where Max worked. Then they started to ask Chelle about her background, and while she told them about studying exercise science, Mira decided it would be a good time to get a drink from the bar. She was parched from the long drive and the bar wasn’t crowded at the moment.
“I’m going to get some water or something,” she said. “Anyone need anything?”
“No, I’m okay,” Chelle said, and Max and Ruby indicated the same.
So Mira headed across the room to where she spied a couple pitchers of ice water sitting on the end of the bar. She was just reaching for one of them when Jack stepped up to the bar beside her.
“Hey, Jack,” she said, trying not to let her disappointment at his presence to seep into her voice as she poured herself a glass. He ordered a beer – by the looks of it, not his first – and she asked, “You taking it easy? Don’t want to be too hung over to go to the conference tomorrow morning.”
“I think you’re the one taking it a little too easy, Miranda,” he said. His voice was clear, the same menacing tone he always answered her with.
“I’m having water, actually,” she said, gesturing at her glass.
“I’m not talking about alcohol,” Jack said, glancing over at the table where Chelle was talking with Max and Ruby.
Fear shot down her spine and she wondered for the second time that night what Jack suspected of her. It seemed pretty clear that he was beginning to make the connection between her and Chelle, but exactly how much he knew was hard to tell.
Chelle looked up from her conversation, choosing the exact wrong moment to smile in Mira’s direction. She was oblivious – she’d never taken the situation as seriously as Mira did – and Mira wanted to melt into the floor right where she was standing. She felt panic beginning to rise under her collar like a fever, and she decided it would be best to get the hell out of the room and away from Jack before she overplayed her hand.