CHAPTER 18
ON MONDAY MORNING, Evelyn was waiting for me beside my desk the instant I arrived at the library. “Just a second,” I said. “I’ll turn on the latte machine.”
“This is more important.”
More important than the precious aroma of Colombian Roast filling the lobby? Evelyn had always insisted that I prepare our coffee service first thing; we could lure early morning researchers that way. Besides, if we were ready to serve them right when the doors opened, we were more likely to get their repeat business before they finished their library work.
I locked my purse into my desk drawer and straightened to look at her. Deep lines cut beside her lips, making her face look even more jowly than usual. I was sure that Neko would know some cosmetic fix, but I didn’t have the courage to suggest such a thing. “Is everything OK?” I asked, apprehension twisting my stomach.
“Come into my office.”
Gulp. This was serious.
I followed Evelyn into her glassed-in office, shutting her door as she took her seat. She was wearing a brown and green tweed suit, with a large, loose weave. The colors weren’t terrible on her, but the cut was far too boxy. More advice that I’d absorbed from Neko. More advice that I wouldn’t share.
Evelyn nodded her head toward one of the guest chairs. I sat down, but I did not lean back. Something told me not to get too comfortable. “What?” I finally asked.
“Saturday night, something came to my attention, and I spent all day yesterday trying to figure out the best way to discuss it with you.”
Saturday night. She had been strolling by Cake Walk, and she had looked up to see me light the candle in Melissa’s apartment, without benefit of match or Zippo. Or she had watched Neko and me frolicking in Sephora. Could she have stopped by the cottage while I wasn’t home? Oh my God—had she stumbled on the collection of books?
That must be it. She had discovered the trove of witch books. She had found the valuable leather and parchment, noted its complete and utter disarray. Even if she weren’t furious with me for keeping the collection a secret, she must be angry that I had done nothing to preserve the rare tomes.
Every fiber of my being wanted to explain. I wanted to tell her all about my witchcraft experiences, let her know that I completely understood the responsibility that had fallen into my lap. I wanted to say that I would never harm the books, and that I would get them into some semblance of order, and that I was only using my powers for good and not for evil.
I mean, putting out the fire in my kitchen had been good, hadn’t it?
The fire in my kitchen. Oh no. Was that what she was upset about? Had she heard that I’d invited Jason over for dinner? Had he complained to my boss?
“Evelyn, I can explain.”
He’d been my Imaginary Boyfriend for almost a year, I would tell her. I’d watched him, every day that he’d come in. I knew his study habits. I knew his writing style. I knew everything about him, and I knew that he and I would be perfect together. Once he got around to recognizing the same. Once he thought to ask me out.
“I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was,” Evelyn said, shaking her head. She really should think about getting her hair cut. That length was just so unflattering, the way the ends of her hair curled under right beside her jaw. Of course, if she colored it, instead of leaving it that mousy grey….
Wait. Evelyn was embarrassed? What had Jason said that embarrassed her? I was the one who should be mortified. Just what had he told her?
“Whatever Jason said, I can explain, Evelyn. Just let me tell you the whole story.”
“Jason?” Her lips thinned.
Should I have called him Professor Templeton?
Evelyn said, “You mean Justin. You don’t even remember the man’s name.”
Justin. Justin? I hadn’t invited any Justin over for dinner. I hadn’t ignited my oven for any Justin. I could hear Neko’s snarky voice whispering, “Ignited your oven? Is that what they’re calling it these days?” I tried to tamp down the smile at the corner of my lips, but I wasn’t really successful. If Evelyn was upset over someone called Justin, then my Jason had not spoken to her. He had not complained to my boss, had not told her that the pyromaniacal librarian she had living on Peabridge property had attempted to work a spell in front of him. Had actually worked a spell which, from Evelyn’s perspective, just might be worse.
Well, thank God for small favors.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Justin?”
“Justin Cartmoor.” I must have looked blank, because Evelyn gusted out a sigh. “Justin Cartmoor? The executive director of the Library Foundation.”
Oh.
I didn’t even bother to make my words into a question. “He told you I applied for a grant.”
“He assumed that I knew all about it. He told me that he was terribly sorry, that if he’d known we were interested earlier in the year, he might have been able to do something. I had no idea what he was talking about, of course, and so I made a fool out of myself, trying to get details about what I’d allegedly done.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I really, truly was. “Evelyn, it was just an idea I had. I thought that if I could line up some grant funding, then we wouldn’t have to wear our costumes. We might not have to turn the library into Starbucks, just to keep going for another year.”
“Jane, I was horribly embarrassed. It looked like I have no idea what my employees do. It looked like I don’t keep track of our day-to-day operations, or—worse—that I’m a forgetful old… old… biddy!”
