Cal wasn’t very good at waiting. He hadn’t had a lot of practice at it. But that was exactly what he was doing now. He’d come into the library to see Billy, but he hadn’t been prepared for how busy she would be. When he’d visited the library as a kid, it had been a sleepy backwater. Now it was buzzing with activity, and as far as he could tell, Billy was the only one working. She hadn’t noticed him yet; she’d been sitting at the checkout desk helping other patrons, and he hadn’t wanted to interrupt her. Instead he’d taken a USA TODAY off the newspaper rack and found a place to read it—an armchair that was not only comfortable but also gave him a view of Billy. God, she was pretty, he thought, and as he was watching her, a young girl carrying a wobbly tower of books staggered over to her desk.
“Mara, that’s a lot to check out, even for you,” Billy said to her when she’d finished helping another patron.
“I know,” the girl said, setting the books down on the edge of the desk. “But I’m going on vacation.”
“And they don’t have any books where you’re going?” Billy asked her, amused.
“No, they do. I’m going to Spokane, Washington,” Mara explained, giving the books a little push so that they were more firmly on the desk. “I’m visiting my grandparents. I need a lot of books, though. I’m going to be flying on the airplane by myself.”
“Oh, I see. An unaccompanied minor.”
Mara nodded proudly.
“Well, you’ll definitely want to take enough reading material for the flight,” Billy said. “But”—and here she glanced at the books in the stack—“seven books? Do you really think you can read that many?”
“Probably not,” Mara said. “Except, what if I don’t like one of them? Or even two of them. Or what if I read them really fast?”
Billy smiled and, resting her elbows on the desk, leaned forward and asked confidentially, “Mara, do you have a fear of being without a book?”
Mara nodded her head vigorously.
Billy smiled. “I have that fear, too. It’s why I keep at least three books in my shoulder bag at all times. In case I finish one and I don’t like another. I also keep a book in the glove compartment of my car, and a couple more of them in the trunk. Just for good measure. Because you never know when you’re going to need a book.”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” Mara said, looking relieved. Cal smiled to himself. Had Billy been like Mara when she was her age? he wondered.
“All right,” Billy said, standing up. “If you don’t think those will be too heavy for you to carry on the plane, let’s get you something to put them in. I think we still have some leftover ‘Friends of the Library’ totes from last year’s book sale.”
“Thank you,” Mara said as Billy went over to a cupboard and started rummaging through it. She took a tote bag from the cupboard and stacked Mara’s books inside it after she checked them out.
“How’s this?” Billy asked, coming around to Mara’s side of the checkout desk and handing her the tote bag. Mara hefted it up. It looked like it weighed more than she did.
“It’s fine,” she said cheerfully. “I’m even going to have enough to read at my grandparents’.” She smiled her thanks at Billy and headed toward the door.
“Mara? Don’t forget to spend some time with your grandparents, too,” Billy called after her with a smile.
And Cal watched as this slight girl toting her heavy bag of books slipped out the door. Seeing an opening now, he put down his newspaper and approached Billy.
“Hey,” he said.
“Cal.” She blushed with surprise and, he hoped, pleasure. “How long have you been here?”
“Not long,” he said, standing close enough now to see her delicate freckles.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Well, yesterday I was a little hungover. But today I have a job, so things must be looking up.”
“You have a job . . . in Butternut?” she asked, her eyes traveling over his clothes.
He had on a T-shirt, jeans, and work boots, and while he’d been careful to wipe his feet on the doormat before coming into the library, his boots were still covered with dust from the remodel at the cottage. He’d spent the morning with Jack, helping him tear down another wall. Jack had offered to pay him, but Cal waved this off. The truth was that this was the first time in months he’d really enjoyed working.
“I sort of have a job,” he explained. “I didn’t need it and I wasn’t looking for it, but it found me anyway.” He smiled. “I’m helping Jack Keegan restore a cottage over at the White Pines, when he needs the help, and when I have the time. By the way,” he said, moving closer because a patron was walking by, “I wanted to thank you for driving me home the other night.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” she said. “I owed you a ride, remember?”
