Pamela Morsi (12 page)

333.3 Land Economics

T
he staff meeting was not going particularly well. The three women had sat uncomfortably together for what seemed like a lifetime before Amos showed up, not one minute early. Amelia Grundler was edgy, brittle and well prepared for battle. She had not taken well to her Friday afternoon reprimand, and she was looking for any opportunity for revenge. D.J. had expected that, but it didn’t make her any happier about it.

D.J. had taken great care to provide positive feedback to the operation of the library in general and to each employee in particular. Fortunately, she didn’t need to overly embellish, which might have made it all seem false. For what they were doing, D.J. felt that the institution was operating very well. But the vision was so small and the size of the community that received little or no benefit was so large, that taking on new challenges was going to be unavoidable.

Baby steps. She’d picked up on a couple of baby steps to implement. So after pumping everyone up and listening to their reports, she carefully broached what she’d anticipated to be the least controversial of the two.

But even that proved to be a good deal more contentious than she’d imagined.

“I realize that the furnishings in the reading room are antique. I agree that everything is quite beautiful and well made. But the room is gloomy and all that dark wood doesn’t help.”

“Maybe we could reupholster the cushions,” Suzy suggested. “A nice fabric in a light color would brighten up the place a lot. And we wouldn’t need to replace the furniture.”

That was the kind of compromise D.J. had been hoping for.

Miss Grundler would have none of it. “One does not reupholster vintage leather with cheap cloth.”

“If the leather is sick-poop green, I think you’re allowed,” Suzy replied.

Amelia’s eyes bulged with fury that Suzy would dare to answer back. D.J. was pleased to see the younger woman undaunted by Amelia’s typical display of dominance. Miss Grundler looked as if her head might explode.

“Those pieces were donated to this institution by Estes Milbank himself,” she declared. “The family, indeed the whole community, would be scandalized to hear how cheaply you regard their largesse.”

Suzy sputtered, her moment of self-confidence shaken. D.J. had no choice but to intervene.

“Thank you both,” she said. “These are exactly the kind of ideas and concerns that I wish to take to the library board. This will, naturally be their decision, not ours.”

Smiling all around, D.J. calmly but firmly moved on to another subject.

“I’ve been working up a plan for a new senior service model,” she told them. “Based on our experience last week with the residents of Pine Tree.”

Her proposal allowed for the busload of nursing home residents to remain in the hopefully better-lighted reading room area while the books were brought to them. “That’s much too hands-on,” Amelia stated flatly. “If people can’t get around well enough to get their own books, then we can’t be responsible.”

“But we are, in part, responsible,” D.J. pointed out. “Our stack area is very dark. Even I have trouble in that dim light. And James is carrying a flashlight. Right, James?”

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence before a disembodied voice answered. “Yes.”

Amelia snorted. “If we do this for Pine Tree, everybody is going to expect it.”

“Which is exactly what I want,” D.J. said. “I’m actually hoping to lure some of the nursing homes that we’re currently visiting with the bookmobiles into using their own transportation to come to the main library.”

Amos shook his head. “Nobody’s going to want to do that.”

“Because it’s too dark,” D.J. said. “And the place is unwelcoming. But if we lighten it up and make it fun for them, perhaps we can change that.”

“Why would we want to?” Suzy asked. “They like the bookmobile and I like going.”

D.J. nodded. “But a lot of places are not being served at all. If we got more of the nearby facilities to come to us, then you’d have time to add some new stops that have growth potential. I’m sure both you and Amos could come up with some ideas about that.”

Suzy nodded thoughtfully. Amos had an idea immediately come to mind.

“The kids from the high school that get dropped off at Batesville, a lot of them hang out there at the gas station for an hour or two every afternoon.”

“They still have an elementary school in town,” Suzy explained to D.J. “But their older students have been coming to high school here for the last decade.”

Amos nodded. “If we were parked there in the lot outside the gas station, just a couple of times a month, I think our YA stats would perk up considerably.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” D.J. said, “extending service to new populations.”

“Plus the guy at the gas station might appreciate that the kids can occupy themselves in other ways besides shoplifting stale donuts.”

Suzy giggled. “Donuts should only be eaten by people who have teenage appetites and metabolism.”

“This does not deal with the problem!” Amelia stated harshly. “You can stop in Batesville or not, but you can’t fill this library with needy nursing home residents.”

“They are our patrons, Miss Grundler.”

“We don’t have the staff for that kind of one-on-one interaction,” the pruney complainer continued. “Who is going to wait on them hand and foot? I’m not. So then, it must be you,
Librarian.
And I feel certain that the taxpayers of this district are not paying you to be a nursemaid. Opening Saturdays, babysitting abandoned children and now wasting valuable time on doddering old fools who wish to be spoon-fed light reading material.”

