Practice Makes Perfect (2 page)

H
elen was upset, and Henry didn't like it. He also didn't like not knowing why. They were more than just colleagues. They were friends. They shared things. But he also didn't like that he didn't like that Helen didn't share everything with him. That was her prerogative, and he needed to respect it.

He just hated to see her upset.

And maybe there was something he could do about it. He had helped her out of jams before. He'd driven her and Lindsey home when they'd had too many margaritas on a girls' night a while back. He'd gone to her cousin's wedding with her, and endured her mother's not entirely subtle comments about how he wasn't a
real
doctor, just because he had a PhD. He'd bought her tampons. Just the once, and with very specific instructions, but he'd done it. Dammit, he was helpful.

Whatever it was, she would tell him eventually. Or she wouldn't, and he would be totally fine with that.

He dropped his briefcase on his desk with a little more force than he intended, sending a pile of papers swooshing to the floor.

Great. He'd spent half of yesterday putting that stack of nineteenth-century property deeds in date order, and now he was going to have to spend half of today fixing it. He could hear Helen:
It takes the same amount of energy to scan them as it does to copy them. But if you really want to kill trees and have print copies, you can at least organize them into folders. Maybe if you put your research into folders instead of piles, you'd save yourself a whole lot of time. It's the twenty-first century, Henry. There are file cabinets now
.

She was right, of course. And there was no reason photocopies of tax records couldn't be stored, conveniently and chronologically, away from an active work surface. But he liked having them at his elbow. He could refer to them at a moment's notice, squelch that spark of a question with an immediate answer. (
You can also roll your chair over to the file cabinet
, Helen-In-His-Head said.) There was something about having them right there, though, that made it feel like the old documents (
Copies of old documents
, H-I-H-H said) were actively contributing to his work, as if the typesetting and elegant handwriting helped pull his mind into the past. He was writing about history, dammit. He needed old stuff.

He knelt down and tried to salvage whatever order he could out of the mess of papers. They had not, as he'd hoped, fallen in convenient chronological order, as if held together by a cosmic paper clip.

The documents themselves were barely legible, being old and fragile, and the photocopies didn't do much to improve that. But at least he vaguely remembered which property records went with which deeds and tax forms.

Who said history wasn't sexy?

He was writing about a brothel, after all.

And nothing says sexy like the property tax forms from an alleged brothel.

Which was the problem.

Brothels were legal in Kentucky into the early twentieth century, although they were far more prevalent in the big cities. Lexington had had a red light district. Willow Springs . . . not so much.

But Willow Springs did have a legendary madam, Renee Beauchamp, who somehow made her way to the small town from a riverboat on the Ohio River. She bought a house, the biggest house in town at the time, and set herself up in business.

But hers was no ordinary brothel. She modeled her business plan, such as it was, after the infamous Belle Brezing, the “Belle of Lexington,” who made her house of ill repute reputable by having a salon downstairs where respectable men could be respectable, and an upstairs where, well, they could not.

Renee Beauchamp—allegedly—entertained professors from the still-new Pembroke College, who led discussions downstairs, and had the favor returned upstairs. Even before women were allowed to teach at Pembroke, they were allowed to teach at Madame Renee's, giving lectures and concerts and self-defense demonstrations. Madame Renee insisted that all of her “girls” know how to read and handle money, and if they didn't when they came to her, she made sure they were taught. She had a doctor on staff—a female doctor!—who allegedly mentored Margaret Sanger.

And all of this in a small town in the middle of the middle of nowhere.

He'd written about Renee Beauchamp, using what he could find in the Pembroke College archives. Unfortunately, early-twentieth-century advocates for the temperance movement decided that hiding the shame of a house of well-educated ill-repute was more important than a historical record of it, and a breakout faction of the Willow Springs Historical Society had wiped any mention of her from the records. So although Madame Renee had surely existed, and had surely run a brothel, no one was quite sure where that brothel was.

Except Henry. Henry was sure.

He was sure it was the big old house on Wood Street, the one with a large parlor and lots of small rooms upstairs, each of which had its own balcony where the ladies could issue verbal invitations to passing gentlemen.

He just had to find the proof.

He felt even more of an impetus to find proof since Pembroke College had bought the old house as part of a downtown revitalization partnership with the town. He still hadn't heard what the committee planned to do with the house, but he had nightmares of glass-walled condos and twenty-four-hour gyms.

