Besides, Gregory had already been to the printer and arranged for a whole bunch of flyers to be made up. He was planning to slap them up around town—on the bulletin boards in both markets, in the office windows of the gas stations, in the windows of the bookstore and the hardware store and as many of the other shops as he could. He would put one up on the Community Calendar board in the post office and tack up the rest on various telephone poles around town. That should get the word out. If it didn’t, he was prepared to buy a full-page ad in the newsless mixture of Chamber of Commerce PR, high school sports photos, and garage sale announcements known as the McGuane Monitor.
He had faith that people would come, though. They were going to start with a Talent Night, an open-mike evening in which anybody who wanted to could come up onstage and do anything he or she wanted. Singers. Guitarists. Storytellers. Bands. Comedians. From there, they’d offer slots to the better performers.
It was a seeding of the grass roots, an outlet for local talent previously denied an opportunity to perform in public, and it was precisely that alternative ethos that appealed to him. They were giving people a chance. Providing a potentially receptive audience for garage bands who until now had only annoyed neighbors with their noise and offering exposure to sensitive singer-songwriters who’d been practicing in front of mirrors in their bedrooms.
The café might be dead now, but he would turn that around. He’d build a clientele for this place, build an audience for these performers. This was an exciting opportunity, and he was determined to make the most of it. He had never really pondered what it would be like to have a “career” before. He’d always just had a “job.” But he could see himself as a latter-day Bill Graham—booking name acts, performers on the way up or on the way down, discovering talent, managing careers. Eventually, the café might even have to expand into the hair salon next door. They would need some type of dressing room or backstage area if they were to lure professionals to their venue.
They finished righting the tables and sweeping the floor and taking the debris to the stockroom in the back.
Odd picked up a hanging socket. “I still say that someone did this. Vandals. There’s no way these lights could’ve fallen on their own. Not after the way we set them up.”
“I don’t understand it either,” Gregory admitted.
From behind them came the sound of footsteps, a clearing throat. They turned. Paul stood in the doorway, looking around at the tangled jumble of lights and cords and cables. He took a deep breath. “You think you can rig new lights that won’t collapse and kill people?”
Odd answered, “Of course.”
“By Saturday?”
“No problem.”
Paul nodded. “All right,” he said, turning away. “All right.”
Odd looked over at Gregory. He grinned. “I guess we’re back in business.”
2
Julia stood in front of the library, not sure if she wanted to go in. She’d finally decided to volunteer, to assist in shelving or checking in books or whatever the library needed done, but she was having second thoughts. There was no rational reason, just a vague feeling of apprehension within her, but if a vague feeling was enough to scare her in her own home, there was no reason one couldn’t just as legitimately steer her away from this.
No. She was neurotic enough as it was. She needed to set her mind to something and do it, follow through with the promises she made to herself and not just flit from one failed intention to another.
She grasped the handle, pulled open the glass door, and stepped inside.
The McGuane Public Library was big enough to be serviceable but small enough to be picturesque. In place of the impersonal bank of computer screens that had supplanted the card catalog in most Southern California libraries, there was an oak filing cabinet set against the far wall, between two open windows. Four reading tables adjoined the two racks of magazines and a glass display case filled with old photographs and mining tools. Fully stocked bookshelves took up the middle two-thirds of the well-lighted room, and a wooden bookcase marked BESTSELLERS AND NEW RELEASES was located just to the right of the checkout counter, where a friendly looking overweight woman was sorting through what looked like a stack of overdue notices.
There were two other women in the library. Patrons. A blond woman approximately her own age standing next to the best-seller rack and reading the dust flap of a new Stephen King book, and a gray-haired old lady sitting at a table with a stack of sewing magazines in front of her.
The library smelled deliciously of old books, the deep, resonant fragrance that had all but disappeared from the climate-controlled environments of most modern libraries. Breathing the familiar, half-forgotten scent took her back to her childhood.
This would be a good place to work.
She was glad she’d come, and she vowed to see it through. She needed to see it through. As much as she hated to admit it, she had not been prepared to win the lottery, and she understood now that she was one of those people who required imposed structure in her life, for whom adversity and necessity were motivators. Coming into money was the worst thing that could have happened to her.
She walked up to the front desk, and the overweight woman smiled up at her. “May I help you?”
Julia nodded. “I’d like to volunteer. I don’t know if you need anyone to work here—”
“Honey,” the woman said, “we always need volunteers.” She stood up with some difficulty. “What’s your name?”
“Julia. Julia Tomasov.”
“Molokan, huh?”
Julia nodded, not sure if there was disapproval in the woman’s voice or just simple recognition.
“I don’t remember seeing you before.”
“We just moved back to town. Or rather my husband moved back. He’s from here. I was born in L.A.”
The woman nodded. “I’m Marge Lindsey. The librarian. I have no paid assistants or aides, so everyone else here is strictly volunteer. You ever work at a library before?”
Julia almost gave the librarian her true résumé, but at the last minute she simply nodded and said, “Yes.” She didn’t want to appear to be competing or engaging in any sort of one-upmanship, and she had the feeling that in a place like McGuane, any prior experience would be seen as a threat. This was the woman for whom she would be working, and she was determined to remain on the librarian’s good side.
“Good. We can use all the help we can get. As I said, I’m the only paid staff member here. The library’s county-funded, and in addition to the money for my salary, we receive only a small stipend for purchases each year, so anything beyond that is strictly volunteer. Most of our acquisitions are from donations, and our volunteers are the ones who sort and catalog and index and repair the books. They also shelve, and sometimes check in and check out.” Her eyes swept Julia’s face to gauge her reaction, and Julia smiled pleasantly.
Apparently satisfied, the librarian called out to the two patrons, “Deanna? Helen? You’re not in any rush, are you? I’m going to take our new volunteer back and introduce her.”
Both the old woman at the table and the younger woman with the King book nodded their acknowledgment, and Julia followed Marge through the open doorway behind the front desk into a surprisingly large work area. There were two middle-aged women sitting at a long table in the center of the room, stacks of books piled in front of them, boxes of additional books on the floor under the table. A few volumes were arranged at one end of the otherwise empty metal stand-alone shelves behind them, and two handcarts were situated against the far wall, next to a small refrigerator and a sagging couch.