D.J. managed not to take the bait, but she did swallow hard.

“Let’s try it, shall we,” she suggested. “I’ll work with Pine Tree this week. And Suzy, perhaps you and Amos can discuss it with the managers of your current nursing home stops.”

They both nodded, avoiding glances at Miss Grundler’s face. D.J. could see in her peripheral vision that the woman was florid with anger.

“But we should probably hold off doing anything until after harvest,” Amos said.

“Oh, sure,” Suzy agreed readily.

Amos looked over at her, his expression sincere and without patronizing. “We’re going to start cutting wheat in the next week for certain.”

D.J. was aware that people in her adopted hometown did tend to drone on and on about gathering the local crop. But surely most would be able to manage a discussion on another subject.

“I want us to get started on this right away,” she said.

“As soon as harvest is in,” Amos agreed. “First thing when we get back.”

“Get back? Get back from where?”

Miss Grundler gave a breathy sigh of exasperation. “The library will be closing for harvest!”

“What?”

“We close. Every year, we close.”

“I didn’t see anything on the calendar,” D.J. pointed out.

“Because we never know exactly when it starts or when it ends. Whenever it does, we close.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” D.J. said.

Amelia Grundler gave a huge huff of disgust.

“Actually, Miss Jarrow, it makes perfect sense,” Amos said. “Nobody has time to read. Almost nobody is even in town.”

“I get it that’s it’s a very busy time for people,” D.J. said. “Why would we not open the main library and run our regular bookmobile routes?”

“Well...” Amos began, as if he was hesitant to give her the bad news. “There will be so many heavy trucks and machinery on the roads, that it’s a pretty dangerous idea to put the bookmobiles out there. Add to that the fact that you’ll have to be the one driving them, ’cause Suzy and I are both commercial truck drivers. We’re committed to haul grain. We always do.”

Amelia seemed to take a certain dark pleasure in the turn of the conversation.

“And since you will be out risking damage to our bookmobile on narrow blacktop roads, the main library will have to be closed,” she said. “I take my annual trip to my sister’s home in Colorado Springs. She will be expecting me and I have no intention of cancelling.”

D.J. sat there, completely stunned into silence. She had never heard of anything like this in her life. A library that closed its doors without notice to reopen at a time unspecified.

“I’ll be here,” a voice from the stacks said quietly.

D.J. almost laughed humorlessly, but managed to keep her decorum. “Thank you, James. I appreciate your help.”

South Padre Island (Eight years earlier)

S
cott had noticed her when she entered the booth next to his. At first he’d discounted her as too young. One of the girls with her seemed a little more his type. He’d always sort of secretly preferred brunettes and that sort of bleach-striped blond look reminded him of cheerleaders. And cheerleaders, of course, reminded him of Stephanie.

If he was really going to do this, he could not allow himself one thought of his girlfriend back home.

A few minutes later she turned to look at him. From that glance, there was no danger of thinking of anyone else. It was as if she glowed from the inside. It was as if there were a radiance within her, so desperate to escape that it lit her up like a firefly.

Scott had to remind himself to breathe.

She smiled at him. There was so much in that slight curve of her dark pink lips. She was confident, sophisticated, worldly, physical.

Scott smiled back in an uncharacteristic act of bravery.

She’s out of your league, Scott,
his inner voice warned him.
You’re a naive farm boy with little experience and none of it good. You don’t want to embarrass yourself.

He chose to heed his fears and turned to concentrate on the dancers on the floor. That worked until she was down there with them. Scott couldn’t take his eyes off her. She moved. She laughed. She flirted. And she was so sexy. Those long legs in those impossibly high heels, made that round butt in the tight black leather stand out like a sign blinking in neon. Do me! Do me!

He wanted to.

So
, the inner voice prompted again,
are you going to sit up here alone or go down there and try to get what you came for, before somebody else snaps it up.

He took a deep breath and then headed for the dance floor. He didn’t look left or right, but walked straight up to her.

“Oh...hi,” she said.

Her eyes were surprisingly shy. Shy, but at the same time audacious.

“I think you’re going to have to dance with me,” he said, almost daring her to reject him.

“Have to? Why would I have to?”

“Because you sparkle so brightly I can’t even see anyone else.”

“Sparkle?” She thrust her chest at him, taunting him with her barely covered breasts. “They’re called sequins.”

That definition of plastic shimmer didn’t begin to explain the dazzle that she exuded.

He reached out to touch her then. Careful to only make contact with the flashy fabric rather than the flesh he feared might scald him. It was not an unfounded fear, he discovered. A fiery particle of static electricity visible charged between them. It was so strange and unexpected Scott could only remark, “You don’t need sequins.”

“Be careful,” she teased him. “If you get too close you might get glitter all over you.”

