Chapter 2
Just a Conversation
Daniel Moore had six eighth-graders in a library, and he was beginning to regret it.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. The robotics club needed a book on gear ratios for their spring project, and the school library had one copy, which was missing. The Eastside Branch was two blocks from Lincoln Middle. It had a quiet room in the back, a big table, and a sign on the door that said Teen Space (Please Be Kind). He had called ahead. A very patient man had said that yes, groups were welcome, if they were supervised.
"Supervised," Daniel had said, in the voice of a man who had been teaching for six years. "Sure. Absolutely."
It was Thursday, the twenty-fourth of October. It was ten to four. One of the six was under the table. Another was reading the first page of a graphic novel aloud, in a voice like a game-show host. A third, a small serious girl named Priya, who wanted to build a robot that could sort laundry, was holding a stack of seven books against her chest and glaring at everyone.
"Mr. Moore," she said. "Marcus is making noises."
"What kind of noises?"
"The wrong kind."
"I am not," said a voice from the floor.
"Marcus," said Daniel, without looking down, "come out from there. Please. You're an eighth-grader. You have a driver's license in about two years."
"That's not a thing a person says to a person."
"I know. I'm sorry. I'm tired."
He went to find the librarian.
He did not look around. It was just a library. It had a front desk, a low one, shaped like a horseshoe, with a computer and a cup of pens and a stack of colored flyers about something called a Mother Goose Hour. A man at the counter was arguing with a machine about a fine. Beyond him, at the far end, past the shelves, there was a circle of small chairs and a rug shaped like a map of the world.
A woman was sitting on the rug.
She had her back to him. She was cross-legged, in a gray cardigan and a long green skirt, with a stack of picture books in her lap and a small girl leaning on her shoulder, and she was reading in a voice he could just hear. It was a low voice, and warm, with a bit of laughter in it. She was doing all the animals. She did a cow. She did a very good duck.
That's nice, thought Daniel, stupidly.
She finished the page. The little girl said something. The woman said, very seriously, "No, I think the duck knew. I think the duck was just being polite," and the child gave a satisfied nod, and slid off her shoulder. Then the woman got up, brushing off her skirt. She turned. She had a long brown braid, and a smudge of something blue on her wrist. She looked up, and she saw him.
She stopped.
He knew her. He had known her in the first second, and had told himself that he didn't. It was the way she held her sleeve. It was the half-second before her face did anything at all.
"Oh," said the woman. "It's the fish man."
"It's the crackers lady," said Daniel.
She laughed. It was a short one, out through her nose, as it had been in the waiting room, and she pressed her fingers over her mouth. "I'm sorry. That's rude. I can't believe I said that."
"It's what I'd have said."
"It's not what I was going to say."
"What were you going to say?"
"I hadn't got that far." She came across the rug, stepping round a boy lying on his stomach with a book about trucks. She stopped a few feet away. She was smaller than he remembered. Her eyes were gray-green, and she had a freckle under the left one. On a lanyard round her neck was a plastic badge. SARAH BENNETT. CHILDREN'S LIBRARIAN. "Hello, Daniel. Did the brakes work?"
"I'm alive."
"That's a good sign."
"Did your Civic have a long and happy life?"
"It's been three weeks. It's thriving." She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her left ear. "I think it's grateful. I think it knows how close it came."
"Gus saved it."
"Gus saved it for two hundred and ninety dollars."
"He charged me two-eighty."
"Then you're his favorite," said Sarah.
It took her about four minutes to find him a book.
She did it very quickly. She did not seem to need the computer. She went down an aisle, and ran her finger along the spines, and pulled out a thick blue volume with a gear on the front. "This one's for adults," she said. "But it's got pictures. It explains it like you're an intelligent person who's never seen a machine." She handed it over. "There's another one, upstairs, if your group's serious."
"They're serious."
"How many are there?"
"Six. One is under a table."
"That's very standard," said Sarah. "That's a normal number of children to have under a table." She looked past him, at the glass door of the teen room, where Marcus's head had appeared and was making a face against the window. "Is that him?"
"That's him."
"What's he like?"
"He's brilliant," said Daniel, after a moment. "He can't sit still, and he's frightened of the teacher's desk, and last week he took apart a smoke alarm to see what it was thinking. I'm trying not to love him. It's not going well."
She looked at him. It was a quick look, interested, with her head a little on one side.
"You teach science," she said.
"Eighth grade. At Lincoln. How did you."
"The book. And the way you said thinking. My dad was the same. He used to talk to engines as if they were nervous." She stopped, and her face did a small thing, as if she had stepped on something in the dark. "Anyway. You'll want the card."
"The what?"
"A library card. For the club. You can't take out the book without one, and I'd like you to take it out. Do you have an address?"
"I have, there's the school."
