Falling for Trouble by Sarah Title (10)

Liam missed Peggy.

He kept meaning to drop in on her, but then he was running late for work or it was late in the evening and he didn’t want to bother her, especially not when half of Halikarnassus seemed to come into the library to tell him that they had just stopped by Peggy’s and that she was doing okay, her spirits were up, that was what was important. This was usually followed by a mention of The Granddaughter, and how they had no idea how long Joanna would be sticking around and wasn’t it too bad that Peggy had no one else to take care of her?

Except for the entire town of Halikarnassus, apparently.

Anyway, he knew better than to take the town’s Greek chorus at its word.

He missed Peggy’s laugh and wisdom and the way she acted all no-nonsense but really offered him unwavering support. He missed seeing her pop up at the library or running into her at the grocery store. She always seemed to show up when she was least expected, but when he most needed to talk to her.

If she had wings, he would have sworn she was his fairy godmother.

Like that time when Mr. McElroy came in drunk and Liam really didn’t want to call the police. The man was harmless and Liam didn’t want to be responsible for adding to his troubles. But Mr. McElroy was starting to sing some pretty salty sea shanties, so he wasn’t sure he had a choice. Then Peggy stopped by, called Craig, who owned the deli, and asked him to come bring Mr. McElroy a sandwich. Which he did. Or the time when Toni was out sick and two moms were fighting over whose kid was going to check out the last Elephant and Piggie book, and Peggy happened to be perusing the new paperbacks and came to see what the fuss was about, and she told them, Solomon-like, that Liam would rip the book and let each of them take half. This made the kids cry (and Liam a little bit, too, on the inside), and the mothers left in a huff with a stack of non-Willems easy readers for their kids.

It wasn’t that Liam couldn’t handle bad stuff that happened at the library. It was just that he was very grateful when Peggy was there to lend a hand.

He should think about putting her on the payroll.

If he still had a payroll. This, unfortunately, was not something guaranteed to be in the next budget year.

He would so rather be alphabetizing his record collection.

Which was already alphabetized.

So he tried not to be too hard on himself for the faux-casual laser focus he kept on the door to the town council chambers. True, Peggy had never missed a meeting since he had been in town—and it sounded as if she barely missed one before that. The old mayor used to joke that she was the conscience of the council, even though she never ran. She had no time for politics, she always said. Except when it came to the town council. And the occasional phone bank for a Democratic senator. And periodically hosting meetings about bond initiative campaigns in her living room. And the League of Women Voters voter registration drive.

Still, it was too much to expect that the Council’s Conscience would become miraculously mobile enough to attend the meeting. Especially since she had called Liam earlier that afternoon telling him that she was not. He thought she might have been crying. Then Joanna got on the phone and accused him of making Peggy cry. Even though he hadn’t said anything! He just listened to her saying she wasn’t going to be able to make it to the meeting and assured her that it was okay, that he would be fine and that he would let her know tomorrow how it all went. He had tomorrow off, he told her. He could bring some lunch and they could complain about the new mayor. He’d take notes and everything.

But now, as he sat here nervously manhandling his notes, he felt sure that a breakdown tomorrow wouldn’t be enough. He needed Peggy there, Peggy and her friends who knit through the whole meeting. The knitters were here, but without Peggy paying rapt attention, it didn’t have the same effect. Kind of creepy, actually. Like a jury of Madame Defarges, knitting in code all of the ways the new mayor had failed to live up to the expectations set by his father.

Hal Klomberg Jr. wasn’t such a bad guy. Well, he wasn’t a great guy, Liam thought, but he hadn’t voted for him. The election was well before Liam moved to Halikarnassus, and anyway, Hal ran unopposed, like his father before him. The way the residents of Halikarnassus talked about Hal Jr., you’d think someone would have stepped up to try to defeat him. Entitled, they said. A bully, they said. Didn’t have any of his father’s integrity or common sense. Never mind that Liam’s library housed the archive for the Halikarnassus Herald, and he had read a few of the letters to the editor. Hal Sr. was not so beloved in his time. But, well, greener grass and all that. People always had a tendency to look at the past with rose-colored glasses. And nostalgia was a powerful drug. The other day one of his teen volunteers came in wearing a Nirvana T-shirt with a beat-up flannel over it. Swap out the skinny jeans (Liam could not get behind skinny jeans) and the kid could have been teenage Liam. It was alarming. Nobody needed to be teenage Liam, that gawky, gangly mess of hormones.

