On the plus side, I’d never seen Mitchell appear in the library before noon. Mornings were the most productive times for us, by far. The man had an odd charm, but a little bit of Mitchell went a long way.
I looked at Stephen’s finger, which was curving backward with the pressure he was exerting on it. “Well,” I said, “I’m not sure what we can do about it. This is a public institution. Mitchell has as much right to be here as anyone.”
“Of course he does,” Stephen said. “But he can’t be interfering with the duties of our staff.”
“He isn’t, not really.” I watched Stephen’s eyebrows go up. “I mean, maybe he talks a lot, but he’s not keeping anyone from doing their job.” Not for long, anyway. We’d all become experts at sliding out of the Mitchell zone.
Stephen stood up straight and folded his arms. “You think so? You’d know better if you paid more attention to the running of this library. You’re spending too much time on that bookmobile and not enough time doing what I hired you to do.”
I started to protest, but he ran right over me.
“And what did I hire you to do? To take care of the details. To take care of the day-to-day operations so I could be free to deal with the bigger issues. I did not expect to get mired down in the muck of daily minutiae at this point in my career and I resent being required to do so.”
He smoothed his tie. “Now, Minnie”—his voice dropped into that grating patronizing tone—“I know you’re trying to do your best. All I ask is that you exert a little more effort regarding your main function here. You are the assistant library director, remember?”
“Sure, but—”
“Mitchell Koyne,” Stephen said. “Take care of it.” He spun around, marched out the door, and soon I heard his leather-soled shoes go up the stairs to his office aerie on the second floor.
Most days it was easy enough to balance between placating Stephen and maintaining a sense of pride. “Not today,” I murmured. But if I was off my game, it could mean only one thing: time for more coffee.
I picked up my mug and aimed myself at the break room. Though I hadn’t checked the time, it must have been about ten o’clock. Josh, our IT guy, was at the vending machine shoving dollar bills in one end and taking diet sodas out of the other. Holly, a part-time clerk, was stirring creamer and sugar into her mug emblazoned with the logo of the American Library Association.
They both looked up when I came in, then exchanged a glance.
“What?” I grabbed the coffeepot and filled up.
“Um…” Holly continued to stir. “Nothing.”
Josh snorted and popped open one of his freshly delivered cans. “Stephen’s been talking to you, hasn’t he?”
I leaned against the counter. “What makes you say that?”
Holly cast her eyes heavenward. “Well, let’s see. You didn’t say good morning, you didn’t say what a beautiful day it is in northern lower Michigan, and you didn’t ask how our weekends went.”
Josh stuffed cans into the side pockets of his cargo pants and continued the list of clues. “You’re drinking coffee that Kelsey brewed without making a face and you haven’t said anything about Saturday’s bookmobile run.” He took a slug of soda. “There’s only one thing that could do all that to you.”
“It’s that obvious?” I eyed the coffee in my mug. Kelsey was my most recent hire. Well, sort of. She’d been a library employee in the past but had left to have two children. Now that the children were older, she was pleased enough to drop them at her mother’s for a few hours while she skipped off to the library. She was excited to be a part of the library staff again, so excited that she’d taken over the task of making coffee. I’d told her that not everyone liked coffee strong enough to stand up and salute, but she’d just laughed at what she thought was a joke.
“Sweetie,” Holly said, “we all know what it feels like to have Stephen yell at us.”
“All of us who have worked here longer than three years, anyway.” Josh toasted me. “Now that you’re here, he just yells at you. Thanks, Min.” He grinned.
“Glad I could be of service.” As I took another sip of coffee, I considered telling Holly and Josh about the Mitchell Problem but decided not to. Stephen was right. I was the assistant director, and it wouldn’t be right to put any of the job’s weight on them. Maybe I’d ask for ideas, but the responsibility to find a solution was mine.
“You know what?” Holly asked, laughing. “Stephen reminds me of this algebra teacher I had in high school. He scared the crap out of everyone and whenever Stephen starts in on me, all I can think about is the Pythagorean theorem.”
And, just like that, my sour mood vanished. Because even though I was going to have to come up with a method of managing the previously unmanageable Mitchell, and even though I needed to tread carefully if I was to keep the bookmobile on the road, I had friends, I could always brew my own coffee, and Stephen obviously didn’t know about the bookmobile’s trip to the hospital.
I quirked up a smile. Most important of all, he still didn’t know about Eddie. Life wasn’t so bad. Matter of fact, it was pretty darn good.
“So,” I said. “How were your weekends?”
• • •
The rest of the library day passed uneventfully. Minor issues were resolved with small dosages of tact and large helpings of humor. Both were needed to pacify Mrs. Tolliver, an elderly, straight-spined summer resident from Wisconsin. Mrs. Tolliver insisted that the Nancy Drew mysteries in the library were substandard and far below the writing quality of the originals and she didn’t want her granddaughter to read anything but the best. She’d been mollified when I said I tracked down as many originals as I could through interlibrary loan, and the exchange had silently been declared a draw.
I unlocked the door to my houseboat. “Hey, Eddie, do I have a story for you! Would you believe that Stephen—” I stopped midsentence, because I’d seen the evidence of what the cat Thessie insisted on calling adorable had been doing in my absence.
“Nice, Eddie.” What had been a pristine roll of paper towels on the kitchen counter the day before was now on the floor in the form of a shredded mass of pulp.
Mr. Adorable looked up from his current favorite napping spot—the dining table’s bench seat—and opened and closed his mouth without saying a word.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “The mess is my fault for leaving you alone for so long. My fault for not finding a friend for you to play with. My fault for not buying you the proper cat toys, whatever those might be.”
Since Eddie already knew that, he went back to nap mode. But since he’d likely been sleeping all day, I kept talking to him. If I didn’t keep him awake, he’d sleep all evening and then, at two in the morning, he’d want to play cat games with my hair.
“I suppose,” I said, “I should be grateful it’s only paper towels that you’re shredding and not furniture. Or the houseboat itself. This poor thing has enough problems as it is.”
My summer place of residence was the cutest little houseboat imaginable. Made of wood long ago in a Chilson backyard, it was smaller than my first apartment. It boasted one bedroom with two bunks, a tiny bathroom, and a small kitchen with dining area. The only generous thing about it was the view I got when I sat on the outside deck. It was the sheer pleasure of being able to see Janay Lake on my doorstep morning, noon, or night, in fair weather or foul, that more than made up for the cranky neighbors that lay to the right.
Every so often, I untied from the dock and puttered around the lake, but I had no desire to venture out through the channel and into Lake Michigan. That lake was far too big for my top-heavy little houseboat, and if I sank the poor thing, I’d be homeless next summer.