“I remember,” he said, thinking that much of their brief relationship had played out in their cars. They stood for a moment in silence, Cal feeling a little bit like he was back in high school. The art of flirting, though, had come more naturally to him then.
“I love what you’ve done with this place,” he said finally, gesturing around the library.
“What I’ve done with it?”
He nodded.
“You know”—it was her turn to lower her voice—“I don’t actually own it. I just work here.”
“No, I know,” he smiled. “It’s totally different, though, than I remember it. When I was a kid, it felt kind of gloomy. And threadbare.”
“Oh, trust me. There are still a few bare threads around here.”
“No, seriously. It looks great. And another thing, too—it smells good. Like . . . gardenias, I think.”
“Oh. That’s just my perfume,” Billy said, blushing. “It’s Chanel Gardénia.”
Cal smiled. “Really? I thought it was the whole place. It used to have this kind of musty smell. This . . . old book smell.”
“That’s a real thing, you know. Old book smell. It’s caused by the breakdown of cellulose in paper.”
“Is it?”
“Yep. There was an article about it in Smithsonian Magazine. Some people love that smell, by the way. It reminds them of their childhood, or their grandparents’ house, or . . . their old public library.”
Cal nodded, distracted. Was it her perfume clouding his brain? Or was it just her? She was wearing a dress—she seemed to favor simple, classic dresses—this one sleeveless, blue and white striped. And while there was nothing immodest about it, the neckline was still incredibly flattering.
“Well,” Cal said, trying to refocus his attention on what Billy was saying, “the place has real energy.”
Billy smiled. “On most days it does. Not always in the dead of winter, though. Still, I’m really proud of our children’s program. That has been a success. Thanks to parents like your sister. But you know, sometimes when I read an article about libraries that are offering Zumba classes or coding classes or things like that, I get jealous. We don’t have the space for that here, or the resources. We make do, though. Recently I started . . .” She caught herself here, and broke off. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear about this.”
“I do want to hear about it,” Cal corrected her. He liked that she was so animated when she talked about her work.
“I was just going to say that recently, I started a program here called ‘Community Conversations.’ I mean, we’re not a large community, obviously, but for a town of our size, we have a lot of interesting people. So I thought, why not get some of them to share their interests and expertise with the rest of us? We have two presentations coming up.” She took a leaflet from the checkout desk and handed it to him. “One is called ‘Contemporary Fur Trapping,’ and the other is ‘Planting for Native Pollinators.’ ”
Cal studied the leaflet. “Fur trapping? Are people still . . . ?”
“Well, I don’t know about people, but a person, anyway. Mr. Jalowitz.”
At that moment, a young woman approached them, and Cal found himself praying that she wouldn’t need Billy’s help. She didn’t. She passed right by them, took a cooking magazine off one of the racks, and settled in at the reading table to peruse it.
“We have to watch the cooking magazines,” Billy said softly. “Believe it or not, people still cut the recipes out of them.”
“Huh. I had no idea you attracted such a rough crowd,” Cal said teasingly. “Clipping recipes? That’s some antisocial behavior.”
“I know.” Billy laughed. “This place is pretty quaint, at least compared to the library I worked at in St. Paul. There was a homeless problem there,” she said, turning serious. “We don’t have anything like that here.”
“There is poverty, though,” Cal pointed out. It wasn’t as visible in the Northwoods as it was in a city, but it was there.
“Of course,” Billy said. “And we see some of it at the library, especially in the winter. We have people who come for the day—mainly elderly, mainly living on fixed incomes—so they can keep their thermostat turned down at home and save on their heating bills. I like to think, though, that there are worse places to stay warm.”
There are much worse places, Cal was about to say, but in that moment a rather shrill voice called out, “Billy,” and a tiny but formidable person came sailing up to them.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Streeter,” Billy said with an enthusiasm that Cal thought had cost her some effort. “You remember Cal Cooper, don’t you? He was at Daisy’s wedding.”