But apparently gawky and gangly was cool now. Thoughts like this made Liam feel very old, and he wasn’t even thirty. They also made him misremember how hellish his high school life was, being a gawky, gangly kid with glasses who was into music and books and feelings. Seeing that kid dressed as Young Liam made him think that, yeah, it was cool back then. He had no problems, no worries. No desk schedules to fight with, no bills due, no town council meetings to deal with.

Nostalgia, man.

It made Liam feel a little bad for Hal Jr. Just the fact that he went by Hal Jr. meant there was no escaping his father’s legacy. But what could the guy do? That was his name. Liam would really feel bad for the guy if he wasn’t trying to cut the library’s budget.

No, not cut it. Adjust it, was how Hal Jr. described it. Because the roof had sprung a leak during the very snowy winter, and so thousands of dollars were spent replacing said roof in the spring. Which was now done, and Liam had submitted a very detailed and specific list of all the materials that were damaged in the leak—the specific books, the exact model of public printer, and the very expensive microfilm machine. The insurance company cut the check and Liam placed the order and they had a shiny, almost-new microfilm machine and a new printer that also scanned, and the holes in the collection were filled with shiny new books.

Fixing the damage wrought by the leak, Liam was prepared to argue, didn’t actually cost the town anything beyond Liam’s time to assess the damage and order replacements. And the insurance money did exactly that—replaced things that were lost. So Hal Jr.’s argument that the library had already bought a bunch of new stuff this year and so did not need the line item earmarked for new books was . . . flawed.

The problem was, Hal Jr. knew it was flawed. He just didn’t care. He wanted the money for his pet projects, mostly the Halikarnassus High School football team, which killed Liam because of the stereotypes. Couldn’t he want the money for the theater club? Or girls’ sports, for the love of Pete? But no. Football.

Liam liked football. And he enjoyed going to the HHS games, even though the team was absolutely terrible. Putting in lights on the football field was not going to fix that. But try telling that to Hal Jr.

Which was what Liam was at the town council meeting to do.

Man, he missed Peggy.

The gavel banged for order, the flag was pledged to, and Liam sat, using all of his active listening skills to not fall asleep while reports were given about the status of public works projects and yet another proposal to name the community center after Derek Jeter, which was a badly concealed attempt to get Derek Jeter to come to Halikarnassus.

“And now it looks like we have the library here to ask for a budget increase?”

That wasn’t at all what Liam was asking for, as Hal knew, but he stood and approached the podium, bracing himself for what was coming.

“All right, Big, what’ve you got for us?”

Ha ha ha, yes, great, every time. Big as in Big Bird, because Liam’s last name was Byrd and he had to smile because Hal was trying to cut the library’s budget midyear and Liam couldn’t make an enemy of him by not finding his jokes funny.

He did not go to library school for this.

“Yes, hi,” Liam said into the mic.

“Hold on, before you start.” Hal leaned forward like he was ready to dig into a long, hilarious comment.

“Now you wait a minute, Hal, he has the right to speak,” said Councilman Maguire on Hal’s left.

“I’m going to let him—”

“Let’s follow the protocol, shall we?”

“Your father always followed the protocol.”

Great. Just what Liam needed. That kind of comment always got Hal to shut up, but it also got him crabby and pouting, and that made him vote like a petulant child instead of the forward-thinking, open-minded mayor he claimed to be.

“Go on, son,” said Councilwoman Hopson to Liam.

Liam took a deep breath. “As you know,” he started, which was maybe too challenging but he did it anyway because they did know what he was about to say—that they had budgeted this bunch of money for the library and it was approved and the money to replace the roof came from the town’s improvement fund while the money to replace the damaged materials came from insurance and so, while expensive, the roof actually didn’t spend any of the library’s budget and was fully covered by these other funds so he was really just calling to keep the library budget intact. Which he said in a rush into the mic, looking at all of the council members but Hal, whose fuzzy logic was the whole reason he had to stand up and say this dumb stuff in the first place.

