Serenity

by Jesse J. Thoma

  “Haven’t you ever heard of sunscreen? Go put the music on.” Josh pointed to the radio. “We have to get this room mudded so we can sand and do a second pass tomorrow. If we finish in time, you wanna grab dinner and a movie later?”

  Kit shook her head. Dinner and a movie sounded like heaven actually, but she had somewhere she had to be. Josh seemed to know not to push. He headed to the joint compound and drywall tape to set up.

  Mudding drywall was one of Kit’s favorite tasks since she’d joined Josh’s construction company. It took concentration and skill, but was also repetitive. It had a meditative effect. The scraping of the drywall taping knife, the joint compound sealing the tape and filling the joints. The rest of the workday flew by. Tomorrow they would sand this coat and apply the next. She was tired but satisfied.

  After work, Kit walked along the quiet sidewalks and enjoyed the warm, still evening. It still felt foreign to not have thoughts of her next hit consuming her. Her mind wandered to the strangest places now. She’d spent longer than she cared to admit two days ago contemplating the best way to pack grocery bags to maximize space and minimize smashed strawberries. It was a welcome change.

  When Kit reached her destination, she stopped short. She hadn’t paid much attention to the change in venue notification for today’s Narcotics Anonymous meeting, but she should have. The NA meeting was at the library where she’d chosen not to tempt fate and where she’d finally made the decision to change her life for real.

  She stared up at the stone facade that most people would probably find welcoming. If it weren’t for the trash cans always near capacity, the benches three years past their “best if used by” date, and the heavy feel of toxic stress and inertia, the library and park could be dropped on any Northeast college campus. It was an undeniably beautiful old building and the park had a stateliness to it, with its mature trees and rambling paths. The embodiment of human complexity that littered the park didn’t take away its natural grace.

  Kit’s memories of this place weren’t especially positive. Except for Captain Naloxone the Super Librarian. Even in the midst of miserable withdrawal, she’d made a lasting memory. Kit couldn’t have banished the woman’s beautiful face or kind eyes even if she’d wanted to. And she didn’t. Did she still work there or had she moved on to save lost souls elsewhere? Kit’s legs tingled and felt weak at the memory of their meeting. She could feel the rock poking her in the ass when she’d rolled over on that step. Why was Super Librarian carrying naloxone? Her heart rate jumped. She needed a few minutes before she walked up those steps.

  Kit had time before the meeting, so she turned away from the library and wandered into the park. There were the normal assortment of park goers, kids, folks in pairs out for a stroll, the physically active, but Kit also saw those that others ignored or overlooked. She noticed two homeless men camped under a graffiti covered footbridge, a drug deal being finalized behind a tree, and two people she didn’t ever expect to lay eyes on again. Before she could decide what to do, they saw her too and headed her way. Shit.

  “Kilo!” the man said. “Haven’t seen you in a couple months of weekends. What can I get you? Friends and family discount on account of you being gone for so long and one of my favorites.”

  “Hey, Parrot Master.” She had no idea what the man’s real name was. Everyone called him Parrot Master. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  “Do you hear this?” Parrot Master turned to the woman with him. “Kilo turning me down? My feathers must be shooting rainbows because today is truly a unicorn.”

  “Can it, you crazy old bird,” the woman said.

  Her name was the Zookeeper. There was affection in her voice as she shooed Parrot Master away. Kit had never understood the pair, but they were devoted to each other and she respected that.

  “Let me talk to Kilo alone,” the Zookeeper said.

  Parrot Master flew off, his arms out as if flying, and he perched on a bench not far away. Kit wasn’t sure, but it looked like he struck up a conversation with a pigeon.

  “You straight?” The Zookeeper looked her over.

  “About a year now.” Kit was proud of it, but it felt weird talking about her sobriety with one of her former drug dealers.

  “Well, shit. Good for you. I guess Kilo doesn’t suit you if you’re not shooting a kilo in your arm anymore.”

  “Is that why you called me that? I always thought it had something to do with my name.”

  “Honestly, kid, I have no fucking clue what your name is. When you disappeared, I hoped I wasn’t going to find you dead somewhere with a needle in your arm.”

  Kit thought about how close that had been to happening. But it wouldn’t have been the Zookeeper who found her. Would it have been the pretty librarian? Or some kid who had to pee? She pushed the thought away. No use dwelling on a mistake she didn’t make.

  “Kit, my name’s Kit. What did it matter to you where I ended up?” Kit was curious, not accusatory.

  “Everything that happens in my neighborhood matters to me. And now you’re back and you’re straight. Is that going to matter to me?”

  “What, like are we going to start sending each other Christmas cards?”