"That'll do. Sit." She pulled out a chair for him beside the front desk, and sat in her own, and began to type, quickly. Her nails were short, and there was another smear of blue on her thumb. He looked at it. "It's paint," said Sarah, without turning her head. "We did hand-prints. Under four. I'll be blue until Tuesday."
"It's a good color."
"It's called peacock. The children said it looked like a sad bird."
"They're right."
"They usually are."
He had not meant to stay.
That was what he told himself later, when he thought back. He had meant to get the book, and the card, and take his six children back to Lincoln before somebody's mother called. But the card took a long time, because the computer was slow, and while they waited for it to think she told him about the bad one, a man who had once tried to return a live goldfish, in a plastic bag, as an overdue item. Daniel told her about the boy who had once brought a bag of pond water to science class and asked him to find the worst one. She told him about the Mother Goose Hour, and a grandmother who sang in a voice like a foghorn. He told her the story of Marcus and the smoke alarm.
"Does it go off?"
"It went off at eleven in the morning, in the middle of a test. Nineteen children did their best to look sorry."
"And Marcus?"
"Marcus said, In my defense, it was already broken."
She laughed so hard that the man at the counter looked up. She put her hand over her face. Her shoulders shook. When she took it away her eyes were wet, and her cheeks had gone pink, and she looked ten years younger. "Oh, that's good," she said. "That's very good. Sorry. I haven't. It's been a long week."
"Why?"
"Nothing. It's, the roof leaks in the nonfiction. Everybody's cranky."
He had the feeling that this was not what she had meant to say. But she said it so lightly that he took it, as one takes the hand someone holds out, and said no more.
She slid the card across the desk. It was white, with a stripe. It had his name on it, and a small bar code. She had written, in the corner, in pen, a very neat Lincoln Robotics.
"That's the most official thing I've owned in years," said Daniel.
"It's the second most. You've got a driver's license."
"I forget I've got it."
"So do I," said Sarah. "I mean. My car forgets. It's, never mind." She lifted her eyebrows at a folded square of newspaper lying beside the keyboard. A pen was clipped to it. "Do you do these?"
"The crossword?"
"I do it every day. It's the one thing I have." She smoothed it flat. "I'm stuck on seven across. Sound of a small mistake. Six letters. I've been staring at it for two weeks."
"In pen?"
"Always in pen."
"That's a lot of confidence."
"It's not confidence. It's a rule."
"I do mine in pencil."
"You what?"
"I use a pencil. It's, you can fix it."
She stared at him with great, grave, dawning horror.
"That isn't a crossword," she said. "That's a draft."
"It's a perfectly good method."
"It's cheating."
"It's not cheating if nobody's being graded."
"Somebody's always being graded," said Sarah. "That's the whole point of the, you can't just go around erasing. How would you ever know what you got wrong?"
"I'd know."
"You wouldn't. You'd have a clean sheet. You'd think you'd been perfect."
"I'd think I'd been efficient."
"You'd be a liar."
"To who? The newspaper?"
"To yourself, Daniel."
She said it with such an air of triumph, and was so plainly enjoying it, that he could think of nothing to say. He sat there, grinning like a fool. She grinned back. And for a second, in the warm fluorescent light, with a boy singing under the table in the next room and a printer wheezing behind her, there was a small clear space in which the two of them were simply two people who had found a thing to argue about.
He did not examine it. It was too small.
"Mr. Moore," said Priya. She had come to stand at his elbow, with her seven books and her glare. "You've been talking to the librarian for twenty minutes."
"Have I?"
"Marcus has found a stapler."
"Oh, no."
"He's doing something to it."
"I'll be right there," said Daniel. He stood. He took the book and the card, and found that he had put them in the wrong pocket, and moved them. "Well. Thank you. That was, you've been very helpful."
"It's the job."
"I'd like to say it's more than the job."
"It's a little bit more," said Sarah, solemnly, "but only for you, because of the crackers."
He was at the door of the teen room when he heard the other voice.
It was a man's. It was pleasant and warm, with an easy carry, the kind that is used to being heard in restaurants. It said, "There she is." Daniel looked round.
A man had come in by the front door. He was tall, about thirty, in a dark overcoat over a good gray suit, with brown hair that had been cut by someone who charged a lot. He had a square jaw and a beautiful smile. He was carrying, in the crook of one arm, a bunch of sunflowers wrapped in brown paper.
"Mark," said Sarah.
She had stood up behind the desk. She did it quickly. It was not a startled movement. It was only that she had not been sitting down, in a way, a moment before, and now she was, as if somebody had pulled a thread. Her hand went to her sleeve. She smiled. It was a lovely smile. It was exactly the same smile, and it was not the same at all.
"You're early," she said.
"I got out at five. I thought I'd surprise you." He crossed the floor in a few easy strides. He kissed her on the cheek, and then, lightly, on the corner of the mouth, and held out the sunflowers. "Your favorites. They had them at the stand on Elm. I told the woman, she's the only person in the world who likes these."