Henry would do everything in his power to save that whorehouse.

And he got no end of crap for it from his friends. But then, he always thought that was how you knew who your true friends were. Enemies made fun of you behind your back; friends did it to your face.

He wasn't sure who was worst: Lindsey, who knew the least about the project but kept sending him ideas for “Save Madame Renee's Brothel” swag; Grace, who worked at Pembroke with him and knew all the right academic buttons to push; or Helen, who not only worked at Pembroke but was also helping him with his research. At first he was grateful; librarians had always been helpful, but he'd never worked with one so proactive before. Then he found the Burt Reynolds centerfold hidden in a stack of newspaper clippings that Helen sent over via interoffice mail.
You can just email the articles
, he said.
No, I'll send paper copies
, she said.
I know how you like paper copies
. Then ha ha ha naked Burt.

As much as his friends teased him, though, he much preferred that to the whispered comments he overheard from some of his colleagues in the history department. Henry knew he had a reputation as a stuffy, prematurely old-man professor who fetishized the puritanical. Which wasn't fair at all. He just liked bow ties. And he was studying a brothel! What was puritanical about that? He knew that some of the other professors found his focus on local history less significant than their work on Important Topics in the Historical Canon. “Charming,” they called his research, despite the fact that he had presented at international conferences on the significance of the hyperlocal and community-building through academic research, that he'd won awards and fellowships and mentored students who went on to do the same. He was a talking head in a Ken Burns documentary, dammit.

Let the haters begin, he thought as he rough-sorted his documents. He dug a binder clip out of his junk drawer (
All of your drawers are junk drawers
, Helen-In-His-Head chided, not inaccurately) and clipped them together. Good thing too, because as he stood up, he knocked his hip against the desk and the documents went down, flopping messily, but together.

He sat on his chair and put his head on his desk. I should go home, he thought. The universe is against my getting any work done today. But he had office hours and later he was supposed to track down Mary Beth Brakefield, the Realtor who had sold him his house and, coincidentally, sold the Wood Street house to Pembroke. And she sat on the town-and-gown committee that was deciding the ultimate fate of the house. Mary Beth's brother, Jake, flipped old houses for a living. Henry and Jake weren't close—Jake was kind of macho and Henry was kind of not—but Jake was engaged to Grace, and Henry was friends with Grace. He planned on using that tenuous small-town connection to push Mary Beth into siding with the Wood Street restorers on the committee. Then he had to track down Helen and have an awkward conversation about her feelings and why she'd been acting so quiet lately, when normally Helen was the loudest person in the room.

Maybe coffee. He had had some coffee at home, but maybe he needed more. And maybe he could stop by the library on the way back from the Daily Drip, the worst-named coffee shop in the state of Kentucky and the only one in Willow Springs. Helen said she had some stuff to show him from the special collections, and she didn't want to copy it if she didn't have to. Fragile old documents. It made his heart go pitter-patter. Unlike conversations about feelings.

“Professor Beckham?”

Just when his body had decided that, yes, more caffeine, then fragile old documents, then feelings, his first appointment of the day showed up. He waved her in and dug around his desk for his calendar. Ah yes, the History 215 student who wanted to argue that the hypermasculinity of early twentieth-century boxing was actually thinly veiled homoeroticism. Or was she the one who wanted to argue about the B on her paper? Whatever it was, she was on time, which was a nice change, and he pushed thoughts of caffeine and documents and Helen aside to listen to his punctual student.

H
er student assistants were covering the desk, her web bibliography for Grace's English 240 class was done enough for now, her exhibit on the Pembroke Hellbenders—the first integrated college basketball team in Kentucky, and also currently the worst—was just waiting for the start of basketball season to go up.

So Helen had a moment to breathe.

Breathe
.

The problem was, she couldn't breathe. Oh, sure, the normal minimal required amount of oxygen to maintain biological functions was happening, no problem. It was the relaxing, turn-off-your-brain, slowdown-your-heart kind that was MIA.

If only her problems were strictly professional.

No, she'd always had a pretty easy time managing her professional stress. She had good relationships with the humanities and social science professors, and had mostly gotten them to treat her like a colleague instead of a research assistant. Some of them even considered her valuable, and not just because she had a key to the archives and could let them in off-hours. She did committees and professional organizations and student advising—it was all just a matter of being organized. She got stuff done, dammit.