Tears were starting to build up in her eyes, and her voice had grown thick. My belly twisted, and I caught my breath. I had never intended to cause anyone harm. I really had thought that I’d be helping—helping me, of course, but also helping Evelyn and the Peabridge.
“Of course you’re not a biddy, and anyone who would imply that is absolutely insane!” The words came out a bit more vehemently than I’d intended, but they made Evelyn smile. I took that as a good sign and carried on. “The applications were totally a spur of the moment thing. I spent a morning putting them together.” Hmmm. That might not reflect well on me—it made me sound like I’d gone off half-cocked. Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Applications?” Evelyn said, stressing the plural.
I nodded, suddenly wary, but I knew I needed to come clean. “Thirteen of them.”
“Thirteen!” She looked out the windows of her office as if she expected the Inspector General of Grant Applications to be waiting for her, black briefcase and bad suit at the ready.
“Those were only the strongest leads. For historic collections. And original materials. Like ours. There are lots of other possibilities. That. I. Can. Follow up on later.” I ended in a rush, realizing that there would be no “later.”
Evelyn shook her head. “Jane. Jane, Jane, Jane.” When she finally looked at me, though, her face had relaxed. I thought that there might even be a hint of a smile behind her powdered cheeks. “Jane, you are an excellent librarian. You really have a flair when it comes to research, and I am often amazed at the obscure details that you’re able to come up with in our collection. You are personable. You are flexible. You understand customer service.”
Any other time, I would have preened at the compliments, but I knew there was some giant “but” coming.
“But—” There it was. “But, you are not a fund-raiser. You aren’t trained in development. We have board members who specialize in that, people who have retired from successful careers working with some of the largest non-profits in the country.” She leaned back in her chair. “The Library Foundation is one of the ‘big guys.’ Applications to them should include complete records of our finances and plenty of graphs, charts about our past, present, and future needs. If we’re going to ask them for money, we need to make sure that we’ve dotted every single one of our i’s and crossed each of our t’s. It’s a tremendous job. Much more than any one of us should take on, on our own. And even so, the Peabridge is
likely below their radar screen.”
I felt as if I had shrunk to the size of a munchkin. Smaller. To a fairy. A gnat.
What had I been thinking of? I walked by one guy on the street, found out that he was thinking of donating money—to a theater company—and I believed that there were thousands of dollars just waiting to be taken?
“I’m sorry,” I said, and now I was surprised to hear tears in my own voice. “I only wanted to help. I thought that I’d surprise you, that you’d be happy—”
“I am happy, Jane. I’m happy that you care enough about the Peabridge to have tried. And I’m happy that we understand each other going forward. We’ll wait for a few years. Get our collection under control. Once we’re running a little more smoothly, we can try to go after the big grant people. All right?”
It wasn’t all right. I wanted to ask how we were going to get our collection under control without additional funding, without qualified cataloging help. But Evelyn knew the situation as well as I did. Better. I wasn’t going to teach her anything she didn’t already know. I nodded. “All right.”
“Thank you.” She nodded.
I pushed back my chair and crossed to the door. When my fingers touched the knob, Evelyn said, “Oh, one more thing.” I froze, afraid to turn around. “Justin was quite impressed with the essay that you wrote. He said that you were clearly passionate about your work, that your true librarian interest shone through. He was particularly taken with your quoting that line about Prospero’s books, and how you tied it in with the magic of learning.”
Well, that made it a little easier to head back to my desk and face another work week. But I wasn’t any more enthusiastic about getting the latte machine set up.
I had ground the first batch of coffee beans when Harold came through the library doors. Great. Frosting on my Monday morning cake.
“Did you have a wonderful weekend?” he asked. “You deserve the very best.”
Poor guy. I looked into his eyes and saw the patient trust and loyalty of a basset hound. “Yeah, Harold. I did. I helped my grandmother out with a party on Friday night and then I mostly hung out with friends. How about you?”
“Well, my mother needed a ride to her bridge club.” That’s right. I’d forgotten that Harold lived with his mother. “I brought along a book to read, instead of driving back and forth. The ladies there were really nice. They offered me treats, but all they had were those nasty cookies. You know, the pink and green ones? From the Watergate Bakery?”
I actually laughed out loud, and I was rewarded with the first pure, unworried smile I had seen on Harold’s face for a long time. “I know those cookies,” I said. “My grandmother loves them.” I added fresh-ground coffee to the paper filter and set the first batch of drip coffee to brew. Harold liked his black, although he sometimes treated himself to one of the sugar packets at the end of the counter. “What book are you reading?”
“Oh, nothing interesting.”
“You never know.” I smiled, amused by his hang-dog look. “I’m interested in a lot of things.”
He blushed, and I wondered if he was reading the secret erotic diary of some desperate Victorian lady. He looked carefully to either side before he replied, “Linux for Dummies.”