Cal certainly remembered Mrs. Streeter. Only now, instead of being wrapped in acres of plum material as she had been at the wedding, she was swathed in a blue-and-white-gingham dress that seemed nearly to swamp her small frame, and where the plum-colored bird’s nest hat had been before, there was now a straw hat with a rather aggressive assortment of plastic flowers on top. The effect was slightly startling on someone so old, and so small, but Cal wondered if perhaps that was the purpose behind it.
“I remember him,” Mrs. Streeter said, and though she was well over a foot shorter than Cal, she somehow managed to give the effect of looking down on him. “But I didn’t come in here to socialize.”
“No? What can I help you with?” Billy asked, her bright blue eyes resting patiently on her.
“I would like to check out a movie,” Mrs. Streeter said.
“Let me guess,” Billy said. “Cary Grant?”
“That’s right. Today I’d like Only Angels Have Wings.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Streeter. We haven’t gotten that in yet. It’s at the top of our list, though. We’ll be putting in another DVD order next month.”
“Next month?”
“Uh-huh. If you can’t wait that long, you could always . . . consider subscribing to Netflix,” Billy said gently. Cal guessed this was not the first time Billy had suggested this.
“But that would cost money!” Mrs. Streeter said, clearly appalled. “And another thing—I don’t understand why you can’t have all of Mr. Cary Grant’s movies. He’s a major motion picture star.”
Was, Cal thought.
“I know, Mrs. Streeter,” Billy said. “He has a large body of work, though. And we consider other people’s tastes, too. Most people who check out DVDs here want to see more . . . current movies.”
“Then they don’t know what they’re missing.”
“Probably not.”
“Furthermore, you could order more movies. You know, expand your collection.”
“We could. If we didn’t have limited shelf space for it.”
“Then allot more space.”
“You mean take away the space that we’re already using for books?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Streeter said, as if Billy were being deliberately slow. “More movies. Fewer books.”
Cal thought for a moment that Billy’s politeness was going to falter, but he saw her draw in a steadying breath. “You know what, Mrs. Streeter? We will take that under advisement.”
“Good,” Mrs. Streeter said, seemingly satisfied. “For today, I suppose I’ll take Suspicion. It was Cary’s first collaboration, you know, with Mr. Alfred Hitchcock,” she told Cal, speaking of each man as if she knew him personally.
Billy went to get the DVD, though there was nothing to prevent Mrs. Streeter from getting it herself, Cal thought. He watched as Billy checked it out and said good-bye to the fierce little woman.
Afterward Billy came back to Cal. “I, uh, should probably get going,” he said reluctantly. “I told Jack I’d pick up some burgers from Pearl’s.”
“Okay. Was there . . . anything you needed here?” she asked. “Any books? The Art of Doing Nothing, maybe?”
“I probably should check that out. It might be too late for me, though. There are a couple of architectural books I was thinking of ordering online.”
“Get them here,” Billy said. “If you decide you want to buy them after you read them, you can always do that.” She went behind the checkout desk, and Cal gave her the titles. They were both books on contemporary American homes, but when Billy typed them into the computer, she discovered the library didn’t carry them. “I’ll get them through interlibrary loan.”
“Do I need a card?”
“I’ll just use your sister’s account. They should be here by the end of the week. Will you still be around?” She frowned, tapping on keys.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll be here for at least a couple more weeks. Thank you for ordering them. I’ll see you soon,” he said, not wanting to leave. And maybe she didn’t want him to leave, either, because he hadn’t even gotten halfway to the door when she caught up with him.
“Cal?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to . . . come over for dinner sometime? Maybe this Friday?”
“I’d love to,” he said. They exchanged cell phone numbers.
“I’ll . . . call you,” Billy said smiling, before she turned to help someone who was waiting at the checkout desk.
Cal went over to Pearl’s. There was a long line there, but that didn’t stop his new friend, Mrs. Streeter, from pushing right to the front of it. Cal didn’t mind, though. He was in too good a mood to care. In fact, he was even considering renting a Cary Grant movie on his computer tonight.