CHAPTER 7
Mimi wanted to stay up and talk more, and the bombshell I’d dropped erased any fatigue I felt moments before. But a primal urge throbbed inside me. Some ancient instinct to protect myself filled the space between my ears, screaming at me to hurry away. An irrational impulse to grab Mimi by the scruff of her neck and toss her out of my house surged through my muscles.
But that was ridiculous, of course. At least that was what the thinking part of my brain was insisting. Mimi was still the woman she was before I learned her last name. Lying there on my sofa, in my pajamas, she looked like a vulnerable teenager. I needed to be by myself and make sense of what was happening. So I overrode my instincts and told myself to calm down. Get some rest. Everything would make sense in the morning.
I went to my room, locked the door, and flopped on my bed. My arms and legs were heavy, yet weak. Every inhale and exhale demanded purposeful effort, as though deep structures in my brain had forgotten how to go about the basic business of staying alive. A burning fatigue stung right behind my forehead, dancing incongruently with an incendiary burst of energy. It was even money which one would take the lead. My throat was dry as dust. Sleep was out of the question. I suppose that might be natural after all the events of the day. But nothing felt natural anymore. I tried all my tricks to make myself drowsy. I counted backward from two hundred to zero. When I got all the way down to three, two, one, my body was exhausted, but my mind was as alert as a sniper on night patrol in Kandahar.
I didn’t have a clue what was happening, but whatever it was, it had jumped way beyond being explained away as one of Rosie’s statistical coincidences.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke to the smell of coffee brewing. It took me a few groggy moments to convince myself I hadn’t been invaded by caffeine-loving burglars. Then I remembered I had a houseguest and lifted my head off the pillow, only to be greeted by what felt like the U.S. Olympic boxing team using the back of my eyeballs for speed-bag practice. I forced a halfhearted focus to my bedside clock and kicked myself free of the tangled sheets. It was almost seven-thirty. I had to open the library at ten. And there was always that forty-five minutes of paperwork left by the closing crew that had to get done before the first patron walked through the doors. If I didn’t hustle I was going to be late. I slipped my feet into some flip-flops and headed down the hall.
Mimi stood by my kitchen sink, wearing my lightest-weight jeans and my favorite Green Bay Packers T-shirt, freshly showered and ready to greet the day. While I was certain I looked like something someone might put on a poster to warn kids against the evils of talking to strangers, whatever mystery the two of us were involved in didn’t seem to have had any impact on her sleep at all.
“Are you wearing my underwear, too?” I stumbled forward to accept the mug of coffee she held my way. “I’m sorry. That sounded mean.”
She nodded toward the bathroom. “I left you plenty of hot water. I like the smell of your shampoo, by the way. You want me to fry you some eggs while you shower?”
I took a long sip of coffee, and the pain behind my eyes eased a bit. “No. Thanks anyway. I save big breakfasts for the weekend. Most mornings I make do with toast and a couple of pieces of fruit.” I glanced at the bowl on the counter. Four apples, two oranges, and three bananas. Same inventory as the night before. “But you go ahead. Help yourself.”
Mimi shook her head. “I’ve already eaten. Must be the time difference. Maybe all the excitement of our paths crossing. I know we said we’d have breakfast together, but my stomach was growling.”
I drank more coffee and made note of another distinction between us two seemingly identical women. Mimi was far perkier than I had ever been that early in the morning.
“I’ll have your toast ready when you’re dressed,” she said as I headed down the hall. “We’ll have a nice chat and I’ll walk you to work.”
* * *
Despite my sleep deprivation, I was beginning to feel as if I might be able to handle the day ahead. Mimi sat across from me at my breakfast nook table while I ate my toast, banana, and apple. We didn’t talk about whatever cosmic convergence led to our meeting one another. Instead, we shared more about our lives. I learned she dated off and on but hadn’t met anyone she considered worthy of a long-term commitment. She talked a bit more about her love of American popular music and her belief that it was more than mere soundtrack.