“Gentlemen?” asked Councilwoman Hopson. “Comments?”

“First of all, I want to say what a great job you’ve done with the library, Liam. You’ve really opened it up and made it fun. At first a lot of us were concerned that you were undoing all of Mrs. Pratt’s hard work, but it looks like that was just a strong foundation that you built on. I understand that kids and teens are using the library now, which makes it less quiet”—some grumbles from the council—“but also keeps them off the streets, which I’m sure Chief Savage appreciates.”

A bewildered nod from the police chief, who knew as well as everyone on the dais that if kids were going to get in trouble, there was much more fun trouble to be had in neighboring towns. Halikarnassus was too boring even for trouble.

All rumors about Joanna Green notwithstanding.

“So this is what I need you to help me understand, Big. If you bought all these new books a few months ago, why do you need more new books?”

The dumbness of Hal’s statement was so powerful that it radiated stupidity and struck Liam momentarily mute. “Uh,” he started. Then he recovered. “New books are constantly being published, and the library’s collection needs to—”

“Yes, but you already bought new books.”

“Well, not all of those books were new.”

“You’re saying you bought old books?”

“We bought new copies of older books, yes, to replace the titles that were damaged in the roof leak.”

“So you wasted your money on old books?”

“No, we used our insurance money to replace the important volumes that were destroyed.”

“But you could have used it to buy new books.”

“The terms of the settlement—”

“I remember the terms, and you didn’t have to buy exact copies of what was lost because, as you pointed out, some were out of print or not worth replacing. So why did you replace them?”

“In those cases, I replaced them with newer editions or similar books that had updated information—”

“But not new books.”

“Some new books, yes.”

“So you’ve already had your fair share of new books, don’t you think? There are other places that can use that money.”

Liam looked at the other members of the council, who were all studiously taking notes instead of meeting his eye. He knew what was happening. Some of those guys supported the library, but they were all dazzled by Hal’s vision of a new revenue-generating football stadium, and they were convinced the only way to pay for the lights was to take away the library’s money.

“Let me try an analogy,” Liam started. “Let’s say you have a football team. And that football team needs equipment and uniforms to be competitive. So the town approves the funds to buy some.”

“Great. Smart town.” Some laughs from the audience.

“Now let’s say it’s six months later, and Nike comes up with this new kind of shoulder pad that is less bulky but just as strong as the other kind of shoulder pad.”

“Bob, do you know anything about this shoulder pad?” Hal asked Coach Simonetti, who liked to come to council meetings to show support for Hal’s lighting project, even though his time could be better spent actually trying to make his team, you know, good.

“No,” Liam interrupted Hal’s interruption. “I just made it up. It’s for the analogy.”

“Well, it sounds like a great idea. Maybe you could work on it and use your millions to buy however many books you want for the library.”

Liam gritted his teeth, but continued. “These shoulder pads are great, but you already have shoulder pads for your team. But you would still want to get these new ones, right? Because they’re so great?”

“Hell yes, Big, I would want to get them.”

“But you already have shoulder pads.”

“Are you saying our kids don’t deserve the best?”

“No, I’m saying they do, and so you should get the new shoulder pads.”

“Great. Go out and invent them and I’ll be your first customer.”

More laughs from the audience.

“Well, as I mentioned, that was just an analogy. So now imagine the shoulder pads were books.”

“I can’t imagine books would do a very good job of keeping our boys safe.”

“Ha ha.” Then Liam looked at Hal and realized he wasn’t joking. Oh boy. “No, the shoulder pads were just a metaphor for the books. We have other books that are great, but we also need the new books, not only so we can stay competitive, but so we can continue to provide great service to the community.”

“Yes, but new shoulder pads would protect our children. New books won’t actually do anything for kids, would they?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Liam suddenly felt the crush of the silent shock and disapproval of the entire council and everyone in the audience.

I guess I said that out loud, he thought. Oops.

He looked at Hal’s face, a mixture of cold fury and righteous victory. For a dumb guy, he had a very complicated face.