It was a dare he could not, would not, ignore. He pulled her brusquely into his arms. As loud music pulsed all round them, what passed for dancing between the two was more of a hot embrace. Her body simply melted into his. It was the sensation that he’d waited for all his life, but had never experienced. This was how it was meant to be between a man and a woman. She filled all of the hard angles in his past with a balm that was both soothing sweetness and sizzling heat.

Warnings went off in his head.
Don’t move too fast! Don’t expect so much!
Don’t scare her off!
All excellent advice gleaned over years of research, but he threw it out the window as he brought his mouth down to hers.

The touch of their lips brought the connection total.

It was never like this with...

His brain couldn’t even complete the thought. This was kissing as he’d thought it should be and he knew now that he had never been kissed before.

When they finally parted, he missed the contact so starkly, that he clutched her more tightly against his chest. He lowered his hands on her hips and she didn’t complain. He grasped her butt and lifted her slightly to press intimately against him. She moaned as if she liked it.

“This is so what I’ve needed,” he said to himself as much as her. His words seemed to be welcome. She wrapped her arms around his neck and wiggled against him.

“Don’t move too fast!” he warned himself again.

“There is no such thing as ‘too fast’ for me right now,” she whispered to him in a tone so thick with sensuality he could have slathered it on with a butter knife.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Hand-in-hand, they were practically running for the exit.

Outside in the night air, Scott sobered slightly. His body was urging him to back this girl against the nearest wall and take exactly what she was offering. But he’d had functional before. He knew what that was like. He knew about that kind of release. Tonight he wanted more. He wanted everything. He glanced over at her. In the garish neon of the bar’s flashing entrance, she looked even younger than she had inside.

“Are you twenty-one?” he asked her.

Surprisingly, she laughed. “Yesterday, I would have had to say no,” she answered. “But this is my birthday.”

“Happy birthday.”

She stepped up closer to him, her eyes narrowing enticingly. “I think you should give me a present. I’m hoping for something a little hotter than candles on a cake.”

She kissed him again and his body went into reverb over doing her standing up against the wall.

“Let’s walk,” he said, when their lips parted.

He took her hand and they started down the sidewalk. In fewer than ten paces, they stopped and kissed again.

Heart thumping, he clasped her hand once more and continued on down the avenue that led toward the beach.

The circuits in his brain appeared to be shorting out. He was incapable of coherent conversation. He heard himself saying, “You’re hot. You’re so hot.”

His thoughts ranged from
Do her in the motel! Do her in the car! Do her on the beach!
To the even less coherent urgings of
Do her! Do her! Do her!
Scott kept trying to recall even one of
GQ
’s
Seven Steps to Sizzling Sex
or any advice from
The Performance Playbook
from
Men’s Health Monthly
. He wanted to be anything but disappointing tonight. But he was completely on his own and the only help he could count on was his own sense that he wanted to make it good and make it last.

Conversation. Try conversation.

“I guess I should introduce myself. I’m...”

She reached up and set her fingers atop his lips. “We don’t need names or histories. Let’s just keep this exactly what it is.”

Scott wasn’t sure what that meant, but he loved the sound of her voice when she said it and the feel of her tongue on his after the words were gone.

They walked until they couldn’t bear the absence of embrace. And then they embraced until it was necessary to walk in self defense. The crowds were thick and the music pouring out of cars and clubs and stores was loud. Drunken celebrants of both genders weaved to and fro. And other couples like themselves paused at irregular intervals for a fresh kiss or fleeting fondle.

A little cloud of smoke poured out of the door of the hippy shop. Scott might have walked right past, but in the window he spotted a headless mannequin wearing a peace symbol bikini thong and a dozen styles of nipple rings on her breasts.

He wrapped his arm around the waist of the gorgeous woman beside him and urged her inside.

“I want to buy you a birthday gift,” he said.

He showed her the nipple ring, already imagining having her slip off her top to try it on. Scott watched her eyes widen. The naive expression contrasted sharply with the sophisticated hottie that he already knew her to be.

“It’s a fake,” he assured her, demonstrating the hinge on one side. “I’m not asking you to get your nipple pierced.”

There was so much relief in her expression that he wondered vaguely what other men
had
asked of her.

That was when he spotted the belly chain. The glittering rope of rhinestones and metals was more gold paint than gilt, but it shined in the fluorescent lighting. A tiny pink heart-shaped stone hung down like a tassel and drew the gaze to the sexy regions below.

“This looks like you,” he told her.

“It’s pretty,” she agreed.

“May we try it on?” he asked the hippy. He took the man’s unconcerned shrug for permission.

Scott fiddled with the cheap latch before circling her waist with the chain. He secured the clasp and then lovingly ran his fingers along the metal, careful not to touch the warm, tanned flesh beneath it.