And it was satisfying, but it wasn't always challenging. She realized, after sneaking to a signing at a bookstore in Lexington for one of her favorite guilty-pleasure writers, that she had creative muscles that weren't being stretched by librarianship. She needed to do something that would use her smarts but was totally un-academic.

So she wrote a novel.

It was that easy! All she had to do was work in secret during early morning hours and eschew all extracurricular social commitments, and voilà: romance novel. So easy.

And now it was done and she had actually sent it out in public, but she still hadn't gotten up the nerve to confess her romance-writing secret to anyone she cared about.

She had enough trouble being taken seriously at Pembroke—she wasn't a
real
professor, just a librarian. Add romance novelist on top of that? Forget it. She could kiss tenure good-bye. No amount of academic publishing (and she had cowritten two books on research in the humanities) would undo the damage one smutty book would wreak on her CV—even if she didn't put it on her CV.

And what would her parents say? She loved them, and they supported her—they'd bought dozens of copies of her two books on research in the humanities, and they were dentists—but there was no way. Getting The Talk from her mom when she was seventeen (wishful thinking, Mom, and a year too late) had been bad enough. Knowing they were reading a book of her sexual imaginings? Her father would never make eye contact with her again.

And she could just hear her mother now.
You can write these love stories but you can't give me a grandchild?

Worst of all, what if it never got published? Then people would always be asking her about it and she'd have to explain that not only did she write trashy books, but she wrote trashy books that weren't even very good.

No. It was better for everyone that it was a secret. Not winning the contest was a blessing, then. Her secret was safe.
Whew
.

Of course, she'd taken Psych 101 back in the day. She could see that maybe her unwillingness to be open about her book was affecting her writing. But, no. That letter from the editor said she liked it. Not enough to buy it, but she liked it.

She just had to write better sex.

Helen needed resources. She was good at finding resources. And she had a moment to breathe. And, conveniently, she had brought her personal laptop from home so there was no need to involve Pembroke property in her research, or the IT department if they suddenly became interested in search histories.

Like the good librarian she was, she pulled up Google.
How to write about sex
.

She scrolled through. Links to articles about bad sex writing (not necessary), parodies of purple prose, and a few links she didn't want to click on at work, even from her own personal laptop. She wasn't even going to deal with page two. She fiddled with the key words, found a couple of promising results. She should just bookmark them for later, when she wasn't at work. But then she started reading one on the website of a romance writer she really, really liked. It was a list. “Top Ten Tips for Hot Hot Love Scenes.” Just ten things. She could just read the first few. The first five. Or, it was only ten things. Just a quick break . . .

* * *

Henry was about to knock on Helen's office door, but it was wide-open. He stood in the doorway for a second, thinking she would see him, but whatever she was reading on her laptop had her full attention. He watched her for a second, taking in her bad posture, how she was fiddling with the ends of her hair, her foot tucked under her, her knee resting on the desk, her laptop crowding out the keyboard of her computer. IT definitely would not approve that setup.

Whatever she was doing, she looked cute doing it. (Obviously, she was reading something online, he could see that. But whatever she was reading, she looked cute.) He shouldn't be thinking about her like that. Helen was his friend, and just about his favorite thing about Willow Springs. She wasn't cute. She was beautiful and smart and funny, and he liked her the way he liked all of his friends, which was with a deep, abiding respect and nonsexual distance.

Also, he didn't have many other friends.

It was just a few weeks ago now, but the memory was so vivid it might as well have happened yesterday. Helen went out for margaritas with Lindsey. They'd had a great time, apparently, because the night ended with Helen leaving him a slurring message about needing a ride home. He was home with his guiltiest pleasure (
Ancient Aliens
on the History Channel—if that got out, all of his credibility would really be gone), so he picked them up. He poured their drunk, giggling asses into his car, where they proceeded to shriek and cackle and make the least subtle sexual innuendos he had ever heard. It should have been annoying. But he liked Lindsey; she had a way with words, although he felt a little bad for her next-door neighbor, Walker, who seemed to be the brunt of most of her innuendos. And he liked seeing Helen totally wild and free. Her hair was wisping in the open windows. She was always enthusiastic, which was just a nice way of saying “boisterous,” which was just a nice way of saying “loud,” which didn't seem to go with the always appropriately dressed, well-mannered, totally professional librarian he knew her to be.

