The Librarian's Pass

The library closed at six on Fridays, which in my opinion was a crime against working people, but I don't make the hours. I make most of the other rules at that library, just not those. So six o'clock it was.

Kristie, 34, head librarian, Millbrook Public Library. That's me. I put up the chairs, shooed out the last guy on the computers (Mr. Delaney, who checks his stock portfolio every single day like it's going to apologize to him), and locked the front doors at 6:04. Four minutes late. The radiator hummed its old hum. I love that sound. People think that's weird.

And then, standing there with my keys in my hand, I thought about him again.

Sergeant Joseph. Joseph, no last name that I ever got, just Joseph, like a guy from an old hymn. Forty-something, broad, quiet, wore a jacket even in mild weather. He'd been coming into the library for maybe two months by then. Always polite. Always said thank you. Always put the newspapers back exactly the way they were, which, trust me, almost nobody does.

Three weeks ago he'd stepped between me and a man who was shouting at me.

It was a Tuesday. I remember that because Tuesdays are quiet and I hate loud Tuesdays. This guy came in off the street, big, red-faced, angry about a parking ticket, or a fine, or the government in general, I honestly never found out which. He got in my face at the desk and he was yelling, spitting a little, and I was doing what I always do, which is stay calm and say sir a lot. My hands were shaking though. I'll admit that here because nobody at the desk could see it.

And then Joseph was just there. Between us. Not touching the guy. Not yelling back. Just standing there, arms loose at his sides, and he said, "Sir. Why don't you step outside and get some air. I'll walk with you."

And the guy went. That was the part that got me. He just went! A man who wouldn't listen to a single word I said looked at Joseph for maybe four seconds and then walked out the door like a kid being walked to the car. Joseph followed him to the corner and came back in and asked me where the Westerns were.

Where the Westerns were! Like nothing had happened!

"Louis L'Amour is on the second floor," I told him, and my voice cracked on Louis, and he pretended not to notice, which was its own kind of kindness.

So yeah. I owed him. And I don't love owing people. I'm the kind of person who pays back a borrowed pencil. But how do you pay back that?

I'd been turning it over for three weeks, which is embarrassing to type but here we are. A thank you card felt small. Baking something felt insane, I don't bake. And every time I got close to just saying hey, want a coffee, my courage would do its usual trick of evaporating by morning.

I dumped my bag in my car and looked across the street at the diner. The Millbrook Diner, two blocks of downtown total, and the diner is the best thing on them. Their coffee is terrible and their pie is incredible. It was 6:15 and I was hungry and tired and I figured, fine, pie for dinner, I'm an adult.

That's when I saw him through the window.

He was in a corner booth with a book, of all things, a paperback held close to his face. A soldier reading in a diner booth at 6:15 on a Friday. Tell me that's not a painting. I stood on the sidewalk like an idiot for a good minute, debating with myself.

Go say hi. Say thank you. Say something!

I went in. The bell over the door did its cheerful little ring and he looked up, and I swear his whole face changed. Not in a dramatic way. Just, the tired went out of it for a second.

"Kristie, right?" he said. "From the library."

"You remember my name?"

"I remember most things," he said, and closed his book on his finger to keep his place. "Sit down, if you're not in a hurry. Unless the pie's for takeout."

"How did you know I wanted pie?"

"Everyone who comes in here after six wants pie," he said. "It's a known fact."

I sat. His booth had two mugs on it, one empty, and I wondered for a second who'd been sitting there, and then I wondered why I wondered, and then I told my brain to be quiet. We are not doing this, Kristie. This is a thank you mission. Deployed for a thank you.

"I never got to say anything proper," I said. "About that day. With the guy at the desk. You know, the one who wanted to fight the entire county government in my reading room."

"Carl," he said.

"You know his name?"

"He's been in a few times. Loud in here too." He shrugged, like he was telling me the weather. "He's not dangerous. Just loud and having a bad year. Most people yelling aren't dangerous. You learn to hear the difference."

"And you just, walked up to him. In the middle of all that."

"Somebody had to," he said. "You were doing fine, for the record. Calm voice, everything. But your hands were shaking."

"You saw that?"

"I see most things," he said again, and this time it did something to my stomach that I did not authorize.

Okay. Full disclosure, since this is my story and I'm typing it out where nobody I know will find it: I have not been on a date in two years. I ended a long thing when I was 32, a six-year thing, and since then it's been me, the radiator, and a truly shameful number of library audiobooks. So my read on men is rusty. But I know what a look means. I've read enough to know.

He was looking at me like I was the interesting thing in the room. Me! I hadn't even ordered yet!

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Sure."

"Are you on leave? Passing through? What's your deal, Joseph-with-no-last-name?"

That got a laugh out of him, a real one, and I liked it so much I decided right then I'd try to earn more of them.