She stood so close to him that his hand trembled. Then she turned with a flirty sway to her hips and walked down the aisle and back modeling the potential acquisition.

Scott had not thought that she could be any sexier, but the cheap piece of chain hanging low on her waist somehow made his mouth go dry. The shimmering glint suited her. She truly did sparkle and he began to think of her that way, as if it were her name.

She came to stand immediately in front of him, cocking one hip to the side to give him a better look.

“I think you have to have this,” Scott said.

She laughed. It was a great sound. Low and soft and full of warmth. It went straight to his heart.

“You don’t have to buy me anything,” she said.

“I want you to remember your twenty-first birthday,” he replied.

He paid the hippy, who put a premium price on the tawdry piece of shiny. Not unusual in a tourist trap.

It was worth the cash when she gave him a wonderful thank-you kiss as the cashier counted out change.

Outside they continued down the street. Walking, laughing, kissing as her birthday gift winked at him in the streetlights.

By the time they reached the space where his car was parked, the teasing was being replaced by urgency. He perched her on the hood and spread her thighs so he could stand between them. The tiny black leather skirt slid up easily. And she had almost nothing on underneath it. That knowledge had him groaning aloud.

Her hand was on the back of his neck, her teeth nipping at the skin on his throat. He rubbed the taut bulge in his jeans against her intimately.

It wasn’t close enough. He couldn’t get close enough. He slipped an arm under her right knee and raised her leg to his shoulder. That was better. It was only when he heard a couple of frat boys cheering from the sidewalk, that he realized how crazy it had gotten.

This end of the street was not as busy and was less well lit, but he was still practically having sex in public. He’d never lost his cool so much in his life.

He stepped back and set her on her feet. Her legs were a little unsteady.

“This is my car,” he said. “Get in.”

He felt her pull away. “No, no. Not in a car.”

Scott heard the trepidation in her voice. They were sobering up. That might not be a good thing.

“How about a birthday picnic on the beach?” he suggested.

He had a blanket in the trunk. They bought provisions in the corner store. He set his purchases on the counter. A huge magnum of cheap champagne, not truly chilled but a little bit cold. A pair of paper cups from the fountain. Not exactly crystal, but perfect for toasting. He had to pay as much as if they were actually filled with soda. A package of orange cream-filled cupcakes. And a box of birthday candles.

As the clerk totaled, his date tossed an item on top. Scott’s mouth went dry at the sight of the flat square packages.

“I have condoms,” he whispered.

She gave him a sexy smile and held her body in what was almost a pose. “These are glow-in-the-dark.”

The clerk was grinning at her so lewdly it was all Scott could do not to punch the guy in the mouth.

“Great,” he said to her. But managed to sneak the clerk a dark, dangerous scowl as he accepted his change.

Escaping the lights and the worst of the crowds, they made their way toward the sound of the surf slapping against the shore. In little over a block they crossed Gulf Boulevard and the sidewalk turned into a well-worn pathway. She leaned against him to remove her incredibly high heels as they walked up over the rise of the dunes to the vast expanse of white sand beach.

Their conversation was minimal. She’d made it clear that she didn’t want to know anything about him. And although he was incredibly curious, he didn’t want to threaten the mood with a twenty-questions interrogation. Besides, his brain kept replaying the image of those glow-in-the-dark condoms thrown on top of his purchases.

Scott spread out the blue-and-crimson blanket that he routinely carried to tailgate events upon an isolated spot in the sand. He popped the champagne and they toasted her twenty-first year. He put the birthday candles into the cupcakes, but the sea breeze made them nearly impossible to light.

They drank, they laughed, they kissed and stroked. The beach was not as public as the hood of his car. But it was not exactly privacy, either.

At one point a naked girl, laughing and shrieking, ran through the surf nearby with a jean-clad guy in hot pursuit.

Everything Scott had read about being a better lover, and he’d read virtually everything, had encouraged the need for taking it slow, doing plenty of chitchat amid sexy foreplay. This girl seemed all good with the foreplay, but he didn’t get the sense she wanted him to take his time, to make it great. Her eagerness nearly routed his intent. He was here to test the skills he had and learn what he could. But the last thing that he wanted was the kind of failure he’d become accustomed to.

He loved kissing her. There was something about her mouth, the way she opened for him, the way she pulled him in. He’d never thought much about kissing. It was just something that a guy did. Something that girls liked. Stephanie had not particularly liked it. But then, Stephanie had never kissed like this.

A moan escaped the woman beneath him. She clearly did like it. And if Scott didn’t hang on to his control a little better, he’d be banging her too fast, too soon.

He sat up. She made a tiny noise of complaint as he made an effort to control his breathing by staring off into the distance. He saw the shimmer out on the horizon.