by R. J. Blain
“That’s a really good question, Senator.”
“When you figure it out, don’t let me know the answer. Show me—assuming I survive long enough to enjoy your victory.”
SIX
We had rules for everything.
Senator Westonhaus took me to a restaurant focused on South Korean cuisine, and true to his claims, they made food so spicy I suspected my breath might catch on fire. He took a safer route with his dinner, a wise move, all things considered.
We kept our conversation to his donation, how he would like the funds to be spent with the library, and how the library operated on a daily basis. We’d started the conversation in his vehicle, so if someone had started listening to us, they would believe we’d spoken about business the entire trip.
I worried the SUV had been bugged, but Senator Westonhaus seemed confident it wasn’t. I hadn’t been brave enough to question him on it. Without spending too long thinking about it, I could make a few guesses, and most of them involved the vehicle not belonging to him and wasn’t being monitored. I disliked evaluating my every word as though someone might be listening in, but I played the game.
Playing the game bothered me a great deal less when I worked on behalf of the library, using my tablet to show him the renovation plans and discuss the timeline for completion. We lost an entire hour to a conversation about computers, the issues he felt were inherent in the public library system, and how he might change the sorry state of library tech.
In most cases, the government wanted to cut corners on the library budget as often as possible. Computers got upgraded last—and only if they were no longer functional for the bare minimums for patrons to search for jobs or use a basic text processor.
Considering the amount of money he planned to throw at the library and public services in New York, the public library would thrive for a while.
He even understood we needed to safeguard the equipment, and promised he’d make arrangements for security—something we often struggled with due to costs. When we got lucky, the city provided security and they actually showed up. When we weren’t lucky, mayhem happened outside of our doors. I’d seen it all, from drug dealers picking fights to the homeless inventing new ways to make use of the building’s exterior for their needs.
We had rules for everything, including when somebody opted to use the sidewalk as a toilet.
I didn’t mention that element of librarian life to the senator. I expected he struggled enough with the problem of homelessness.
People like the senator tended to view the homeless as lacking intellect and integrity, when in reality, life had given them lemons they couldn’t mystically transform into lemonade. Then, because people like him couldn’t adjust their perspectives, because it would mean they were wrong about something, they believed the homeless couldn’t be reformed or brought back into society. Thus, the cycle continued.
I’d skirted around the thin line between having a home and living on the streets. Surviving paycheck to paycheck involved a hefty dose of anxiety and fear, and I’d been one of the lucky ones. The first thing to go truly wrong wouldn’t have crushed me. The second thing to go wrong would’ve been the one to finish the job.
My anxiety over the realities of life continued to hamper me, but I had a future—an unexpected one.
That future would change, yet again, once I figured out what to do about the things Senator Westonhaus had told me.
“If you could change any one thing about how your library is operated, what would it be?”
“We’d be able to operate every day all day. We’d have more staff, and we’d do planned closures in the middle of the night if we needed to change the floor plans, and we’d be accessible to the public all of the time. Our hours are set to be as accessible as possible on the budget the city can afford to give us. We can only have so many librarians, we have to meet certain quotas, and we sometimes can’t choose the best people for the job. We have to choose based on quotas.” I worried my position at the library would be at risk given time, as I’d been a quota hire. “Librarians often don’t get or can’t ask for raises; it’s just not in the budget. When it is in the budget, it’s often dished out by seniority, so it can take years for a librarian to get their first raise. It can be hard sometimes. The library tries to make sure we get cost of living increases whenever possible, but it all depends on the budget.”
“And the libraries then rely on charitable donations for anything else.”
“And most librarians are going to pass on raises to make sure the people get what they need, especially if we already have enough to get by.”
“I see.” Senator Westonhaus picked his phone up off the table, a first since we’d started eating. “Please excuse me for a moment.”
“Of course.”
He dialed a number and put the phone to his ear. “Jolene, I have a job for you. Please poll everyone about donations to their public libraries. I left a charitable donation package on my desk, so you can retrieve the details of my first donation to the New York Public Library System. I’ll also need to do donations for my home libraries, which I’ll take care of the next time I’m in the office. I’d like to propose a bill to increase general funding for libraries and similar public services. Please build a comprehensive list of all services most libraries offer, include a list of benefits of those services, and how we can ultimately save money through providing those services. Get in touch with branch librarians—no, not city level or higher, the actual librarians working in libraries at current—and make a list of their needs. Rank them by what the librarians perceive as most important. Once you do that, get a list of libraries in need of funding, how those libraries serve the communities, and how they could better serve their communities if they had the appropriate funding in place.”
Interesting. I hadn’t thought Senator Westonhaus would get started on something without waiting. Then again, from what I did understand of his situation, I doubted he got many opportunities to do something of his own volition.
