We finished eating, not saying too much, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. He smiled a lot, joked a little, ate everything. Occasionally his leg touched mine under the table. I spent some moments wondering how that possibly sent as much electricity through my body as it did. I felt like my hair was getting longer through the energy his touch was delivering. Which was silly, so I didn’t mention it.
He stood up and cleared our table mess onto a tray. I excused myself and told him I’d be outside in a minute. I went into the ladies’ room and washed my hands in the frigid water that squirted to the left instead of straight into the sink and checked my reflection in the mirror.
Hair? Fine. Lipstick? Gone the way of cheeseburger and fries. No big deal. Clothes? Free of Happy’s residue (not always a given).
I made my way out to the patio and saw Mac leaning against an empty table. His phone was in his hands, and he was concentrating on whatever he was reading. I hoped it was the poetry reading website, but when I walked up, he quickly stashed his phone in his pocket.
“Would you go for a walk with me?” he said. “It’s an almost perfect evening.”
“Sure.”
He took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Closer to perfect now.”
I felt myself blushing. We walked to Burton Park and sat on a very particular bench under a huge and very familiar maple tree.
“Want to sit somewhere else?” I asked, but Mac shook his head.
“This is a good spot. I like this tree.”
I nodded, deciding my hesitation was not worth explaining.
He put his arm over the back of the bench. “Did you play here when you were little?”
I had, of course, but the real memory of this park was always as the place Will and I kissed. This park. This bench. Under this tree. I was sixteen years old, and Will and I had made an agreement: If I reached my sixteenth birthday without kissing anyone, he would give me a proper kiss. It was the wish of the year.
The day after my birthday, he’d brought me here in his car—a benefit of being several months older—and had led me to this bench and sat next to me. I’d scooted close to him and inhaled the yummy scent of clean shirt and manly deodorant. I told him he smelled nice and batted my eyes hard enough to make me dizzy.
“It’s a miracle,” Will had said, “that you don’t get kissed every single day.”
I laughed. “Are you making fun of me right now?”
He smiled but neither confirmed nor denied.
“Well?” I’d asked. “Are we doing this?” I rolled my shoulders and cracked my knuckles.
“Seriously, Greta. You are an Olympic medalist in ruining the moment.”
“Sorry. Sorry. Okay. I’m ready. What do I do? Where do I put my hands?”
Will had shifted on the bench so he was facing me. “You have all kinds of options. I am going for the prime spot.” He put one hand on the back of my neck, his fingers warm under my hair.
“Am I supposed to close my eyes?” I asked.
“If you want. I’m going to stare at you for a minute, if you don’t mind.”
I squirmed. “Are you psyching yourself up to do this?”
He’d leaned in so his mouth was close to my ear. “I’m enjoying the view,” he said.
With his hand on my neck and his voice so low, I forgot about Will’s size. All the high school stuff about toughness and hotness and what a guy should look like melted away. I felt the warmth of his hand and the tenderness with which he moved closer to me.
He whispered into my ear again. “You are my favorite person in the whole world. I’m really glad you didn’t get what you wanted for your birthday.” And he kissed me.
Even sitting down, my knees had gone weak. He knew exactly what he was doing.
My hands found the sides of his face, and I felt him smile. His other arm came around my back. For the first time, I noticed things about Will’s body that were exactly right. His mouth was the perfect combination of soft and warm. His hands held on to me just enough so I felt connected but not overpowered.
He broke away. “Well?” he asked. He had that shy-boy look that I loved about him.
I pretended to think about it for a second. “I think . . . I definitely think we should do that again.”
We did.
I straightened up and shook out my hair. “How do you know when you’re done?” I asked him.
Will laughed. “You’re never really done, you just pause for a while.”
“How long does the pause last?” I said.
He smiled, and he’d never looked so handsome. His brown eyes sparkled with reflected sunlight. I’d always loved making him smile, but now I looked at his mouth differently. That mouth had just delivered an excellent kiss. He looked happy and confident and very satisfied. He really did have a great face.
“I hope not very long,” he said, and leaned in again.
After the kiss, I jumped up from the bench. “That was fun. Really fun. Thank you.” And then I thought of something. “Is it always that fun?” I stood in front of the bench waiting for him to answer me.
“Kissing,” Will said, in the voice he always used when he was imparting great wisdom, “is like pizza. Even when it’s not that great, it’s still pretty good.”
I pulled him off the bench. “I don’t know. I realize I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I think you might be really good at it. In fact, I feel sorry for any girl who learns how to kiss from anyone else.”
He’d laughed then. “That’s nice of you. But we both know that without any real data, your conclusion is invalid. How about we discuss it again when you have some further comparative evidence?”
“Deal.” We’d shaken hands on it. And we’d kept the deal. I’d met Will at the bench under the maple tree to discuss every kissing experience I’d had. And I was honest with him—he was still the best.