“I think that’s enough from our esteemed librarian,” he said. “We’ll take it into consideration. I don’t think we need to vote on it tonight. What do you say, fellas?”

The other members of the council gave Liam disgusted looks and nodded. Well, there went all of the support for the library.

Shaking with fury at himself and at Hal, Liam sat down and listened, numb, as the council went through the rest of the agenda.

He’d really screwed that up.

He needed Peggy.

Also, he needed a drink.

* * *

Joanna’s Doc Martens squished in the damp grass as she crossed the baseball field. She couldn’t believe she was wearing them, but as soon as she dug them out of her closet and put them on, it was like her feet were reunited with an old friend. Because all of her friends were inanimate objects. Except for Trina, who was human, and who was meeting her at Chet’s to check out whatever band was passing through town. Besides, Trina would laugh her ass off to see she still had them.

She emerged from the six-foot patch of woods and onto the gravel lot of Chet’s. She was reaching for the iron door handle—God, even that twisty iron handle brought back memories—when her phone beeped.

Great. Joanna did literally nothing all day, but every time Trina wasn’t shuttling kids or furniture around, Joanna was taking Granny to the doctor. She was starting to think that Trina was avoiding her.

Joanna had a choice. She could either go into Chet’s alone, drink at the bar alone, watch the band alone, or she could just go home. Alone.

This whole night out at Chet’s had been Trina’s idea. She thought it would be fun to visit their old stomping grounds, and this time with an actual, legal ID. And Trina was convinced the band would be worth the five-dollar cover. Which, frankly, wasn’t saying much.

Growing up, Joanna and Trina had seen every Fall Out Boy-emo-punk band to come through town. There were a surprising number of them. Halikarnassus was a convenient stopping point between Brooklyn and Buffalo, and Chet’s was uncool enough to be very cool. It was sort of a rite of passage for bands from the New York suburbs. You might get a fancy record deal and open a stadium show for the actual Fall Out Boy, but nothing compared to the unpretentious good time of pitchers and bad PAs at Chet’s.

Chet had never looked too closely at Joanna and Trina’s IDs back then, but looking back, Joanna did find it suspicious that he never served them at the bar. Oh, sure, the visiting rock dudes would buy them beer. And then when he finally let Delicious Lies play, drinking was the last thing on her mind. She was drunk on rock and roll, man.

Standing under the lights outside of Chet’s now, she had a decision to make. She could go in, listen to some rock music, drink a beer, and walk home. It wasn’t like she’d never been to a bar alone before. And she was there for the music. Sure, she was wearing fifteen-year-old shoes as a nostalgic joke for a person who wasn’t even there, but it wouldn’t be the dumbest she’d ever looked at Chet’s. It wasn’t as bad as the Halloween show when she tried to play a gig dressed as a sexy chicken. She didn’t think Rosetta would ever forgive her for those prematurely molting feathers.

Just as she was reaching for the door, it opened with force, jamming into her fingers.

“Ouch!” She backed off the concrete step into the gravel, shaking off the pain.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry!” Chet, the man himself, let the door slam closed behind him and shook a cigarette out of his pack. “You okay?”

The man hadn’t changed a bit. His hair was still gray and slicked back, his face was still tanned and wrinkled. His rough hands still bore the tattoo of a wedding band, and he still flipped that Zippo with the American flag on it.

“Yeah, Chet, I’m fine.” She watched him suck the smoke in, blow it out over his shoulder, away from her.

He looked at her, like he was trying to place her. He shook his cigarette in her general direction. “I know . . . holy shit, Jo Jo?”

And again with the Jo Jo. Usually kids she didn’t like at school called her that. But even when a guy she liked and respected and admired called her “Jo Jo,” she still couldn’t stand it.

“I know that scowl,” Chet said, his smile splitting the crags of his face. “Joanna Green, what the hell are you doing here?”

Before she could answer, she was enveloped in a smoky hug. She grunted as her feet left the ground, and when Chet put her down, he held her at arm’s length. “Look at you, girl. All growed up.”

“Old enough for a beer now.”

He raised his hands up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go on in and spend some money. You owe me, kid.”

She laughed and ducked under his arm through the open door.