“It holds a masterful sway over our emotions and memories,” she said. “I could play a couple of cuts from Metallica, for instance, and in no time you’d be fired up and ready to throw a punch at me for no apparent reason. Or a song can come on the radio and all of a sudden you’re seventeen again and that handsome Sammy Barlow is trying to get you into the backseat of his parents’ Buick after show choir practice.”
She insisted I relax with a third cup of coffee while she cleaned up the dishes. She asked me what it was like growing up in America’s heartland. “Is it the magical world of drive-in movies and summer nights at the ice-cream stand that Bon Jovi and John Mellencamp make it out to be?”
I told her about ice skating in winter, hanging at the lake in the summer, and part-time jobs at fast-food restaurants. She asked me if I was popular in high school.
“Isn’t that the goal of every Midwest teenager, after all?” I didn’t care for the judgment in her tone. “To have three parties to get to on Saturday night? Wear your boyfriend’s letter jacket and beat out your girlfriends to make homecoming court?”
“It wasn’t like that for me.” There must have been something about the way I said it that told her not to push any further. She smiled, turned her back, and focused on one final wipe to the countertop while I crammed what I needed for the day into my canvas backpack.
* * *
“What time’s your flight?” I locked my front door behind us and pointed in the direction of the library.
“I fly out a little after two. The hotel has a shuttle. I’ll be back in Boston in time for dinner. And I’m sure I’ll be spending time with my journal the entire flight back. I want to capture every minute of this whole freaky thing while it’s fresh in my mind.” We walked a few steps in silence. “I’m going to miss you,” she said. “Isn’t that strange? I haven’t even known you for twenty-four hours. But somehow you seem close to me. Like it’s important we know each other. Does that make any sense?”
I told her it did. And that I felt the same way.
I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d told her she meant nothing to me. That our meeting was a mistake. That I wished I could hop on a time machine and go back to the moment I saw her walking out of that hotel. Because if I could, I’d find a way out of that damn traffic jam. Even if it meant crashing into somebody’s car or driving up on some stranger’s lawn. I’d get myself away . . . far and fast . . . from that star intersection. And I’d never look back.
But that’s the thing about any given moment. You can’t know what the next one’s going to bring. You do the best you can without one stinking clue about what’s going to happen five seconds from now . . . hell, even half a second from now. You roll the dice based on what you’ve got at hand. Your heartbeat hands you off to the next moment, and you hope it all works out. Most times it does.
This time it didn’t.
Mimi and I turned north on Garfield, and the library came into view. She said she liked my setup. I remember thinking that was an odd word to use. I asked her what she meant, and she told me it was nice that I could walk to work or restaurants or shops. She said she thought it was a nice way to live.
“Yeah,” I told her. “I do have a nice setup.”
“Trader Joe’s!” Mimi pointed across the street while I unlocked the front door to the library. “Oh, my god! I’m hooked on their Triple Ginger Snaps. Have you ever tried them?”
My breath caught in my throat. I don’t know why. I should have been immune to being stunned by our similarities by then.
“No.” Why did I lie about something so small? “I don’t think I’ve ever had one.” I stepped inside, and Mimi followed me.
I went about my business while Mimi strolled the aisles. It felt good to have her there. Looking back, that was one of the most confounding things about this whole situation. One minute my instincts screamed at me to run away from her, and the next I felt as comforted by her presence as a newborn hearing her mother’s lullaby.
Maybe that was part of her plan.
That morning in the library, I glanced at her from time to time, trying to determine what held her interest as she visited the various sections of our small neighborhood outpost. Was she curious about my job? Or was she lingering, delaying the time she’d have to leave our odd confederacy of confusion? She came back to my office and stood in the doorway while I put the finishing touches on last night’s reports. I got the feeling she was about to say something when a familiar code knocked on the front glass door. Three long, two short, three long.