After making a few more requests, he hung up. “There. That will get the wheels rolling on that. Of course, I expect it to get mired in red tape for a while, but that’ll keep me busy. I expect to be able to draw a decent amount of support on the bill, especially right now.”
I could read between the lines; if the government wanted me out of their hair and to stay out of their hair, supporting libraries would be a good way to go about it, especially as I’d expressed interest in keeping my current job rather than transitioning into the medical field. I would get some medical training because I could, and I’d volunteer in the emergency room for the same reason, but I’d found work I could be proud of.
I would have a great deal of juggling to do in my future, but I’d figure something out. I always did. Bradley’s willingness to bend around the life I’d made for myself helped.
I’d started as a bodyguard, and while I saw myself guarding Bradley’s back in the future, I’d be doing it for reasons other than a contract and a paycheck.
“Thank you, Senator.”
“You’re welcome. This is something I can do, so I will. I’ll also earn some serious points with my wife at the same time.”
“Always a good thing.”
“Yes. Keeping our spouses pleased is definitely an ongoing job. You’ll learn that soon enough. I appreciate you taking the time to teach me about what libraries need, how they operate, and what I can do to help.” The senator took a few moments to eye my plate, which had been reduced to a few scraps of food and a stray pepper or two. “Also, thank you for not testing my ability to eat that. I don’t know if I would have survived your preferred spice level.”
I grinned. “Bradley tried eating food the way I like it, and I’ve come to the conclusion he’s very lucky to have survived the experience. I’ve started a training program so he, too, can enjoy spicy food one day.”
“I’ll send him a sympathy card,” the senator quipped.
I checked the time
on my phone to discover a fretting Bradley had sent several texts whining over how long business dinners could take. “And speaking of which, it seems my fiancé has developed separation anxiety.”
“That would be my cue to pay the bill and take you home. But seriously, thank you for meeting with me. I’ve learned a lot.”
So had I. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“Thank you for coming.”
We left the restaurant and waded into the chaos of New York traffic. For the late hour, everyone and their cousin was out and about, shipping companies had decided to route their goods through the city rather than bypassing it, and for some reason I couldn’t fathom, someone had thought it had been a good idea to haul a truck full of live goats through a city. No, not just through a city, right down Broadway.
The driver must have gotten lost, likely fresh out of the Lincoln Tunnel, ending up around 8th Avenue before getting turned around onto Broadway in a haphazard attempt to get back to a highway. I’d seen plenty of lost drivers end up on 8th Avenue.
Goats on Broadway was new, but it could have been worse.
They could have reached Times Square.
Everything would have been fine if the goats hadn’t figured out how to unlock the gate and let themselves out, resulting in stopped traffic and general chaos. To complicate matters, the scattered goats made certain we wouldn’t be going anywhere until they were contained.
“We might be here all night,” I observed, grinning at the mass of New Yorkers attempting to catch the goats making even more of a mess of things. While most cussed and bitched over the delays, the New Yorkers did as New Yorkers did, pitching in to help while moaning about the need to inconvenience themselves for somebody else.
The senator put his SUV into park and killed the engine, joining the growing number of drivers opting to save gas rather than add to New York’s ever-growing smog problems. He took out his phone and began taking pictures of the rampaging goats. “My wife might question my sanity if I tell her about these goats without providing picture evidence.”
“Pictures or it didn’t happen does seem to be a trendy thing as of late.” I joined him in taking pictures of the latest threat to New York traffic. “As far as delays go, they’re pretty cute.”
I would have to apologize to my fluffy goddess later, especially if I lucked out and got to pet some goats. Of the farm animals I’d worked with, I’d liked the goats.
They lived life to the fullest.
Senator Westonhaus chuckled. “These are absolutely ferocious beasts. They’ll have to call in the army to handle a problem of this scale. It might be classified as a national disaster. A state of emergency. The goats have stormed the streets. New York might fall to this threat.”
I snorted at the senator’s quipping—and my New York pride kicked in, demanding I prove New Yorkers would never be defeated by a bunch of goats. “I feel we won’t be sufficiently New Yorker if we don’t get out and at least look like we’re ready to wrangle goats.”
“You’re absolutely right, and I’m not even a New Yorker. Crutches or cane?”
“The cane, please. Thank you.”
Senator Westonhaus got out and went to the back to retrieve my cane while I slid out of the vehicle, careful to keep from abusing my healing foot. Once armed with my cane, I observed the goats, which created adorable mayhem, as they had a heavy interest in accepting attention from anyone who’d give them the time of day.
The New Yorkers would be even more of a threat to traffic than the animals, and I was willing to bet half of them had never stepped foot on a farm in their lives. I’d been to enough farms to understand goats could be little devils, and a good number of them needed to have pool noodles shoved over their horns to keep them from being a menace.
I expected there’d be injuries before the goats were wrangled, and I’d do my best to avoid being one of the injured.