Chet’s was exactly as she remembered it: dark and divey. She had never found another bar quite like it, where hipsters with beards mingled with men who wore their beards without irony. Where you could walk in with as many pretensions as you want, but nobody was going to pay them any attention, so you might as well leave them at the door. Where there was only Bob Seger on the jukebox, and if you wanted to listen to something different, you better just stick around until the band started.

It was pretty crowded for a weeknight, but Joanna found a place at the far end of the bar. The bartender made his way over and when he got to her, his craggy face split into a grin. “Jo Jo?”

Gus was a legend, as much a part of Chet’s as the cheap beer and the plywood floor. He knew everything about music, could go toe-to-toe with any music head on everything from Mozart to Mingus. But all he really cared about was the soulful tone of Bob Seger, and since he had been at the bar longer than most of the patrons had been alive, they let the jukebox be Gus’s. That was how you knew Gus liked you, if he started talking about the time Bob Seger had come through town and played a set, unannounced. Gus still had his whiskey glass in a place of honor above the bar. But he was also a great bartender, heavy-handed with the booze early in the night, knowing just when and how to cut someone off. He could break up a fight with his army voice, and he could soothe the most heartbroken girl better than whiskey. He did not make margaritas.

Gus had always told her and Trina that he never forgot a face, and, given the dozen or so years Joanna had put on hers, he wasn’t kidding.

Although he did forget that she hated that nickname.

Or maybe he didn’t forget. Maybe he just remembered that he was the only one who could get away with it.

Well, him and Chet.

Man, she was getting soft in her old age.

“I heard you were back in town! Wonderin’ when you’d make it in to see your old friends. Or you too big for us little folks now?”

Coming from most people, Joanna would have considered that a dig. She knew the word was around town that Joanna was no longer with Bunny Slippers. She knew that the good people of Halikarnassus saw her as a failure. She preferred to think that she’d given up fame and fortune for artistic integrity.

But Gus was incapable of passive aggression, and insincerity was not something he practiced. This could result in stony silence or a lifelong bond—regardless, Gus didn’t bullshit you.

And he didn’t make margaritas.

She waved off his proud papa grin—obviously Gus hadn’t heard the good news. “Just came in for a beer and some music.”

“That’s my girl. How’s Peggy?”

Geez. Small towns. Peggy, as far as Joanna knew, had never even been to Chet’s.

As far as Joanna knew. Granny seemed to have some hidden depths.

Joanna gave Gus a thumbs-up. “She’s doing great.”

“Great. She’s a tough old broad, your grandmother.”

Now Joanna was confused. “How do you know—?”

“The usual?” Gus cut her off. Was he blushing?

Good Lord, did Granny and Gus have a thing?

She needed a beer.

She nodded for the usual, then scanned the crowd for a better place to hover while she waited for the music to start. Preferably a quiet corner where she could avoid the curious looks from locals and the overenthusiastic bouncing of the SUNY kids. Didn’t they know you weren’t supposed to bounce at rock shows anymore? Just stand there and appreciate it, dammit. That’s what the cool kids did now.

She headed toward her ideal corner of the bar, but when she got there, she saw that it was occupied. And that it was occupied by Liam the Librarian. Liam the Librarian, who was wearing a tie, loosened at the neck, and a dress shirt rolled up to his elbows.

Do not notice the forearms, she told herself. And do not, instead, focus on the shoulders. Or the neck. Who even had a sexy neck? This guy was ridiculous.

Before she had a chance to wipe the scowl of disapproval off her face (really, it was unnatural for someone that dorky to be that sexy), he looked up and caught her eye. He gave her a confused look—apparently he was unaware of how wrong his sexiness was. She thought about sticking her tongue out and finding a new corner. But she was a grown-up now. She didn’t need to hide her mistakes with aggressive posturing.

So she smiled.

Now he looked frightened.

He seemed to shake off whatever it was about her that was frightening him (her personality, she realized) and he gave her the same smile as when she’d seen him in the library. The How Can I Help You Smile.

Great. She could either spend the night trading confusing glances with Liam the Sexy Librarian, or she could get trampled by the SUNY students pouring in to see the band.

“Hey, Joanna.”

