Eddie was my first pet ever; my dad had suffered horrible allergies and until last year I’d never felt the connection a human and a pet can have. I’d also never realized how opinionated and stubborn a cat could be.
“He’s already pretty big,” I said to Julia, “but the vet says he’s a healthy weight.”
“Mrr,” said the cat in question, starting to ooze off the headrest and toward the driver’s seat.
“Thanks so much,” I muttered. “I love it when you sleep there and shed all over the upholstery so I get your hair on the seat of my pants.”
Eddie thumped himself onto the seat. “Mrr!”
“I think,” Julia said, laughing, “that he took offense to that big comment.”
“Who you calling big?” a woman asked.
Julia and I turned. Up until that point, the bookmobile’s stop had been empty of patrons. I smiled, pleased that we weren’t going to turn up completely dry. Of all the facts and figures that my library board scrutinized, the numbers from the bookmobile got the most attention. So far, the trends were upward ones, but I didn’t for a moment assume that all would be well forever.
“Hey, Leese,” I said to the woman, who was almost a foot taller than my efficient five feet. Her height was the same as that of my best friend, who owned a restaurant in Chilson, but instead of Kristen’s slender blond Scandinavian inheritance, Leese Lacombe’s ancestors had endowed her with a broad build, an olive skin tone, and brown hair almost as curly as my unruly black mop.
Leese, a few years older than me, possessed a razor-sharp brain, a quick wit, and a prestigious law degree. She’d spent more than a decade playing by the rules in the downstate corporate trenches, and moved back north a few months ago to start up her own law office, one that specialized in elder law. To keep costs down, she was using her home as an office and had taken to borrowing books from the bookmobile instead of making the half-hour drive into Chilson. A July article in the local paper about her practice had generated a number of clients, and it looked as if she was on her way to success.
“What’s new with you?” Julia asked, standing to get the stack of books Leese had requested online. I was still tweaking the bookmobile schedule, but at that point we were visiting each stop every three weeks. Though that wasn’t a very long time for most people, it could be an eternity for bibliophiles, and we were getting used to bringing along huge piles of requested books and lugging back the correspondingly huge piles of returns. I doubted any bookmobile librarian ever had needed to buy a gym membership to get an upper-body workout.
“New?” Leese set her returning books on the rear checkout desk. “I’m glad it’s almost October, for one thing. My summer neighbors have slammed their trunks for the last time.”
Julia and I nodded, understanding the feeling. We lived in a part of Michigan that was the summer playground for a large number of folks from the Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Chicago areas. Some people visited for a weekend or a week; others had seasonal residences.
The population of Chilson and the entire Tonedagana County more than tripled in the warmer months and summer came with a complicated set of issues. Most of us were glad to renew the friendships that had been put on hold the previous fall—not to mention the fact that many businesses depended on the summer tourist dollars—but October came with an undeniable sigh of relief. No more parking problems, no more waiting in line for a restaurant table, no more waiting anywhere, really.
“It is nice to have our town back,” Julia said. “We’ll be tired of looking at each other by April, though.”
Leese laughed, and it was a surprisingly gentle sound from such a large person. “Undoubtedly. But without the busy months, would we appreciate this quiet time?”
The question was an interesting one. I gave up trying to shift Eddie from the driver’s seat and walked down the aisle to join the conversation. “So it’s part of that old question, how can we value the highs of life if we don’t know what the lows are like?”
“Exactly!” Leese gave me a high-wattage smile and I knew exactly what was going to happen next. She would sit on the carpeted step, Julia would pull around the desk chair, I would perch on the edge of the desk, and the three of us would dive into a long, leisurely discussion when we all had better things to do. But it was nearly October, the summer folks were mostly gone, and it was warm enough to prop the door open. What could it hurt to let the bookmobile chores wait a few minutes longer?
Julia pulled the chair around and Leese sat on the step. “It’s the swings in life that make things interesting,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, hitching myself up onto the edge of the desk. “Isn’t that some Chinese curse? ‘May you live in interesting times’?”
“Would you rather live when it’s boring?” Leese challenged.
Julia laughed. “Minnie Hamilton couldn’t live a boring life if she wanted to. She’s attracted to trouble.”
“Am not,” I said automatically. “I’m just—”
“Do you know what this tiny woman did earlier this spring?” Julia demanded of Leese. “In the middle of a massive power outage, she managed to hold a bang-up successful book fair.”
Leese looked at me with interest. “I heard about that. Wasn’t Trock Farrand the headliner? I didn’t know you were involved.”
“Minnie’s show, from top to bottom,” Julia said. “When the original big-name author canceled, Trock heard about it and flew out from New York.”
“He’s a friend, that’s all,” I said, knocking my shoes together. “He wanted to plug his new cookbook.” Trock, host of a nationally televised cooking show, owned a summer place just outside of Chilson, and in spite of the differences in our ages, background, and interests, we’d struck up a solid friendship.
Another solid thing was the relationship between Trock’s son, Scruffy, and my friend Kristen. I had the inside scoop that a proposal was in the near future, and I was doing my best to play innocent.
“Whatever.” Julia waved off my comment. “And just a couple of months ago, Minnie figured out that—”
“Hey!”
Julia frowned. “I’m ranting, Minnie. Please don’t interrupt when I’m in full flow.”
But it wasn’t Julia that I was scolding. “Where are you going?” I asked my cat.
When we were en route, my furry friend traveled in a cat carrier strapped to the floor on the passenger’s side, but once I set the parking brake, Julia unlatched the wire door, setting him free to roam about the interior. Though he’d run outside a couple of times the first year of the bookmobile’s service, since then he’d shown little interest in leaving the bus before we did.
Eddie, being a cat, paid no attention to my question, but continued to sniff at the open doorway.
“Is he going to make a run for it?” Leese asked, amused.
“Not a chance,” I said. “He wouldn’t want to get too far from his cat treats.”
Eddie’s ears flattened and Julia laughed. “I think you hurt his feelings. You should apologize before he does something drastic.”
“I shouldn’t have to apologize for telling the truth.” But she did have a point. A miffed Eddie was not a good situation. He had claws and knew how to use them, especially on paper products. Facial tissues, paper towels, toilet paper, newspapers, and even books weren’t safe when Eddie was in the mood for destruction.
“I am sorry,” I told my cat, “that you take offense to a fact-based statement.”
“Huh,” said Leese. “Not much of an apology, if you ask me. Not sure he thinks much of it, either.”
Eddie was standing at the top of the stairs, staring out, twitching his ears and nose.