With my luck, I’d be back to the body shop to make sure I hadn’t caught some form of disease from the goats.
I limped to the nearest goat, who thought prancing on top of the hood of somebody’s junker counted as the most entertaining thing he’d done in his life. Keeping on hand on my cane, I waited for the rascal to stop moving for half a second before grabbing hold of his horn and pulling his head down. Thus contained, I pulled the goat towards the lowest part of the vehicle so he could make the jump to the ground without hurting himself. He cooperated better than most goats I’d met before, and I had him on the asphalt and contained within a few minutes of cajoling and gentle pulls on his head.
“Okay. That had to have been pure magic,” Senator Westonhaus said, staring at the goat I held. He then took a picture of my latest conquest. “Now what?”
I nodded in the direction of the truck, which had managed to rope several of the goats to the vehicle while people struggled to catch them. “We secure the beast there, and we go catch another one.”
“You made that look easy.”
“Once you have control of their head, it’s manageable. It helps these are pretty small for goats. It’d be simple if these were fainting goats. We’d just wait for them to fall over, halter them, and we’re done. Alas, these aren’t fainting goats. These are trouble goats.”
“What species of goat are trouble goats?”
“Every species of goat,” I admitted, keeping the goat’s head pinned to my upper leg while hobbling in the general direction of the vehicle the goats had escaped from. Rather than bracing his legs and forcing me to drag him, he followed along. “Goats are trouble. All of them. I really like goats. I didn’t enjoy the goat farm portion of my education, although I have to admit, I do find them to be rather good in stew.”
Following my example, Senator Westonhaus grabbed a goat by the horns. Unlike mine, which seemed resigned to the situation, his put up a fight.
I gave the politician some credit. The goat waged a valiant war, bucking and kicking and doing its best to free itself from his tyrannical clutches. Alas, it proved no match for the man, who dragged it over as though he’d spent most of his life working in a barn of animals rather than making laws.
“Now I’m impressed, Senator,” I informed him. “Is this your first time goat wrangling? Maybe I made it look easy, but you caught a goat that wants nothing to do with being caught.”
Several nearby noticed how we wrangled our goats, and they jumped into the fray, joining in the chase to corner goats on or near vehicles. I didn’t envy the drivers or their insurance companies.
Hoof prints surely took a great deal of work to remove from the hood, roof, and panels of a car.
“I tried my hand at roping calves once. I’m terrible at it, but I learned a few tricks. The way I figure, the hard part is making sure I don’t hurt the animal, but it doesn’t seem like goats are too inclined to try to snap their own necks when you have them by the horns.”
I bet I’d tweaked his pride. After all, if I could do it, while juggling a cane, he could as well. “After seeing what some of the goat owners will do to get their stubborn animals on the move, it became obvious I could use a little force without hurting them. This one is being unusually good.”
At the truck, the beleaguered driver, who likely had gotten hired to haul and not wrangle, struggled to figure out how to get the animals back into the truck without losing them each time he added a new one to the fray. I counted lead lines, determining he was about twenty leads short of keeping all of the goats contained.
In good news, most of the goats were haltered, which would turn an otherwise impossible job possible.
The goat I’d captured lacked a halter, which meant he needed to go into the truck with the others that had been recaptured.
“Sorry,” the driver mumbled.
Poor guy; judging from his accent, he came from somewhere south of the city and hadn’t done more than pass a few farms before being hired to handle the adorable hoofed minions of the devil. Rather than join the rest of the New Yorkers prone to snapping harsh commentary
while pitching in, I offered him a few tips to get the stray goats in without losing the ones he’d already caught before looking over the chaos on the streets and giggling at the sight of stock market brokers mingling with the blue collar, all joining forces in an attempt to contain mother nature’s natural prankster.
“Have I mentioned I love goats?”
Senator Westonhaus chuckled. “I had figured that out around the time you started beaming at their antics. If you smile much more, you might hurt yourself.”
Huh. I realized he was right; I grinned enough my cheeks ached. “But they’re goats. How can goats make anybody mad? Look at them. They’ve stopped traffic, and the complaining is at a minimum. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.”
“I had expected a lot more profanity and risks of violence. New York has a reputation.”
We did, but most people failed to realize that beneath the reputation of strict efficiency and grouchiness lurked kind people who would—and did—go out of their way for others. Unfortunately, in true New York fashion, that kindness came at a price, usually.
I’d learned to speak up and ask for help if I needed it, else I’d get a scolding. The last time I’d gotten scolded, I’d been waging a battle with a shitty wheelchair and some steps. A giant of a man had taken offense to my struggle, stolen my chair, ordered me to stay put or else, and had handled the steps before offering his arm and making sure I made it without incident.
Every step of the way, I’d gotten a lecture over how I needed to just ask if I needed help rather than be a stubborn goat.