“Maybe try not to, you know. Get messed up from it.”
“Too late,” she said, and though she smiled as if she were just joking, once the door closed behind him and David’s absence transformed into silence, the book-lined world of her apartment began to constrict, and Lydia utterly disappeared into Joey’s messed-up crate.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tomas was checking out a pile of picture books to a young mother with a tot climbing up her shoulder when the phone rang at the circulation desk and startled him. He stamped an inky due date on his thumbnail.
—Crap. Sorry.
It was a city administrator on the phone, calling about WinterFest, an annual celebration that had started this morning in the ski town of Breckenridge. At this very moment, Tomas was informed, he was scheduled to be there, parked on Main Street in his branch’s rainbow-painted Bookmobile, serving cocoa and handing out library bookmarks on behalf of the Denver Public Library system. The trip had been arranged months ago by the PR people downtown as a sort of goodwill gesture to encourage literacy in the state and to strengthen relationships with small-town libraries, and Tomas had been reminded about it so often that he’d written it in bold red letters on his desk calendar, in his pocket calendar, and even on the construction-paper calendar that Lydia had made him for Christmas and taped to their fridge at home. . . .
Yet he’d still managed to forget. Because that’s how this week was going.
—I somehow forgot, he said on the phone.
—You’re paid to somehow remember.
Thankfully, the administrator explained, thick with sarcasm, WinterFest would be happening all weekend, and seeing as the town was at least a two-hour drive into the mountains, and seeing as snow was presently tumbling over Denver, and seeing as it was getting darker every minute, he didn’t exactly see how Tomas was going to solve this problem except by putting chains on the Bookmobile’s tires and driving it there tonight. Yes, tonight. Yes, in the snow. If he was lucky, the librarian in Breckenridge would take the keys and let him go home, and if he was really lucky, someone from the festival would give him a lift back to the city. If not, he’d have to try to find a hotel or catch one of the moonlight buses that shuttled skiers in and out of downtown. On his dime.
—You really want me to drive it there tonight?
—Only if you want to keep your job, he said. Get going.
Tomas looked out the window at the headlights and taillights seeping over the streets and his heart felt hollow. The snow that had begun to fall was getting thicker by the minute, whitening sidewalks and weighing down trees and giving the gray light of dusk an atomic glow. He dreaded the long drive that waited for him out there, but an even deeper dread surrounded the news he’d soon have to break to Lydia: there would be no sleepover tonight.
For the past week, tonight’s sleepover had been Lydia and Carol’s main topic of conversation, and they’d composed countless colorful lists of everything they wanted to do: make candles out of melted crayons in tuna cans, pop a pot of marshmallow popcorn, tell ghost stories with flashlights after dark—but now they were going to be shattered. Carol couldn’t spend the night at Lydia’s after all. Not if he had to haul the Bookmobile into a snowy pocket of the Rockies.
Just when Tomas thought he couldn’t imagine a worse afternoon, he looked out the frosty library window and saw Bart O’Toole’s yellow pickup truck with its cage of racks bouncing into the parking lot, sliding to a halt at just the right spot to block the book drop. Tomas’s heart began to pound. He looked around the library and saw empty chairs and empty nooks; almost all of the patrons had gone home, attempting to beat the snowstorm. And then he found himself staring at his watch—4:17, it blinked, 4:17—as if to secure the moment in time, like a doctor noting a patient’s expiration.
O’Toole hopped up the library steps, two at a time, looking swift and unshaven and burlier than Tomas remembered. He shoved the door too hard when he came inside, so now it was propped open and cold air swooshed through the library, flapping newspaper pages and kicking the heater into overdrive. Tomas flinched.
—Hey there, pal, O’Toole said.
Tomas jogged around the circulation desk and offered a blundering hello, but before he could think of anything more to say, the girls arrived from the library basement, giggling and excited, wearing blue jeans and striped sweaters and necklaces they’d made from pop-tops. They blasted right past him and latched on to O’Toole’s pant legs as he entered the book-lined foyer.
—You’ll never guess what, Carol blurted to her dad, as if she’d been waiting hours to share. A boy was bawling at school today. Just blubbering!
O’Toole played along, slapping his hands on his knees, stooping down, pretending to be dramatically interested in Carol’s classroom gossip.
—it’s because he was dying to come to my sleepover, Lydia said.
—Who could blame him? Carol said, rolling her eyes like a diva. I’d cry too.
The girls giggled and Tomas, aware that they were probably talking about Raj, scratched his neck uncomfortably. He’d rarely seen this side of Lydia before—taking such cruel pleasure from excluding her friend—but rather than intervene he stayed focused on O’Toole, attempting to determine the nature of his visit. O’Toole just wiped his boots on the mat, brushed snow off his shoulders, lifted and resettled his blue-jean cap.
—You’re really in here all day long? he said to Tomas. I’d be crawling out of my skin.
—I keep busy, Tomas said. Good to meet you by the way.
Their hands pumped and Tomas thought that O’Toole’s grip was both strong and mild, exactly like the man. With his other hand, O’Toole held up a pink duffel bag.
—I brought Carol’s stuff for the sleepover.
Carol snatched the bag and, with Lydia crouched alongside, unzipped it and began rifling through. Pajamas fell out, and a cassette tape covered with heart stickers, and a bag of rubber bands.
—Buddy, you okay? O’Toole said, leaning forward with a smile and intercepting Tomas’s sight. You look like someone shat on your toast.
—Sorry, Tomas said, it’s just I had something come up for tonight. Work stuff.
—Work stuff tonight? What’re you, a plumber too?
Tomas wiped his palms on his slacks and explained his Bookmobile predicament. He needed to leave soon for Breckenridge and didn’t expect to be back before midnight, maybe even later with the snowstorm.
—Bottom line, Tomas said, no sleepover. We’ll have to do it another time. I’m really sorry, girls. I know you’ve been—
The girls sprang from the floor and began to beseech.
—This is not happening!
—you promised!
—Hey, O’Toole said, I’ll take them over at our place.
—That’s okay, Tomas said.