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They don't teach witchcraft in library school. Vermin--check. Mold and mildew--check. Difficult patrons--check. But there was no course in witchcraft, no syllabus for sorcery. If only I'd been properly prepared for my first real job.
I was probably responsible for what happened. After all, I was the one who recited the Scottish play as I pulled a gigantissimo nonfat half-caf half-decaf light-hazelnut heavy-vanilla wet cappuccino with whole-milk foam and a dusting of cinnamon."Double, double, toil and trouble," I said as I plunged the steel nozzle into the carafe of milk.
"What's that from, Jane?" asked my customer, a middle-aged woman who frequented the library on Monday afternoons. Her name was Marguerite, and she was researching something about colonial gardens. She'd had me track down endless pamphlets about propagating flowering trees.
"Macbeth," I said.
See. It
was my fault. Everyone knows that it's bad luck to say the name of Shakespeare's Scottish play. At least for actors it is. Still, I should never have risked the curse. I probably deserved everything else that happened that day and in the weeks that followed.Every last thing.Even the-- Well. No need to get ahead of myself.
I rang up Marguerite's coffee and crossed back to my desk. Strictly speaking, it wasn't necessary to walk by the online catalog. I didn't
need to straighten the pens. I didn't
have to set out more scratch paper. I wasn't
required to organize the newspapers.
But all that busywork gave me an opportunity to walk by Jason Templeton's table.
Jason was my Imaginary Boyfriend. Oh, he was real enough.He just didn'tknow that he was my boyfriend.Yet.
Jason was an assistant professor at Mid-Atlantic University. He looked exactly like that movie star in last summer's blockbuster--you know, the one who suavely seduced two different women while he double-crossed the Mafia and stole the Hope Diamond? Except his hair was caramel-colored. And curly. And he was on the skinny side. And I've never seen him in a tuxedo--he's more of a J.Crew sort of guy.
Okay, maybe he didn't look exactly like a movie star, but when someone is your Imaginary Boyfriend,you give your fantasy a little breathing room....
In fact, since fantasy was my only romantic outlet these days, I gave my dreams a
lot of breathing room. After all, they were the magical cure. My dreaming about Jason was helping me to move on, to get over the near-legendary Jilting of Jane Madison.
I knew I should be over Scott Randall by now. Any man who would choose climbing the law firm ladder at his firm's London office over being my beloved husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse....
Well, he wasn't worth having. Especially when he'd hooked up with some British slut his first week on the new job. And when he had the nerve to write to me--
write to me!--and ask for my engagement ring to give to her....
But Scott Randall was the only man I'd ever loved. Really.
And how sad was that? I was twenty-nine years old, and I'd only loved one man. He'd been my high school sweetheart. I'd never even dated seriously in college; Scott and I had made our long-distance thing work.College,then grad school for me (twice-first for a worthless English master's focusing on Shakespeare,then practical library science!) and law school for him. We'd lived together in D.C. before he took off for London.
He'd dumped me almost nine months ago, and it still felt like a part of me was dying every time I looked at my bare left hand.
So,Jason Templeton was actually a great development for me. Even if I wasn't ready to confess my attraction to him. Even if I hadn't quite brought myself to take a risk,to move him from the Imaginary category to Real Flesh and Blood.
At least I had convinced myself that--however unconsciously--Jason came to the Peabridge Free Library to see me. Well, to see me, and to study the relationships between husbands and wives in Georgetown during the two decades immediately following the signing of the Declaration of Independence. My best friend, Melissa, said that boded well--he had a romantic soul and a scholar's mind.
I was certain that one day he would look up from the letters of George Chesterton.He'd reach for the sharpened pencil that I'd have standing ready (no ink permitted around the original letters),and I'd say something witty and sly,and he'd smile his gorgeous, distracted smile, and then we'd go out for lunch, and our scholarly discussion would turn to personal histories, and we'd take a long weekend drive to North Carolina to visit George Chesterton's ancestral home,and we'd stay in a bed-and-breakfast with a king-size sleigh bed and lace curtains and homemade scones, and...
I hurried over to my desk and opened the top drawer. There,nestled safely among Post-it notes and Hi-Liters was my personal copy of
Gentlemen Farmers. Jason's first book. University Press of Virginia had brought it out the year before and it received great critical acclaim.Okay,it got one column inch in the alumni magazine,but they really seemed to like it.
At Melissa's urging, I had ordered a copy of my own; it had finally arrived in yesterday's mail. She was the one who made me realize that a scholar needed recognition. He needed support. He needed a loving helpmate.
Before I could carry the book over to get Jason's autograph, the phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID and saw that it was Gran. I could let the call go, but then my grandmother would leave her one message: "Jane Madison's grandmother." Answering machines had been around for decades, but Gran refused to believe that they could be trusted with substantive messages.She was eighty-one years old; who was I to try to change her?
"Library, this is Jane," I said, trying to sound crisp and professional.
"Make me a promise, dear."