That night, she was also a little handsy. If he hadn't been driving—and if she hadn't smelled like a blender—he would have liked it. Nothing too scandalous, and nothing to impede his assigned duties to get them home safely. But every time Helen let out that big, boisterous laugh, her arms would flop and her hands would land somewhere on his person. His shoulder, his knee. It was a little distracting.

And then Lindsey got out of the car and told them to get a room.

“Ha,” he said.

Helen just looked, well, stricken. Then she giggled. Then she laughed. Then she rolled down the window all the way because she said she felt nauseous.

She hadn't even rejected him—he hadn't offered anything to reject. But that moment, with the heavy silence and the night air and Helen's hair blowing crazily in his peripheral vision, it felt uncomfortably familiar. Every nerdy guy had one: that girl who asked for your homework, then laughed in your face when you asked her to prom; showing up for the first IRL after lots of great online convos, only for her to get an emergency call from her roommate.

Not that he hadn't had some great girlfriends in the past. He was still friends with his high school girlfriend. Her kids called him Uncle Henry. He dated. He dated quite a lot, thank you. He'd gone on a date just last week. The woman smelled like cat litter and cigarettes, but it was fun. He didn't plan on calling her again—a mutual decision—but at least he'd discovered a new restaurant.

And Helen had laughed when he told her the story.

Whatever Helen was reading now, it looked like it was bothering her. Her face was screwed up in concern and concentration, and she started running the ends of her hair over her lips as she read. He'd never really looked at Helen's lips before. It was . . . distracting.

Not distracting for her, though, since she didn't even hear him walk into the room (OK, so he'd snuck in quietly) and stand behind her to read over her shoulder. He couldn't see it all, but he could read the bold pull quote in the middle of the screen.

“What?”

He hadn't meant to say it. It just slipped out. Because the last thing he'd expected Helen the Librarian to be reading was a text about crafting erotic fiction. Even though she was a librarian. She looked up all kinds of stuff. Maybe it was for an English class.

Whatever she was doing, he definitely surprised her, because she squeaked and slammed her laptop closed and turned to face him in one quick move that almost toppled her chair in a tangle of legs and wires.

He caught her chair and righted it, and he caught her eye as well. She stood up, shielding her closed laptop from him.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly. “Where did you—”

“I was standing at the door, but you didn't see me. Or hear me. Or . . . smell me. Helen, what the heck were you reading?” He laughed, teasing her for getting caught doing something he was pretty sure wasn't part of her regular Pembroke workload.

If the fifty shades of red she turned was any indication, it definitely was extracurricular.

“Nothing,” she said, turning back to her desk and shoving her laptop aside.

“Sure didn't look like nothing.” He reached for her laptop to try to tease her some more.

She slapped his hand away. “Forget it!”

His smile froze on his face. She was really pissed. “Helen, I'm just kidding. You can read your pervy stuff all you want. I don't care.”

He was going for a keep-it-light-in-an-awkward-situation tone. It did not make her face look less mad.

Smooth, Beckham.

Then her mad face crumpled and she plopped down on her chair, her head in her hands.

“Hey, hey.” He squatted down so they were face-to-face. He'd made her cry. He'd taken an awkward situation and turned it into a crying situation. He hated seeing people cry. He should probably just go before it escalated. What situation came after crying? Did he even want to find out?

“I'm sorry, just forget it, OK?” She snuffled into her hands.

“Helen—”

“Please, Henry. Just drop it.”

Henry prided himself on being a sensitive guy, the kind of guy who respected women's experiences and recognized the institutional misogyny of the patriarchy. But even he would rather have a root canal than deal with tears. So, like a coward, he took Helen's proffered excuse and backed out of her office.

He should call Grace. Grace could handle feelings. But what would he tell her?
Grace, I just left our best friend crying in her office because I think she has some kind of sex problem and I caught her reading about it at work and I made fun of her for it
.

“Uh, I'll call you later,” he said from his cowardly position in the doorway.

Helen nodded, or maybe that was just from her blowing her nose. Whatever it was, he backed off, as requested, and went to drink his coffee alone.