And now, here I sat on the same bench. With Mac, hoping a great hope that I’d have another experience to add to the list. And that maybe this one would top all the rest.
“Greta?” Mac asked. “Did you?”
“Did I what?” I asked, aware that I had gotten distracted.
“Play here? When you were little?”
I pointed to the playground. “When I was a kid, I used to run up that slide and turn around and slide down again. I’m pretty sure the slide was much taller back then. I bet I couldn’t do that now.”
He stood up from the bench and took my hands, pulling me up. “Try it.”
I shrugged. “Come with me. You can catch me if I fall.”
We walked over to the playground set. The slide looked tiny now. I jumped onto it and ran up a few steps. At the top I spun around and sat, sliding down a much narrower space than I remembered. About half a second later, I reached the bottom. Mac held out his hands and pulled me up. In the same motion, he put his arms around my waist and drew me close.
The space between us was so different from the space between Will and me. I put my arms around him, and my fingers touched my elbows. That never happened when I hugged Will.
When Mac kissed me, I forced myself to stop thinking about Will. It might have been too easy to compare, and I knew this was a kiss I wasn’t going to discuss, at least not right away. It wasn’t hard to let myself dissolve into the moment and stop thinking about much of anything except mouths and hands and a warm autumn breeze.
Chapter 11
The next morning, I stopped at Beans on my way to work.
“Hey, Greta,” Mac said, setting down a load of boxes and dusting off his chest. His T-shirt asked me if I had any plans for the rest of my life. “I’m happy to see you.” They were innocent enough words, but as he said them, all I could think of was standing in the park, holding on to each other, ignoring the rest of the world.
I’m not saying he caused it or anything, but I
had a tiny episode of amnesia, so I stared at him until I remembered why I was there. Oh. Right. “I need three peanut butter cookies, please, and the name of your favorite author.”
He smiled and put the cookies into a brown paper bag. “Today is your lucky day. The prettiest girl to walk in today wins three free cookies.” He handed the bag across the counter. My whole body squirmed. Was that shock? Surprise? Pleasure? What do you even call it when all those things happen at once? Distraction, apparently, because I thanked him and walked out without getting an answer to the author question.
Walking to work, I clutched the bag of practically stolen cookies and texted Will.
It was his prep hour at work so he answered right away, as if he’d been holding the phone in his hands already.
Obviously.
I’d walked about half a block when my phone rang. “Wait. Living author? Are we doing an event?” Will laughed, knowing the answer.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi. But, are we? Are you bringing in an author?”
Leave it to Will to get squeaky with excitement at the prospect. “I’m thinking about it. What do you say?”
“It’s the best idea in the history of great ideas. You’re a genius. I could not be more into it. Tell me what I can do to make it happen. I want in. I want to be a part of this historical awesomeness.” The excitement in his voice made me laugh out loud.
I breathed in the perfect morning, the happiness of the conversation, and the possibility that lay ahead. “Thank you, Will, for real. Thank you for being so excited with me. You are my favorite.”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? What kind of cretin wouldn’t be stoked about this? Okay. I have to go teach school. But do not—I repeat—do not leave me out of this. Text me all the updates. You’re a genius. And I’m so proud of you.”
When I got to the library, I swiped my time card and tossed my bag under the desk. I handed Julie a cookie and started talking to her as if it was normal to eat cookies at ten in the morning, and as if we’d ever actually started this conversation. “What about a reading? With a picture book writer. What about someone who adults loved when they were little and now they love to share with their kids? What about”—I paused for effect—“Eleanor Richtenberg?”
Julie opened up her mouth and showed all her teeth and laughed out loud, in a non-library-approved way. “I love it.”
“Really? Because I think it could be perfect. I think it’s the way to draw the biggest crowd. I think she will be the most accessible because kids and adults and teens—everyone—can connect with her. I think this is the one.”
She closed her mouth, but couldn’t stop her smile. “You sound like you’re defending your thesis.”
“I’m pretty excited.”
“No kidding. Me too.” She pulled the bag of gummy bears out of the desk drawer and handed it to me. I took a green one and pulled off its head.
“Okay. How do we find her?” Julie asked.
I sat down at the computer and Googled her. Website? Grimsby.com. Oh, yes. A squirming glowworm glared out of the screen, alongside a photo of the author that must be twenty years old, at least, judging from the hair. And the outfit.
I flipped through the digital bookshelf, and each Grimsby the Grumpy Glowworm book flashed up on the screen. I was giddy. These were the favorite books of my kid-hood. I had permission, and I was determined to make this happen.
Take the following steps to arrange an author’s visit to a community library:
1. Search author’s website for contact information. Find none.
2. Google author to see if, by some chance, her phone number is listed.
3. Find that, in fact, it is not.
4. Discover a hidden website page, behind a particularly grumpy glowworm drawing, that contains a link to author’s publicist.
5. Contact the publicist, who has a polite assistant who assures you that your call will be returned (at work) as soon as possible.