"They're so pretty."
"They're a bit much for a library."
"They're perfect."
"Good." He turned. He looked round the room, the desk, the rug, the boy with the trucks, and his gaze came to rest on Daniel. It was a quick, bright, friendly look. It went over him, from his sneakers to the stained cuff of his jacket, in less than a second, and came to rest on his face. "Hello. I'm sorry. Am I interrupting?"
"No," said Daniel. "No, not at all. I was just leaving."
"Mark, this is Daniel," said Sarah. She said it a little fast. "He teaches at Lincoln. He's got a robotics club. I was helping him find a book."
"Daniel." Mark held out his hand. It was a firm, dry, perfectly friendly one. "Mark Hollis. I'm the boyfriend."
"Nice to meet you."
"You're the guy from Gus's."
Daniel hesitated.
"The crackers guy," said Mark. He was smiling. "She told me. It was the first thing she said when she got to dinner. There was this man, and a vending machine. I almost didn't recognize the story. She was so animated." He laughed, a warm, easy laugh, and squeezed Sarah's shoulder. "She doesn't tell me much about her day. I always say, you should be a writer."
"I just told the one story," said Sarah, quietly.
"It was a good one."
"It was only the fish."
"It was the fish," said Mark. "And the crackers. And a dollar." He smiled down at her. It was a warm, fond, fully affectionate smile, and Daniel, standing a few feet away, with six children and a gear book, thought: he's nice. He's a nice man. It was a ridiculous thing to feel disappointed about. He was not sure that he did. It was only that something small in him, that had come up in the last twenty minutes like a bird to a window, had gone quietly back.
"Well," said Mark, "I won't keep you. It's nice to know she's, you're a good influence. She's always saying she doesn't have enough friends."
"I'm not," said Daniel. "I mean. I'm only the guy with the book."
"All the same."
"I'll let you go."
"Take care of the robots."
"I will. Thank you." He cleared his throat. He looked at Sarah. She was smiling at him. It was a good, courteous, proper smile, the one she had given the man at the counter, and he thought that he had seen her face a minute ago with nothing on it at all. "Thanks for the card."
"Anytime."
"Good luck with seven across."
"I'll need it," said Sarah.
She said it quickly, without looking at the paper. And at the last moment, as he was turning away, he saw her tuck her hair behind her ear.
The six eighth-graders went back to Lincoln in a line, with Daniel at the end, like a very tired sheepdog.
It was a short walk. The sun was low and orange. There was a cold wind with the smell of leaves and woodsmoke, and Marcus had found a stick. Priya walked in front, with her seven books, telling Marcus that if he waved it at the cars she would report him to the police. Somebody had a bag of sunflower seeds. It was nearly five.
"Mr. Moore?" said a small voice.
It was a boy named Theo, the youngest, who rarely spoke. He had been walking next to Daniel for a whole block with his hands in his pockets.
"Yes, Theo."
"That librarian was nice."
"She was."
"You smiled the whole time."
"I did not."
"You did. You looked, you looked like when you got the new motor." He considered. "It was kind of weird."
"I was being polite."
"Okay," said Theo.
He did not seem convinced. He walked a little farther, kicking a pebble, and then he said, with the awful honesty of thirteen, "Did the guy with the flowers have a, was he the husband?"
"The boyfriend."
"Oh."
"She's got a boyfriend, Theo."
"Oh," said Theo again. He thought about it. "That's all right. You can still be friends with a librarian."
"I know."
"You can borrow her books."
"I'll bear that in mind."
They turned the corner. The school stood up at the end of the street, a long brick building with a flag, and a row of yellow buses idling at the curb. The wind took a leaf and blew it against Daniel's knee. He picked it off. It was red, and small, and had a rip across the middle.
He turned it over in his fingers.
It's fine, he thought. It's a nice woman, with a nice boyfriend, who had a kind thing to say about a bad joke.
That's all.
He did not think of her that night, particularly. He ate cereal for dinner and graded eleven lab reports. He fed Pickles, who was a beagle with three legs and an expression of permanent sorrow, and took him round the block. He worked for an hour on the old Schwinn in the garage, a frame he had bought for ten dollars at a yard sale, taking the rust off the front fork with a wire brush. It was a good, quiet, thankless job. His mind went where it wanted.
Sound of a small mistake.
He did not know. He tried a few. He tried them under his breath, with the brush going, and none of them fit.
At ten o'clock he took a pencil off the shelf and wrote it on the back of his hand.
SEVEN ACROSS. 6 LETTERS.
It was foolish. He knew that. He looked at it for a moment, with a feeling that he could not have named, and then, with a small dry smile, he rubbed it off with his thumb. It was pencil. It came away at once.
You can fix it, he thought.
That's the point.