"Joseph Andrews," he said. "Sergeant, twenty-two years in. I'm on leave, ten weeks of it, staying at my sister's place outside of town while I figure some things out. It ends Monday. The base is ninety minutes away." He turned his mug a slow half-circle on the table. "You'll laugh."

"Try me."

"The library's the best place in this town. Quiet, warm, and nobody wants anything from you. I go there to not be a sergeant for an hour."

"You go to my library to hide?"

"To breathe," he said. "Same thing."

Well. What do you say to that? I said nothing useful, obviously. The waitress came and I ordered the cherry pie and he ordered a second coffee, and I sat there doing math on a leave that ended Monday. Three days. Which meant he'd be gone soon. Which meant if I was going to do this, I should do it now, before my courage pulled its usual vanishing act.

"Here's the thing," I said, and then immediately regretted saying it that way, whatever. "I want to thank you. Properly. Not a card. I make really good jambalaya, it's the one dish I have, and my apartment is two blocks from the library. Would you come to dinner Saturday?"

I said it all in one breath and then had to breathe.

He looked at me. Not long, not weird, just a beat, and something in that look went straight through me. He wasn't surprised. That was the wild part. He'd maybe been waiting for me to ask.

"I'd like that a lot," he said. "Can I bring anything?"

"You can bring nothing. You can bring yourself and your ability to defuse belligerent men, in case my smoke alarm goes off."

"Saturday, then," he said. "What time?"

"Seven. Don't be early, I'll still be cleaning. Don't be late, I'll assume you died."

"Yes ma'am," he said, and grinned, and I swear that grin was a problem I would be thinking about all weekend.

I got my pie to go after that, because staying felt like too much, my heart was doing things I couldn't supervise. We said goodbye at the door and he watched me cross the street to my car, and I felt that look on my back the whole way like a hand between my shoulder blades.

Saturday. Seven o'clock. I had two days to buy groceries and lose my mind, hopefully in that order.

Saturday I cleaned my apartment three times, which is two more times than any apartment needs. My kitchen looked like a jambalaya bomb went off, but the good kind, the kind that smells amazing. The whole place smelled like garlic and paprika and I'd lit the one candle I own because why not, go big or go home, and I was already home so.

He knocked at 6:58. Two minutes early. I'd told him not to be early, and there he was, and I opened the door and forgot how words work for a second.

"You're early," I said.

"I'm not. It's 6:58."

"Semantics, Sergeant."

He held up a bottle of wine. Red, with a label that looked hand-torn, like he'd bought it somewhere that didn't believe in labels. "You said bring nothing. This is nothing."

"That's a bottle of wine."

"It's a very quiet bottle of wine. It barely makes any noise at all."

Okay, he was funny. Nobody warned me he was funny. I took the bottle and stepped aside and he came in and stood there in my doorway-sized living room looking politely enormous, the way big men do in small apartments. He'd changed into a plain gray shirt and jeans and I thought, oh no, he dressed for this, he thought about what to wear, and something about that just about finished me.

"Dinner first or wine first?" I asked.

"What's the correct order?"

"Wine. Definitely wine. Dinner's got another twenty minutes."

So we sat on the couch, which is a loveseat, which I now realize is a horrible piece of furniture to offer a man you're trying not to jump, and poured the wine, and it was actually good, which felt unfair. We talked about nothing for a while. His sister's dog, who hates him. Mr. Delaney, who apparently checks his stock portfolio at the library every single day and had once asked Joseph if he knew anything about a shipping company. The radiator in my building, which we could both hear ticking through the wall like a small determined robot.

And then I put my glass down and said it.

"I don't actually want to cook for you."

He looked over. "You already did. It's cooking right now. I can smell it."

"No, I mean. That's not why I asked you here. The jambalaya was an excuse. I know it was an excuse when I said it. You probably knew too."

"Maybe," he said.

"Maybe?" I laughed, more at myself than him. "What kind of maybe is that?"

"The kind where I didn't want to assume," he said, and set his glass down next to mine, slow, like he was giving me time to stop this if I wanted to. "But I hoped."

"Hoped."

"Kristie." He said my name and my whole spine paid attention. "Tell me what you want. Plain. I've spent twenty-two years taking orders. I'd like to be asked for once."

So I asked. Sort of. What I actually did was lean over and kiss him, hard, both hands on that gray shirt, and for one second he went still and I thought oh no, I broke it, and then his hand came up to the back of my head and he kissed me back and the bottom dropped out of the evening. The pretense of dinner just dissolved, gone, evaporated like it never existed, and honestly the jambalaya could have burned the building down right then and I'd have let it.

He pulled me into his lap like I weighed nothing, big hands at my waist, and I broke the kiss long enough to breathe.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Okay? I just climbed into your lap, Joseph, what do you think?"

"Just checking," he said, and grinned, and I kissed the grin right off him.

His hands were careful and slow and his mouth was not, and