In the alley behind the building Charlie found one of his coworkers, a young man named Ed Hines, leaning against the wall with an unlit cigarette in his hand.
“Hey, Charlie, got a match?”
“Sure.” Charlie tossed him a packet of book matches. “I’d appreciate having them back, if you don’t mind. There’s an address written on the cover.”
Ed grinned. “And a phone number?”
“No. Not yet.”
“You gay old dog, you!”
“No. No, it’s not like that actually—” Charlie stopped, realizing suddenly that Ed wouldn’t understand the truth, that there was a family at 319 Jacaranda Road who were neglecting their pretty little girl, Jessie.
Ed returned the matches. “Thanks, Charlie. And say, the old man’s in a stew about something. You better check in at the front office.”
Warner was behind his desk, a small man almost lost in the welter of papers that surrounded him: order forms, invoices, sales slips, bills, correspondence. Some of this stuff would be filed, some would simply disappear. Warner had started the business forty years ago. It had grown and prospered since then, but Warner still tried to manage the place as if he personally knew, as he once had, every customer by name, every order from memory. Many mistakes were made, and with each one, Warner got a little older and a little more stubborn. The business continued to make money, however, because it was the only one of its kind in San Félice.
Charlie stood in the doorway, trying to hold his head high, the way Ben kept telling him to. But it was difficult, and Mr. Warner wasn’t watching anyway. He had the telephone perched on his left shoulder like a crow. The crow was talking, loud and fast, in a woman’s voice.
Mr. Warner put his hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Charlie. “You know anything about some skeletons?”
“Skeletons?” The word emerged from Charlie’s throat as if it had been squeezed out of shape by some internal pressure. Then he went dumb entirely. He couldn’t even tell Mr. Warner that he was innocent, he had done nothing, he knew nothing about any skeletons. He could only shake his head back and forth again and again.
“What’s the matter with you?” Warner said irritably. “I mean those life-size cardboard skeletons we have in stock around Halloween. Some woman claims she ordered a dozen for a pathologists’ convention dance that’s being held tomorrow night.” Then into the telephone, “I can’t find any record of your order, Miss Johnston, but I’ll check again. I promise you you’ll get your skeletons even if I, ha ha, have to shoot a couple of my employees. Yes, I’ll call you back.” He hung up, turning his attention to Charlie. “And believe me, I meant everything but the ha ha. Now let’s start searching.”
Charlie was so dizzy with relief that he had to hold on to the doorjamb to steady himself. “Yes, sir. Right away. If I knew exactly what to search for—”
“A package from Whipple Novelty in Chicago.”
“That came in this morning, Mr. Warner.”
“It did? Well, I’ll be damned.” Warner looked pleasantly surprised, like a man who doesn’t expect or deserve good news. “Well, I hand it to you, Charlie. You’re getting to know the business. I ask for skeletons, you produce skeletons.”
“No. No, I—”
“I saw you at the drive-in the other night, by the way. You were with a nice-looking young woman. Funny thing, I could have sworn I’ve seen her before. Maybe she’s one of our customers, eh?”
“No, sir. She works at the library, in the reference department.”
“That explains it, then,” Warner said. “So she’s a librarian, eh? She must be pretty smart.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It pays to have a smart wife.”
“No, no. She’s not — I mean, we’re not—”
“Don’t fight it, Charlie. We all get hooked sooner or later.”
Charlie would have liked to stay and explain to Mr. Warner about his relationship with Louise, but Mr. Warner had picked up the phone and was dialing, and Charlie wasn’t sure he could explain it anyway.
He felt sometimes that he had known Louise all his life and at other times that he didn’t know her at all. In fact, he had met her about a year ago at the library. Charlie was there at Ben’s insistence: “You don’t want to be a stock boy forever, Charlie. I bet there are careers you never even heard about. One of them might be just down your alley but you’ve got to investigate, look around, find out what’s available.”
And so, night after night, Charlie went to the library and read books and magazines and trade journals about electronics, photography, turkey farming, real estate, personnel management, mining engineering, cartooning, forestry, interior design, cabinet-making, raising chinchillas, mathematics. He barely noticed the woman who helped him locate some of this material until one night she said, “My goodness, you certainly have a wide range of interests, Mr. Gowen.”
Charlie merely stared at her, shocked by the sudden attention and the fact that she even knew his name. He thought of a library as a warm, safe, quiet place where people hadn’t any names or faces or problems. The woman had no right to spoil it, no right—
But the next time he went, he wore a new shirt and tie, and a very serious expression which befitted a man with a wide range of interests. He took out an imposing book on architecture and sat with it open on the table in front of him and watched Louise out of the corner of his eye as if he had never seen a woman before and wasn’t sure what to expect from the strange creature.
He guessed, from the way her colleagues deferred to her, that she was head of the department and so must be at least in her late twenties. But she had a tiny figure like a girl’s with the merest suggestion of hips and breasts, and her movements were quick and light as if she weighed scarcely anything at all. Every time Charlie caught her glancing at him, something expanded inside of him. He felt larger and stronger.
He was only vaguely aware that it was getting late and people were leaving the library.
Louise came from behind the desk and approached the table where he was sitting. “I hate to disturb you, Mr. Gowen, but we’re getting ready to lock up.”
Charlie rose awkwardly to his feet. “I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t notice. I... I was absorbed.”
“You must have great powers of concentration to study in a noisy place like this.”
“No. No, I really haven’t.”
“I wish I could let you take this book home but it’s from the reference shelves and isn’t allowed out. Unless, of course, there are special circumstances—”
“No. No, there aren’t.” Charlie hung his head and stared down at the floor. He could almost feel Ben behind him, telling him to square his shoulders and keep his head up and look proud. “I mean, I’m not an architect or anything. I don’t know anything about architecture.”
He hadn’t planned on telling her this, or, in fact, talking to her at all. He’d intended to let her think he was a man of some background and education, a man to be respected. Now he could hear his own voice ruining everything, and he was powerless to stop it.
“Not a thing,” he added.
“Neither do I,” Louise said cheerfully. “Except about this building, and here I qualify as an expert. I can predict just where the roof will be leaking, come next January.”