But in the morning Drum turned out to be against the idea. He heard it with his eyes on something far above the bed, his face smooth and blank and patient. Then at her first pause he said, “No.”
“But don’t you see?” Evie asked. “It works out so well. You would never be pressed into doing some job you hated; you would know you had me to fall back on.”
“I don’t like it,” said Drum.
“Well, Drum, I never. Are you one of those people that doesn’t like working wives?”
“No. Well, no, of course not. But it wouldn’t look good. People will say I must have got cut back at the Unicorn.”
“You have,” Evie wanted to say, but she didn’t. She had read in Family Circle about how wives needed tact at times like this.
On Monday afternoon, she passed the library twice very slowly and then made up her mind and walked in. All she wanted to do was satisfy her curiosity. She smelled the familiar library smells, paste and buckram and polished wood, and she saw how the cheerful yellow curtains framed narrow rectangles of winter light. Behind the desk sat Miss Simmons, red-haired and spectacled, sliding pencils into an orange-juice can some child had painted for her. “Why, Evie,” Miss Simmons said. “How nice to see you.”
“I only came by for a minute,” Evie said. She shifted the heap of books she held against her chest.
“Was there something I could help you with?”
“Oh, no. Well, I was curious, is all; my father said you had a job open.”
“That’s right, Naomi’s job. She got married. I hated to lose her. Are you interested?”
“Well, I don’t know. There’s my, Drum, he doesn’t — but it sounded like something I’d like.”
“It’s after school hours, you know. No problem there.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“Dollar and a half an hour.”
“Would it take up any evenings?”
“Evenings, no, we’re not open evenings. Three to six every afternoon; you’d be home in time for supper. Won’t you think about it? I’d love to have someone I knew.”
Miss Simmons had a wide, lopsided smile that changed the shape of her face, making her look young and hopeful. When she smiled Evie said, “Oh well, all right. I think I’d like to,” without even planning it. Drum was in some far unlighted corner of her mind. She wouldn’t think about him until later. She followed Miss Simmons into the workroom behind the desk, still carrying her books, listening carefully while the job was explained to her. “Could you start today?” Miss Simmons asked. “There are all these cards piled up. Oh, I hope you like it. Some people get the fidgets in libraries. It’s the importance of details that bothers them.”
But to Evie, importance of details seemed peaceful and lulling. She settled herself on a high stool in the workroom, with an electric heater warming her cold stockinged feet and a mug of cocoa at her elbow. For three solid hours she alphabetized Library of Congress Cards and stacked them in neat little piles. Abbott, Anson, Arden — the cards snapped crisply under her fingers, and when she had finished with the A’s she evened up the corners, slipped a rubber band around them, and moved smoothly into the B’s. “Are you getting tired?” Miss Simmons called. “Do you want to take a break? I know this must seem tedious.” But Evie didn’t get tired all afternoon. At six o’clock, when Miss Simmons moved around the reading room closing blinds and straightening magazines, Evie was sorry to have to go.
Drum was lying on the couch at home with an old copy of Billboard. “What took you so long?” he asked.
“I stopped by the library.”
“Oh,” Drum said.
“Do you — shall I open up some chili?”
“Sure, I reckon.”
He never asked what she had been doing at the library.
She went to work every day that week. Although Miss Simmons kept up a steady patter of tea-party talk Evie stayed silent, soaking up the words and the warmth from the heater as she filled out overdue-reminders. Sometimes she wandered through the reading room with a trolley of books to shelve, and the memorized classification numbers hummed peacefully through her head while she searched for shelf-space. Or she sat behind the circulation desk, swiveling in a wheeled metal chair and stamping first books and then cards — thump-tap, thump-tap — until she was lulled into a trance. People rarely spoke to her. If Violet came by and said, “Hi, Evie. Evie?” Evie looked up with a blank smile for several seconds before she realized who it was.
“Oh, aren’t you just bored out of your mind?” Violet asked. “I don’t see how you stand it here.”
“It’s all right,” Evie said.
She kept preparing explanations for Drum — how Miss Simmons was desperate, how the job was only temporary — but she didn’t have to use them. Drum asked no questions at all. On Friday he said, “It’s my late night at the A & P. Can you come early so I can have the car?”
“I have to stay at the library till six,” Evie told him.
“Well, I’ll come pick you up and take you home, then. That all right?”
“I guess so.”
At six o’clock she looked up from the desk to find him leaning in the doorway, looking sleepy. “I’m ready any time you are,” he told her. She had never thought it would be so easy. She wondered if he were just waiting till they were alone to say, “Hey. What’s this? I thought I said I didn’t want you working.” But even after they had left the building, he kept quiet. She had him drop her by the bank to cash her paycheck, and when she returned to the car she handed him the money. “Good, I’m out of cigarettes,” he said. She was relieved, but she had a let-down feeling too.
Meanwhile nothing seemed to have been settled with the Unicorn. Friday night David stopped by the house and said, “I wanted Drum, but maybe you could tell me. What am I supposed to do about this Unicorn business? I been letting it ride; I never thought he’d go this far. Now tomorrow is Saturday and we still don’t know if Drum will change his mind and play there.”
“He hasn’t mentioned it,” Evie said.
“Shall I just go on and say we’ll show? I thought of it. But then Drum could always make a liar of me, and that’s bad for business.” He sat down on the edge of the couch. He was still wearing the suit he sold insurance in, gray wool with a pinstripe. It made him look unusually straight-edged and sure of himself. “You’re around him all week,” he said. “And you know he likes the Unicorn. Even I am sure of that much. So what should I do? You must have some idea.”
“David, I don’t. Really.”
“But if you don’t take the decision out of his hands he might just say no from pride. You know how he is.”
“Well,” Evie said.
“Shall I do it?”
“He is proud.”
“So shouldn’t I go and tell Zack he’s coming?”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess you could.”
“Good enough,” David said. “It’ll work out. You’ll see.”
And it did. On Saturday night she talked Drum into his singing clothes, polished his boots and set them beside the door, followed him around holding his guitar out level, like a tray, until he grew nervous about its safety and yanked it away from her. “Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.