  “You always had a smart mouth on you, Kit. Are you going to cause us trouble now that you’ve found your way to the other side? I’m a survivor, but I need to be around to look after Parrot. He was always good to you.”

  “Isn’t he the head of the local gang around here?” Kit looked around the park and saw plenty of Parrot Master’s followers on benches, huddled in small groups, or playing cards at the tables.

  “A head doesn’t get where it needs to go, or see what it wants to see, without a body and a neck. I told you, he needs me.”

  Kit had never fully appreciated this dynamic when she was using or even understood what the Zookeeper was talking about most of the time. Mostly, Parrot Master was a source of drugs. Now she wondered what else she’d missed about them.

  “All I want to do is go to work and start my life over. If I could erase all this from my memory, I would. I’ll leave you well enough alone.”

  The Zookeeper nodded and shook Kit’s hand. “You can’t run away from who you are, Kit. Sometimes you just have to accept it.”

  “Accept that I’m a drug addict and go back to using? I don’t believe that.”

  “That’s not what I said.” The Zookeeper jabbed her finger in Kit’s chest, then turned and walked away.

  Kit watched as the Zookeeper approached Parrot Master. He looked like he was asleep on the bench. She turned before she got to him.

  “If you need us, Kit, or Kilo, you know where to find us.”

  Kit checked the time. She was going to be late. She jogged across the park to the library and back into the place where she’d left the last remnants of her old self. However unlikely, she was a little worried she might still find a piece of that Kit hiding along with forgotten dusty tomes. She shook off the thought.

  Maybe that beautiful librarian would be there. Maybe Kit could apologize. She sighed. The world was full of maybes.

  Chapter Two

  The library was quiet in the early evening. Libraries had a reputation of always being silent, stale places, but Thea Harris had never found that to be true. It certainly wasn’t true in her library. If you were to visit the second floor children’s library mid morning, it more closely resembled a house party than the silent recesses of space. With more and more community groups, events, and programming for all ages happening, Thea felt the buzz of community all day. But now, she welcomed the tranquility. She was, after all, in a library.

  She made her way to the front desk to check on Walter, her right-hand man. He had thirty years on her twenty-seven, but they had clicked the moment she took over this branch. When Thea arrived at the front desk, she knew she was in for some kind of trouble. The look on Walter’s face was solely reserved for mischief making.

  Carrie, the children’s librarian, and a few other staff members and l
ibrarians were milling about, trying out what Thea was sure was their best attempt at looking casually busy. Except Carrie should have been upstairs and she, along with many of the others, had no real business loitering at the front desk. Carrie was also one of Thea’s best friends and she’d always had a terrible poker face.

  “Out with it, Walter.” Thea put her hands on the desk and tried to look menacing. “We’ve got to turn the community room over for the next group meeting at six.”

  “Relax, just this once.” Walter never stressed about much of anything. “Do you know what day it is?”

  “Of course I do. It’s Tuesday. The date is—”

  “No, not that. You probably know exactly what time it is without consulting your watch, too. I am referring to why this date is noteworthy.”

  “Oh, yes.” Thea had no idea why Walter felt the need to bring up her divorce.

  “Don’t look so forlorn, my dear,” Walter said. “It’s your divorceiversary. We’re celebrating.”

  Walter pointed to Carrie who had appeared by his side, a wide grin on her face. On Walter’s cue, she pulled a string behind the desk and a sign unfurled. It read “Happy Divorceiversary!” Suddenly, a cake was on the desk and someone was trying to put a party hat on Thea’s head.

  “Take that down.” Thea waved at the sign as if she could strike it from existence. “We can’t have that in here while the library is open.”

  “It’s not open,” Walter said. “There’s no one here but us. This is the perfect occasion for a bit of revelry.”

  “I don’t think a divorce is the kind of thing you’re supposed to celebrate.” Her protest was a little weaker this time. The cake looked awfully good.

  “It is when the cause of the divorce is a lying, cheating, no good, rotten scoundrel.” Walter slid the cake closer. Carrie and a few others nodded enthusiastically.

  “It wasn’t really cheating. We just had a difference of opinion on whether we were in an open marriage.” Thea eyed the cake. Her protest sounded ridiculous leaving her mouth. Walter wasn’t usually so heated, and Thea appreciated his protectiveness. “Okay, fine, she was a lying, cheating, dirty, rotten scoundrel. Does that deserve cake?”

  “I don’t know, honey, you were married to her. Is cake enough?” Carrie put her arm over Thea’s shoulder and kissed her cheek.

  “Not hardly, but it’s a start.” Thea examined the floor next to her shoe feeling defeated, wishing she were standing tall, eyes forward, chest puffed out, defiant.