“What’s that?” she asked.
I closed the program, shut off the computer, and stood. “Not what, who. A regular. He’s on his way to work. Comes by twice a week. Drops off the book he’s finished and picks up another. In and out.”
Mimi feigned a look of exaggerated disappointment and spoke with a deep, authoritarian voice. “What’s this, Miss Kincaid? Are we stretching the rules? Playing favorites?” She pointed to the clock on the wall behind my desk. “The library doesn’t open for another fifteen minutes.”
“Be quiet. It doesn’t hurt a thing. Think of it as providing excellent customer service.”
Mimi craned her neck to see the man standing in front of the glass door. “Oh my. We’re a handsome sort, aren’t we?” She turned to me with one eyebrow raised. “What’s the story? And if you haven’t made a move on him I’m going to need a full explanation why.”
“There’s no story.” I came around the desk and stood in front of her. “John’s a very nice man. It’s a small kindness I do, that’s all.” The coded knock came again. “Stay here. I’m not supposed to have anyone in the library off hours.”
She pointed toward the door. “And what do you call letting him in?”
“That’s different. He’s a patron. He belongs here. Now stay put and be quiet. This will take all of three minutes.” I didn’t wait for an answer before I headed to the front.
“Good morning, John.” I opened the door wide enough for him to enter, then locked it behind him. “It’s going to be another hot one, isn’t it?”
“Makes it a little easier to be stuck in my cube all day.” John Rappaport, I’d come to know from almost a full year of brief twice-weekly conversations, worked in the business office of the university’s athletic department. He oversaw contracts, particularly those from manufacturers wanting to use any of the scores of trademarked logos tied to the various sports teams. “Won’t have to be out in the hot soup all the cool kids are calling air these days.” He handed me the book I’d given him the past Monday. “This one was terrific. Maybe in need of a little editing, but still amazing.”
“Stephen King knows what he’s doing. Not a better storyteller working today. He’ll use as many pages as he needs to get the job done.” I set the book on the return desk and handed him three I’d selected for his review. John was always in a hurry. It hadn’t taken me long to learn what types of books interested him. About eight months ago I offered to make suggestions. He seemed to like the efficiency of that idea, and our early morning arrangement was born. “Pick one.”
“Guaranteed?” He always asked the same playful question.
“Or there’s no charge.” I always gave the same response. John headed to his favorite table by the window. I went back to my office, knowing he’d make his pick in short order.
“Well, he’s not ugly, is he?” Mimi was all smiles.
She didn’t need to know I agreed.
“So? Is there some secret code of library ethics that says you can’t date a customer? What are you going to do? Break some confidence that he likes bodice-ripping romance novels?”
I stifled a laugh. “He likes thrillers with a bit of a horror or supernatural twist.”
“Is he married?”
I glanced over my shoulder. John was still at the table, reading the back of one of the books. “I don’t know.” It must have seemed odd that after nearly a year of chitchat I didn’t know that about him. But there was something about him that tweaked my awkwardness quotient and kept my tongue tied about anything beyond book reviews. “We don’t talk about things like that.”
“Does he wear a ring?” she asked. “And don’t even try to lie and tell me you’ve never looked.”
This time my laugh was born of embarrassment. Still, it was nice to tease with someone like this. “No. There’s no ring.”
“Then ask him out. I can tell by that cute little blush crawling across your cheeks you think he’s as handsome as he most assuredly is.”
“I couldn’t do that.” I wasn’t interested in mischief anymore. “Maybe you could, but I couldn’t.”
She thought about that for a moment. I hoped she wasn’t offended.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll ask him out. Like I said, my plane doesn’t leave until two.” She broke out a devilish grin. “And I do have that hotel room right down the street.”
My eyes must have grown wider than I realized, because Mimi burst out a laugh. “You do like him. I knew it. And I have a hunch he likes you, too.”
I felt vulnerable. Curious, but vulnerable. “Why do you say that?”