The librarian spoke! And now his customer service smile was replaced with a look of mild curiosity.

She was getting really good at reading this guy’s face.

“Yeah, hi. I almost didn’t recognize you without your head in my grandmother’s fridge.” Hey, that sounded nice and weird.

“Are you here to see the band?” She recovered smoothly, because of course he was, wearing a tie. Totally the kind of thing one wears to a post-punk hipster band show.

He nodded, which surprised her. So he had good taste in music (Bunny Slippers aside), bad instincts for fashion. “I’ve been hearing good stuff about these guys,” he said, pointing his beer toward the stage where a bunch of guys—in suits!—were starting the sound check. “It was supposed to be my reward for surviving the town council meeting.”

She took in his rumpled-up sleeves and his tie, askew. “How’d it go?”

He raised his glass.

She took that to mean not well.

“So that’s why you’re wearing a suit in a dive bar?”

“Yup.”

“I thought you were auditioning for Death of a Salesman.”

He laughed. “I didn’t think—”

“What, you didn’t think I could make literary references? I took freshman English, same as everyone else.”

He held up his hands. “Okay! You’re right. That was an unfair assumption.”

She took a drink of her beer. It was delicious and cold and tasted like the best and worst times of her misspent youth. Mmm . . . beer. Too bad the company was leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Do I look ridiculous?”

She looked at the sexy librarian’s mouth. But only because that’s where the words were coming from.

“Huh?” she asked, because she took freshman English.

He waved his hand up and down, indicating his body. No, she corrected herself, indicating his clothes. His body was ridiculous, librarian-wise.

She shrugged. “You’d look more ridiculous in skinny jeans.”

He looked pained. “I do not understand skinny jeans. How can they be comfortable?”

“Hey, it’s about time men learned to suffer for fashion.”

“Yes, but that just seems so . . .”

Whatever it seemed was cut off by the band.

And Joanna had a major flashback. The sound pouring through the speakers went straight to her heart. Part of her wanted to jump up on the stage and steal the skinny suit–wearing lead guitar, and part of her wanted to curl up in a corner and cry. That could have been her up on that stage. Up on any stage in the world. She just had to play crappy radio music.

“They’re not that bad.” Liam nudged her with his elbow.

She gave him a weak smile and a thumbs-up.

“They got nothing on you, kid,” Gus said, sidling up to them.

“I’d love to hear you play live,” Liam said, his eyes lighting up with interest.

Joanna hmphed noncommittally. She’d love to play live. Her fingers were itching to do it. But in this shitty town? And who with?

“She was the heart and soul of Delicious Lies,” Gus said like a proud papa.

Liam raised an eyebrow at her.

“High school band,” she explained, hoping the band onstage would continue their excessively rowdy guitar riffs. It didn’t make for a great balance of sound, but it did the trick when she was avoiding talking about things Gus was not getting the hint about.

“Great name,” Liam said.

It was a great name. It perfectly captured how she and her angry high school girlfriends felt about society, man. She was glad she hadn’t taken it with her to LA. LA would have beaten Delicious Lies into sexy-boring rock submission.

“Too bad that other gig didn’t work out.” The look on Gus’s face was getting awfully close to pity, which was alarming enough. Coupled with the fact that she did not want to talk about bands not working out, it made Joanna suddenly decide she’d had enough rock music for one night.

She put her empty beer bottle on the bar. “See you, Gus.”

“’Night, kid.”

“You’re leaving?” Liam the Librarian actually looked a little sad about that.

“Not my scene.”

“I thought you came here for the music.”

Which was true, and which had just started.

“It’s the company,” she said, bitterly.

His face told her that he got the hint, but the rest of him clearly did not.

“Hold on, I’ll walk you to your car.” He reached for his wallet.

“No, it’s fine. I walked.”

“Well then, let me walk you home. It’s late.”

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s Halikarnassus. Besides, I know self-defense.”

She watched the thoughts pass over his face—he wanted to be a gentleman, but he wanted to finish his drink. This guy should definitely never play poker.

She put him out of his misery and made it easier for him. “Your nice-guy bullshit? Don’t bother.” She didn’t wait for his response, just waved and was out the door.