He looked so uncertain when he said it that I wanted to assure him that the “dummies” part was a joke, that he didn’t have to be dumb to want to learn. Especially about Linux. I barely knew what Linux was—some sort of computer operating system, a gold standard with geeks who managed computers. “Do you program computers, Harold?”
I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to blush more. The strands of hair that he had carefully combed across his bald pate looked as if they might catch fire from his embarrassment. “Not yet,” he said. “But I want to.”
I remembered the day that he had fixed my computer, pushing it past its annoying blue screen of death. “I’m sure you can, then. Especially if you’re willing to spend your weekends reading up on the subject.”
“You don’t think it’s stupid? For me? I mean, I’ve never been to college.” He lowered his eyes, suddenly overcome with bashfulness. “Like you have.”
Ach. What had I done working that spell? Sure, I’d gone to college, but so had most women in the world around us. Certainly Evelyn had. And Marie, our intern in the mail room. Harold was putting me on a pedestal, and I had no right to the special treatment. Oh well, I might as well see if I could use my power for good. “If there’s one field that you can break into without college, it’s likely to be computers. Take Bill Gates—he never got his degree.”
Well, that might have been a little overly optimistic. I mean, how many billionaires dropped out of Harvard? I thought that I should temper things a bit. “You might want to look into some of the technical schools around town. Or one of the community colleges. An associate degree may open just the doors you want.”
“An associate degree,” he repeated the words as if they were a mantra. I’d better watch what I said, or he’d be filling out college applications right in front of me. A quick beep let me know that the coffee had finished brewing, and I gratefully filled a cup for him, ready to send him on his way.
“Thank you,” he said gravely. “You make the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.”
“That’s very nice of you to say.” I made the best coffee. Right. He hadn’t even tested this batch. All I’d done was grind the beans, put them in the filter, and let the machine work its magic. Still, I supposed it was a nice sentiment. I said, “I’d better get back to work.” I nodded toward Evelyn’s office. “I don’t want her to think that I’m slacking off.”
“Who could ever think that of you?” Harold sounded astonished. So, this is what it felt like to have a knight in shining armor, ready to ride to one’s defense. Poor guy. He took his coffee and shambled off to the front door.
Before I could return to my desk, another patron approached the coffee counter. “Mr. Potter!” I said, recognizing Uncle George’s friend from the opera guild.
“Good morning,” he said, tipping an invisible hat. “And how is the Peabridge’s grant-writing phenom?”
I tried not to make a face. “Not the best, Mr. Potter.”
“What’s wrong?”
I gave him the sanitized version of the story—the funding just wasn’t going to come through this year, but we had high hopes for the future—and then I asked if I could make him a coffee. “A small mocha would be wonderful, dear.”
“Whipped cream?”
“What’s a mocha, without whipped cream?”
I laughed and agreed and got to work making the chocolate and coffee mixture. Mr. Potter took advantage of the time to look around the Peabridge lobby. “You’ve got a beautiful building here, don’t you?”
“It was converted from a residence nearly fifty years ago. The architects did a wonderful job at bringing in light.”
“My Lucinda would have loved this place. She always said that her spirits rose, just by standing near books.”
I smiled. “I know what she meant. How’s her dog?”
“Oh, Beijing is doing fine.”
I passed him his mocha, and he took a tentative sip, relying on the generous serving of whipped cream to keep from burning his mouth. “Ah,” he sighed. “As perfect a mocha as I’ve ever had.”
“We aim to please,” I said.
“I never would have expected to find a coffee bar in a library.”
“Well, you know. We try to make up budget shortfalls, wherever we can.”
“How much revenue can coffee possibly generate?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Besides, our budgetary needs are relatively modest. A thousand here, a thousand there, and we might be able to get started on cataloging our colonial recipe books.”
A smile crinkled the corners of Mr. Potter’s eyes. “I’d better stop in for a mocha more often, then.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing you.”
Then he was gone, off to
his widower’s life, with Beijing and whatever else he had for company. I turned my attention to wiping down the milk-steaming nozzle. When I looked up, I was astonished to find Jason Templeton standing at the counter.
Jason Templeton. Flashing the perfect Imaginary Boyfriend grin.
“Good morning.”
“It’s 9:00!”
He looked confused, but then he said, “And it can’t be a good morning at 9:00?”
“You don’t come in until 9:30.”
“My morning class was canceled today. Founder’s Day. The students are supposed to attend other lectures on the deep inner meaning of higher education in our country. Most of them are still sleeping off the weekend, though.”
I was hearing the words, but I wasn’t truly processing them. Jason was here. In the Peabridge. Talking to me as if I hadn’t incinerated dinner in front of him the week before. As if I hadn’t worked magic.
“I brought you something,” he said, and he handed me a white plastic bag.