6. Wait, staring at the phone, for eleven days.
7. Moan.
7.5. Send polite reminder emails to publicist every thirty-six hours.
8. Receive a phone message (at work) from publicist, who, as it happens, returns calls in the middle of the night.
9. On a Saturday.
10. Do a giddy dance.
11. Engage in a game of pro-level phone tag with publicist.
12. Erase several community events from library calendar to clear an entire week for author’s possible visit.
13. Accept (without reading) publicist’s list of requirements for author’s comfort.
14. Hear these words: “Congratulations. Eleanor Richtenberg will be at your library on October twenty-sixth.”
“Save the date: Beloved author E. Richtenberg @Franklin Library 10/26. Reading, reception, & signing. #Grimsby #SaveFranklinLibrary #NotAJoke”
Chapter 12
At the library, I pulled the stack of fresh newspapers off the desk and walked to the periodicals room. Replacing the big papers first, I tried to pretend I wasn’t completely eager to get to the Franklin paper. Journal, Times, Post. There it was. I pulled the half-sheet of grocery store ads out of the fold, because they’d only end up on the floor.
Front page had an article on the football rivalry between East High and Central. Pass. I turned to the arts section, and there was nothing about the library. Ditto for metro. I almost gave up, because the only other thing I really wanted to do was dive into the Dr. Joshua Silver collection, but Julie had asked me to save that until the weekend. I went back to the front section and turned each page.
Near the back of the first section I saw an ad for our Book Jam concert. Marigold seemed to have worked her magic. The ad looked great in black and white. The graphics were cool and readable and totally unlikely to find an audience among the newspaper readers of Franklin. Maybe somebody would tell her grandchildren about the concert over Sunday dinner or something.
On to the sports section, not to be confused with the front page sports article. It’s not like I actively expected anything in that section, but the publishers of the newspaper were often creative with their article placement, so I looked. There was a shuffleboard tournament on Saturday in Burton Park. Nothing about the library.
Editorials. The opinion page. There was a column of letters under the headline “Library Controversy” that filled up nearly half a page. It was too much to take in all at once. I let my eyes bounce from letter to letter.
“This is proof that we need a civic center far more than an outmoded building full of books.”
“A library will always have a place in a community that values learning.”
“Welcome to the twenty-first century. We’ve been waiting for you.”
“I loved the library as a kid, but I can see how it’s become more trouble than it’s worth.”
“Dr. Martin Luther King visited our library in 1966.”
I did a little cheer inside for that one. Someone else knew.
There was a letter from Mayor Cutler’s office voicing support of the bond. Was that normal? Could that be a good sign?
The last letter was the weirdest one.
“The library is a historical piece of Franklin, and the community has grown up with it. But once it becomes exclusionary, we need to look at better options. A public building should be accessible to every member of the public, and if any institution should be all things to all people, a library should.”
I read that line over a few times and then glanced at the end of the letter.
Ms. Marnie Blum, Attorney, City Council
I went back to the letter.
“Interested parties should feel confident that their opinions matter. Any letter, phone call, or email directed to the city council containing viewpoints about the options for dealing with the library matt
er will be carefully considered.”
I read the letter again. Ms. Marnie Blum, attorney, seemed to say everything and nothing. Like she held every opinion at the same time.
I straightened up the periodicals room and went back to the front desk.
Bonita was filing papers. Kevin taped covers back onto falling-apart paperback books. Julie sorted a stack of mail straight into the recycle bin.
Nobody was waiting for any help, so I sat down at the computer and searched Ms. Marnie Blum, attorney. She had a couple of websites, clean and boring. I found her campaign site and snorted out loud. “Your agenda is my agenda.”
Julie heard me, of course. “Are you finding the internet funny this afternoon?” she asked.
I didn’t want her to think I was wasting time, so I hurried to justify myself. “A lady from the city council wrote a long letter to the newspaper. I was doing some research. Look. This is her campaign. And she got elected.” I pointed to the screen, and Julie leaned over the monitor. She looked with me at the photo of Ms. Blum’s metal yard signs. I made a gentle scoffing noise. At least, I’d like to think it was gentle.
Julie nodded. I thought she was agreeing with the scoff, but then she said, “You know her.”
I looked up. “I do? How?”
“She brings her mother here to senior activities. She’s the one who does laps around the building instead of coming inside.” Julie drew a looping circle in the air in front of her to demonstrate the path, I guess.
I scrolled down the site and found a photo. “Oh. Yeah. I do know her. She sometimes comes in,” I said, feeling like I needed to justify her. “She sits by the stained glass if it’s raining.”
“And she probably reads,” Julie said. “Something with every opinion at the same time.” She gave me a smile and went back to the stack of mail she was mostly throwing away.
“Did you write the letter in this week’s paper about Dr. Silver and Dr. King?” I asked Julie.
Check Me Out Page 9