Oh no. We were back in "promise" mode. Gran went through these phases.She would read articles or watch television or listen to the radio, and she'd dwell on all the ways that people could die. As she was fond of saying, I was the only family that she had, and she wasn't going to lose me without putting up a fight. (Not until I blessed her hearth with a great-grandchild, in any case.)
In the past month alone, I had sworn that I would not go hang gliding, rappel down the outside of the Empire State Building or practice free diving in the Caribbean. Those promises were a small price to pay, I suppose, for Gran having raised me.
Every once in a while, though, I wondered if my actual parents would have been so insanely concerned about my safety. I mean, what were the chances that I'd ever engage in such risky behavior, promise to Gran or not? But I suspected that the car crash that took my parents' lives started Gran on her quest for "promises."
"Jane," Gran said."Are you listening to me?" I'd waited too long to reply. "Of course. I was just helping a patron at the circulation desk." I glanced across the room at Jason, smile at the ready, but he didn't look up from his notes.
"Make me a promise."
"Anything, Gran."
"This is serious!"
"Of course it is. You have my best interest at heart. You always have my best interest at heart. I'm the only granddaughter you're ever going to have."
"Don't get smart with me, Little Miss Librarian."
I glanced at the clock in the lower right corner of my computer screen."Gran, I've got a meeting with Evelyn in five minutes. I'm going to have to run."
"Promise me you won't lick any toads."
"What!" I was so surprised that I shouted. Jason did glance up then, and I managed a harried smile, pointing at the phone and shrugging elaborately.Great.Now he'd think I was a crazed mime.
"Promise me you won't lick any toads. I read an article about South American toads--they have poison on their skin,and it makes people hallucinate,and those poor people get into car crashes, and they don't even remember to try to get out of the wreck, and they die terrible, fiery deaths."
"Why would I lick a toad,Gran?"I tried to stop the chain reaction at the first link.
"I remember that poster you had on your bedroom wall. "You have to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince."
"That was in fifth grade, Gran. And it was frogs. You know, from fairy tales."
"We form our basic personalities very early,"she insisted, and I could picture her shaking her head. "People don't change. You'll always be that fifth grader."
Great. Ten years old forever. I was doomed to spend the rest of my life with braces, stick-on tattoos and bangs. And I'd always be chosen last for the softball team.
I sighed. Maybe Gran wasn't so far from the truth. I
did still have freckles, sprayed across my nose. And my hair still had too much red in the curls that hung halfway down my back. And my glasses continued to slip down my nose when I least expected them to, making me blink my hazel eyes like a dazed chipmunk. "Gran," I said. "I don't even remember the last time I
saw a toad."
"All the more reason for me to worry."
What did
that mean? "Fine, Gran. I promise. No toad licking for me."
"Thank you, dear." I could hear the relief in her voice.
"You'll see. You'll be grateful when the decision is staring you in the face, and you'll know what to do because you've already made up your mind."
"I'm sure I will, Gran." My acquiescence drifted into silence as I watched Jason stack up his notes. I knew his routine better than I knew my own; he was preparing to leave so that he could deliver his noon lecture. He was shutting down his laptop, stowing away his books, capping his pen, clasping his satchel... And then he was gone. No autograph for
Gentleman Farmers today. No blazing Templeton smile. No anything."Oh, Gran..." I sighed.
"What's wrong, dear?"
She might have been an eighty-one-year-old woman. She might have believed that my fate depended on my ability to withstand the siren call of toads. She might have worried about the most absurd disasters ever to preoccupy a human mind.
But she loved me. She loved me despite my unsightly freckles and unruly curls and smudged eyeglasses. And it seemed like I was never going to find another person who would--never find a
man who would.
I shook my head."Nothing, Gran. I just wish..." I closed my eyes. "I wish I had a magic wand. I wish that I could change things."
"Things?"
I came to my senses just in time. The last detail I needed to share with Gran was the existence of my Imaginary Boyfriend. She was still waiting for me to get over Scott, a man she'd never truly liked. If she heard about Jason, she'd immediately start planning our wedding, my baby shower, our child's first birthday party, all before I could complete my confession. I forced myself to laugh. "Oh, Gran, you know. Just
things. Make the day sunny. Find the perfect shoes to go with my new skirt. Finish shelving our new books."
"Jane, you know there aren't any shortcuts. No magic wands in the real world."
"Of course not," I sighed, glancing at my clock: 10:30 a.m. sharp. "Sorry, Gran. I really
do have to run to that meeting."
As I hung up the phone, I wondered what other promises I'd make before the month was over. I shook my head and crossed the floor to Evelyn's office. She sat behind her desk; it was half-buried beneath the piles of important papers that had cascaded across its faux-leather surface. I glanced at the prints on the walls--the regimented gardens at Mount Vernon and the colonnaded porch of Monticello--and I wondered once again how my disorganized boss could have chosen to work in a library collection based on order, harmony and the rational strength of the human mind.
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