Jason was here in the Peabridge, and he’d brought me a present.
“What is it?” It was light, whatever it was. And it squished when I clutched the bag close.
“Open up and see.”
Marshmallows. A bag of giant marshmallows.
“I—” I started to say, but I couldn’t imagine how I’d complete the sentence.
“I thought that you could use them, if your oven catches fire again. I should have brought graham crackers and chocolate bars as well.” I laughed, and he shook his head. “No! I should have brought you another blanket to replace the one that burned. That was really quick thinking, to smother the flames.”
There we were. He’d decided to completely ignore the magic spell. Well, wasn’t that what I’d told him to do? Hadn’t I insisted that the strange sights had been misconstrued in the panic of the moment? I felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. I wanted him to press me for information about my witchcraft and yet, I was thrilled that he was willing to make light of the Great Lamb Chop Debacle.
“Well,” I said. “Once a Girl Scout, always a Girl Scout.” I gestured with the bag of marshmallows. “And I can use these to bake banana boats over an open campfire.” Quick. Think of something else to say. Before he walked away. “I’m sorry that you had to leave so quickly Thursday night.”
He looked uncomfortable, as if I’d chastised him for bad behavior. “I didn’t want you to go to any more trouble on my behalf. And things were getting sort of strange with your tenants appearing out of nowhere and your ex showing up and all.”
Scott? What did Scott have to do with anything? Scott was in England with his new lady love.
“Oh!” I said, finally understanding. “David!”
He nodded. “I know that you called him your mentor, and I understand how that works. It’s always strange when professors start seeing their students, isn’t it?” Just how much did he know about that, I wondered? But first, I had to make him understand that David wasn’t my ex.
“I imagine that is pretty strange, but David and I have really never been romantically involved.” Our one kiss didn’t count. He and I had agreed on that.
Jason looked unconvinced. “You can’t tell me there wasn’t something going on there. I got definite possessive vibes from that guy.”
I remembered David’s insistence that he and I needed to talk, that we needed to discuss the fire spell. “He can be pretty pushy, but it’s just that he takes his study seriously. And he thinks that I should too.”
Jason shrugged. “If you say so.”
“So.”
Okay, that was stupid. I know that it was stupid. I don’t know what possessed me to say it. But it just popped out, before I could stop it. Throwing good impressions after bad, I said, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that you’d come over for dinner again?”
That surprised him. What was I thinking? I trapped the guy in a corner of my kitchen and nearly burned the house down around him, then I asked him back for dinner? Right. He might be willing to forgive me one disaster, but what idiot would put himself on the line for a second attempt on his life?
“Actually, dinners are sort of hard for me. You know, as the term gets going at school….”
“Oh, I understand,” I said. My stomach swooped down to my toes, and I tried to remember to keep a smile on my lips, to pretend that I couldn’t feel my heart shattering inside my chest.
“But if you were free for lunch? My treat?”
“No! I mean, no to your treat. But yes to lunch. Of course. Yes.”
He wasn’t rejecting me! He wasn’t trying to avoid me! He wanted to eat lunch with me!
He took out a slender black calendar from his briefcase. “Hmm,” he said. “This week is crazy, with Founder’s Day changing courses around. How about next week, though?”
“Next week’s fine. Name the day.” If I had anything on my calendar, I’d move it.
“How about Wednesday? We could meet at, say, noon? At La Perla?” Italian. That would make Melissa-approved first date ordering a challenge, but I’d manage it. For my Imaginary Boyfriend, I’d manage anything.
“La Perla,” I said brightly. “Noon on Wednesday.”
“It’s a date, then.”
A date. He actually said the word “date.” He started to turn away and walk toward his usual research table. “Jason!” I called, unable to let him go quite yet.
He came back to the coffee counter, a smile quirking his lips. “Jane.”
“Um, what if I need to phone you? You know, if Evelyn calls a meeting or something and I’m going to be late. Can I get your number?”
“Oh. Sure.” He dug a pen out of his briefcase and looked around for something to write on. I started to tell him that I’d grab a pad of paper from my desk, but he picked up one of the cocktail napkins from the counter. “Here you go. It’s my cell. I’m never home, so it’s useless to try to reach me there.”
He smiled and handed me the number. Ten digits. Ten consecutive steps toward making my dream come true. A kiss that I scarcely remembered, a silly gift of marshmallows, a lunch date for next week, and now a phone number. That was clearly progress, anyone would have to agree.
As I watched him settle in at his work table, I resisted the urge to call Melissa. I would never have been able to keep the teen-aged squeal out of my voice as I told her that I was ready to drop the “Imaginary” category for the man of my dreams.
Jason Templeton had asked me out on a date and then he’d given me his phone number. He’d taken the first step over the border into the delicious, terrifying, exciting, breathtaking territory of Boyfriend-land.