“A guy who looks like that?” She nodded toward John. “Let me tell you something, Little Miss Library Staffer. Books you can get any number of places. Day or night. But he comes in here twice a week, makes the same jokes, always when you’re alone, and reads what you want him to. He’s interested. Poor guy’s probably as shy as you are.” I started to disagree, but she cut me off. “Don’t think I don’t see behind your fast-talking bravado. You’re timid, so what? Lots of people are. Maybe John is, too. But the two of you are going to die lonely unless one of you makes the first move.”
A hot flush crept up my neck. I felt a line of sweat form at my hairline. “That’s not going to happen.”
Mimi took a tissue off my desk and mopped my forehead. Without asking she ran her hands through my hair, shaking her fingers as she went, fighting August’s humidity to achieve maximum fullness. Another quick move had her unbutton the top two buttons of my shirt and widen my collar, exposing a significant amount of skin while keeping my décolletage nothing more than a discreet allusion.
“I want you to seize this moment.” Her tone left no room for dissent. “Go out there and do whatever you need to do to make his checkout legit. Then ask him again what he thought of the Stephen King. When he starts to tell you he liked it, interrupt him, look him square in the eyes, and say this: ‘Actually, I’d love to hear all about it over a glass of wine this evening. What time are you free?’ ”
I took a step back. “Are you crazy?”
“Maybe. But I know you’d be nuts to miss this opportunity. Do it, Tess.”
Self-assurance radiated from eyes so identical to mine. I never allowed myself to think anything would come of my attraction to John. But there were her eyes . . . my eyes . . . filled with the conviction that this would be an easy and logical step.
“Look, Tess. This is how it’s going to go, and we both know it. I’m going to get on that plane. We’re going to promise to keep in touch. And for a week or two we might even do that. But then our lives are going to go on. I’m going to get hired somewhere. I’ll build my career, and if I play my cards right, a life with a good man, a couple of kids, a dog, and a few crazy friends is out there waiting for me. You’re going to stay here and be an underappreciated library staffer who walks to work and takes care of her alcoholic father unless you do something different. The odds of our paths crossing again are like ten million to one. But we have this moment. Our paths did cross. Do this, Tess. Do this for you. Do this for us. Mark this odd little shimmer in the celestial sea that brought us to one another by doing something completely out of character.”
“What if he says no?”
“Then he’s either married or a fool. Either way you wouldn’t want him.”
She made it sound so easy. But a part of me whispered that maybe she was right. Maybe it was me making it difficult.
“One of us is right, Tess. I’m betting I’m the one. I’d stake my money on the possibility you’re ninety seconds away from a first date with a good-looking man.” She nodded toward the front of the library. “Now get out there and see which one of us wins the wager.” She spun me around and gave me a gentle nudge out my office door.
“It’s going to be the Koontz,” John called out as I neared the counter. “It was the tease about Elvis that got me. Is he really in the story?”
I held a finger to my lips. “Library oath. We never give away a plot twist. Especially once we know a reader is interested.”
“Well”—he handed me the book—“you’ve never steered me wrong before. I’m sure you don’t intend to start now.”
I processed his loan and handed the book back to him with a nervous little tremor in my hands. My breathing became more rapid as my heart raced. “You really liked the Stephen King?”
“I did, especially the way he . . .”
I interrupted him and jumped off that cliff. “Actually, I’d love to hear all about it over a glass of wine this evening. What time are you free?” The words came out faster than I intended. And I forgot the part where I was supposed to look him in the eyes.
John’s head snapped back as if I’d slapped him. He looked toward the door. Then he looked back to the table where he’d been sitting. He looked down at the counter. My legs melted in humiliation’s heat, and I leaned against the same counter for support. A scorching wave of embarrassment rose from my stomach and climbed toward my chest.
And then he looked up and smiled.
“I could meet you here at six. Does that work? We could grab a table at Barriques.”