seventy
meet the new boss
TUESDAY MORNING, seven days after Serenity had promised the MAD, a workman on the seventh floor said, “We’ll put the real desk in tomorrow, ma’am.”
Serenity smiled. “We’re good. Leave it.”
The man looked at the two sheets of interior plywood on sawhorses they had sat in an “L” as a makeshift desk for her. “You sure? They’ve got a desk coming in tomorrow that they say is really fancy.”
“Put it somewhere on the first floor, where people can see it. There’s plenty of room on this for me to work.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He took his toolbox and walked out.
Serenity sat Faulkner’s habitat down on the side of the ‘L’ and opened his door. “Go explore your new home.” He stuck his nose out and sniffed the air. “Sorry,” she said. “No rum. I’m done with those days.” She paused. “Maybe.”
She looked around her new office, set in the corner with a view of the city through two large glass panes. Although smaller than most corporate offices, it was still palatial for a librarian. She walked to the big video screen that took up most of the wall facing her desk and picked up the remote control to flick through the views. Floor by floor, she watched crowds exploring their new home. She came to one that showed a twice-as-big-as-life view of herself, a high-tech supermirror, one she could adjust lighting and backgrounds as she prepared for future interviews.
The face she saw seemed to sag with tired grayness. She thought it looked like an aging amateur prizefighter wearing a bright red wig as a joke. No chance of running away to the beach and getting a job as a cocktail waitress with that face.
She punched a button and the screen filled with an external shot of the MAD and the big American flag flapping proudly in the breeze. Workmen were climbing on the roof as patrons crowded the doors downstairs and families played in the park that surrounded the building.
Her building. Her life. More than the sad flesh she had just seen, this was her real face and her future now.
A shadow crossed the monitor and she jumped and turned. A figure was at the door.
“Joe,” she said, “you scared me.”
“I understand there’s a lot for you to be scared of these days.”
She tried to read his face. “Maybe not, as long as I’ve got my cowboy.”
He ignored her and waved his hand at the screen. “You did it. You got your dream.”
She looked at him. “There’s a lot to my dream, babe. You know that.”
She looked at him.
He looked down, then looked up at her, squarely. “We’ve made a lot of dreams come true ourselves, haven’t we? But this is that core for just you, even when neither of us knew it. This is what you were born for.”
He crossed over and stood beside her, looking at the library on the screen, at the men and women and children drifting in. He started to say something, couldn’t, and just pointed. Finally, he said it. “Looks like there’s a place for everybody in your library.”
She put a hand on his arm and looked up at him. “A place for everybody, Joe.” Her eyes filled with hope and tears.
“No.” There was a long pause. “Almost everybody. You know me, babe. I know where all this is coming from, or I at least know enough to know I can’t be a part of it.” His mouth moved but nothing more came out.
Serenity said, “I saw you at the dedication.”
“Let’s hope you were the only one.”
She nodded. “I know how much it hurts you to do something that has to be kept a secret.”
“Not as much as it would hurt me to see something happen to my Sweet…” He took a breath.
She reached up to wipe his eyes and that seemed to trigger the flood.
“I’m sorry, Serenity.” His voice was breaking and fighting through the sobs. “Sorry as hell for both of us. Mostly for me. I’ll always love you, but I can’t be a part of this. I know I just said that twice now, but it feels like a song stuck in my head and it’s a sad, bitter song for me, but it’s the only one I hear, over and over. I’ll move my stuff out today. I can’t do this anymore.”
She looked at him and wanted to argue. “I don’t know if I would love you if you could. And part of me—a big part of me—wishes I could be different.”
“I don’t. This is the Serenity I fell in love with, written in a big, big book.”
She could barely see as he walked away. Twenty years gone and only one thing left to say one last time. “I will always love me my cowboy.”
He turned partway and looked at the floor. “And I’ll always love me my Sweetblossom.”
“Maybe someday—”
There was a knock on the door and Joy, Doom and OHR came in without waiting. Joe slipped past them and out the door. Joy said, “First staff meeting in the palace,” and they pulled folding chairs up to the plywood.
Oddly, it felt like an ordinary day to Serenity. No rum, no crisis, just details of running the MAD: Life and death, and all that.
“We’re wasting the roof,” said Doom.
“Jesus, Doom,” said Joy. “We expanded times seven in every direction already. Give us a break.”
“No, listen to me. They’ve got these drones to deliver small packages. We could put a fleet of them on the roof and deliver books to homes and schools.”
“So we could,” said Serenity.
“We can use the roof for security, too,” said OHR. He gave the security status and talked about various weapons and their placements and backups.
“This feels like Eisenhower planning for D-Day,” Joy said.
“Just business,” said Serenity.
Joy closed her notebook and Doom smiled a slight smile as she held up a book.
“We’re not done with enemies,” she said.
“No,” said Serenity.
“So we need a weapon they won’t expect. A library weapon.”
She sat the book in her lap, opened it, and a white powder floated out in a cloud.
“Talcum powder,” she said. “But I’ve got a source that can make ricin—a powerful poison from beans of castor plants—in the back of her farm. We can send someone a book. After they open it, we carefully retrieve the book. And fade away.”
Joy and OHR exchanged shocked looks but Serenity just shook her head.
“There’s a line we’re not going to cross, Doom,” she said. “Somewhere.”
They all watched as Faulkner jumped into his wheel and started spinning faster and faster.
Turn the page
for a bonus chapter
from Michael Guillebeau’s next book
EMERALD COAST:
FREE MONEY
one
LIZZIE HAD NEVER in her life taken a thing that didn’t belong to her, and this is where it got her: grouchy from being up too early, tired from staying up too late—and the wig itched like hell. It was just her luck to get stuck wearing a god-damned cheap, sweaty, platinum blonde wig while going out into the searing Florida Panhandle heat and back into freezing hotel rooms. Over and over, all day long, trying to save money working on minimum wage cleaning rooms at the Emerald Coast Beach Hilton.
She tapped on the door to room 415 twice.
“Housekeeping,” she said in a clear, cheerful voice, the way the corporate trainer had told her.
There was no sound from the room. She stepped inside to the residue of a night of joy and margaritas and coconut oil—just like every other Florida hotel room. She peeled the gloves off her clammy hands and took the wig off to scratch her head. In the mirror, an angry young woman with a bright red mohawk and brown stubble on each side of her head stared back at her.