She went about the business of returning and checking out, and as she did my mind drifted. She talks while she works, but she’s really talking to herself—saying my name as she types it in, and so forth—and so I don’t really listen. She used to tell me all the local gossip, but I never responded with more than a flat, “I see,” and eventually she stopped. She knows everything about everyone, Sue, and has little ability to discern what’s interesting. I wondered if she’d heard about my new neighbor. My eye fell on the computers they keep for public use—near the front, to my dismay, as when I go to a library what I want to see are books—and it struck me that I could look up Jennifer Young on the Internet. It’s a common name, though, I imagine. How would I know which Jennifer Young she was? What could I find that would really interest me? My detective novels would be terribly boring if all questions could be answered by an Internet search. It must be hard, these days, to imagine a mystery.
I don’t have the Internet here in my home. If I did I’d probably look her up. Jennifer Young. We are curious creatures and can’t be expected not to satisfy that curiosity when the answers are so readily available. A child doesn’t really want to spoil the surprise of her Christmas presents, but if she knows where they’re hidden in the closet she’ll have no choice but to look. The world has forgotten that there is more pleasure in wondering than knowing. A quick answer—the year someone was born, the reason for hail—is such a dull satisfaction. Why do you even want to know? That’s the true mystery.
At any rate I was thinking about Jennifer Young, and so when Sue spoke it seemed like telepathy. “Have you found anyone?” she asked.
I was startled. “What?”
“Weren’t you looking for someone?” She pushed the new stack in my direction. “To check on you now and then? To keep you company?”
“No,” I said, with no small amount of indignation.
“Are you sure? I could swear you said you were. Last week. You told me that.”
“Sue, are you getting old?”
She laughed. “Miss Margaret,” she said. “Every day.”
“Perhaps you’ve been talking to my doctor.”
“Oh, Dr. Bell doesn’t gossip. You know that.”
“Do I?”
“Miss Margaret, you are wicked. She didn’t say a thing. Well, if you didn’t tell me that then I must’ve dreamed it.”
“I don’t know why you’d dream about me,” I said.
“Well, I think about you, all by yourself out there.”
“I live five minutes from here.”
“I know, but you’re all alone, out in the woods. My mother fell, and—”
“I’m not going to fall,” I said.
“I know, but—”
“I’m not going to fall.”
She sighed. “All right, Miss Margaret. And I’m sorry if you get an unwanted call, because I did tell someone I thought you were looking for help.”
“Who?”
She lifted her chin to indicate the bulletin board by the front door. I never look at it, being both uninterested in and immune to the usual exhortations to go to church, buy a house, do something charitable, or join a club. I followed her gaze, confused. “She put a sign up there,” she said. “I can’t think of her name—I guess I am getting old—but she said she’d rented Barbara’s old house, which puts her near you, so maybe that’s why you came to mind.”
“Jennifer Young?”
“Yes!” she said. “You know her?”
“No,” I said.
She looked at me a moment, awaiting an explanation I had no plans to offer. “Well,” she said, “she does massage, and she’s new here and just getting started. I thought she might be willing to come and see you, from time to time, if you needed that.”
“I don’t,” I said.
I do not like to be treated with the restrained patience one must show a petulant child, and so I was quite annoyed by the way she was looking at me, by the careful way she said, “I know you don’t.” She flashed a quick smile to signal her withdrawal from the field. “She seems like a nice lady. A tiny bit shy, I think. She has a cute little boy. I hope she likes it here.”
“Where did she come from?”
“I don’t know.” Sue cocked her head, considering. “I don’t think I asked. That’s not like me! She’s a little . . . I said shy. So you know me. I just chattered.”
“About me.”
“Well, not just about you! Miss Margaret, my goodness. Don’t be mad at me. You know I mean well.”
I relented. “I know,” I said. “It’s all right.” I slid the books to my chest and said, in my sweet-old-lady voice, “Thank you for these.”
We said our goodbyes, but I lingered near the front door, pretending to look at the carrel of new releases. I was waiting for Sue to be busy, and once someone finally appeared at the desk to occupy her attention, I stepped to the bulletin board. LICENSED MASSAGE THERAPIST, the sign said. IN-HOME MASSAGES. Then those tear-off strips, printed with a phone number and the name Jennifer Young.
Now I sit here at my desk knowing I could call this person, my new neighbor, if I wanted to. I have her number right here, on the little slip of paper, and, just in case I lose that, copied into the Rolodex I keep beside my phone. If I want to, all I have to do is pick up the phone and call.
In the Beginning