  In truth, Thea had been thinking about Sylvia all day. Getting divorced would have been bad enough, but being cheated on had rocked her foundation. Thea craved, no, needed, stability and predictability in her life. But the person who supposedly knew her best, who was supposed to love her forever and have her best interests in mind, had trampled all over her needs and desires, not to mention their marriage. Her parents hadn’t been the safe harbor she’d needed either. Was it something she’d ever find? So much for revelry.

  After Thea had eaten her fill of cake and all signs of the surprise celebration were cleaned up, Thea and Walter set up the community room for the six o’clock NA meeting. The group hadn’t met in the library before. Walter had some reservations, but Thea had convinced him it was a good idea.

  For a while, the library had been immune from the drug problems, especially opioids, impacting so many communities across the country. But slowly, the encroachment reached a critical mass and active drug use cropped up in the library. Thea wasn’t sure how to stop it, but she was sure she needed to. She wanted the library to be a safe place for everyone. Needles in bathrooms and the threat of overdose endangered the emotional and physical safety of everyone. Thea felt the danger acutely. She grew up afraid to open her front door, never knowing what she’d find inside. That wasn’t what she wanted for the patrons who opened her library door. They needed safety and so did she.

  Walter had raised concerns with inviting the NA group to meet since Thea was working so hard to keep the library free of drugs. As far as Thea was concerned, anyone bothering to show up to an NA meeting, even if they were still actively using, should be encouraged. If she could help that by hosting the meeting, she was willing.

  After setting up, Thea returned to the desk. Technically, she was off the clock, but since it was the first meeting for this new group, she wanted to stick around in case they had questions, or any problems arose. She didn’t have anything pressing left over from the day, and getting started on the staff schedule for the next week, or worse, the quarterly budget, wasn’t appealing. Instead she pulled up a favorite task. She searched a few new 3D printer templates to add to the approved folder for the teen sessions while she waited for the NA meeting to begin. She loved working with the adolescents as they picked a project, planned, and saw it through to the end. They usually worked with tools and materials they’d never used before. She was constantly amazed by the creativity and ingenuity of the young people who passed through the library.

  A few minutes after six, a woman burst through the front doors and headed straight for the desk. She was slightly breathless as she asked for directions to the NA meeting. Thea pointed her in the right direction and watched her walk quickly down the hall. The woman had short cropped hair and was tall and slim, skinny even. Thea couldn’t shake the feeling she knew her from somewhere.

  I know those eyes. Is it against divorcisversary rules to notice if someone’s really attractive? Because she was and I did.

  “She looks familiar.” Walter had a habit of sneaking up on Thea, which she hated. “Do you know her?”

  “Not that I know of,” Thea said, though it didn’t feel true. It was her eyes, sapphire blue and searching. Those eyes were unforgettable.

  For the next hour, Thea tried to remember where she’d seen the woman before. A lot of people came through the library, but for some reason this felt different than one of the nameless patrons she saw daily. It felt like it was just on the edge of her memory, but when she’d try to reach out and grab it, it would skitter further into the shadows.

  Thea was surprised the hour was already gone when a large group of people passed her heading for the exit. She’d sent Walter home, so cleanup would take a little longer. It could technically wait until the morning, but she didn’t like to leave things to hold over another day.

  As she walked down the hall to the community room, the woman from earlier exited the bathroom. She looked guilty, and when Thea looked more closely, she could see why. In her right hand, she had a used syringe sticking out of a paper towel. She wasn’t doing a very good job of concealing it, if that’s what she was trying to do.

  Suddenly, Thea remembered the woman. She remembered her stumbling out of the library and falling down the front steps. She remembered Walter yelling for her to bring the overdose reversal kit. Mostly, she remembered how ill this woman looked then, how ill and how lost. She looked better now, much better. And if Thea weren’t so angry, she’d have been more willing to take a better look. As it was, however, she was strolling out of Thea’s bathroom, after an NA meeting, with a used syringe, and an only mildly guilty look. This was what Walter had been worried about.

  “You can’t do that in here.” Thea pointed at the syringe.

  “You need sharps containers in the bathrooms.” The woman turned slightly and gestured to the bathroom.

  “I wouldn’t need them if you didn’t use drugs in my library. Especially if we’re hosting NA meetings, I’m sure you understand why drug use in the library isn’t okay.”

  The woman didn’t say anything.

  “Look, I don’t care what you do on your own time. I hope the NA meetings help and you can get clean. I really do. But when you’re in the library, there is no drug use. None. If I see anything like this again, or suspect you’ve been using, I’m going to have to ask you to leave and if it comes to it, you’ll be banned from the library. I don’t ban people lightly, so please don’t make it come to that.”

  “Are you done?” T
he woman started to move past Thea. “I have to be up early and I need to find a sharps container before I go home.”

  Thea wanted to continue lecturing the woman strolling through her library with a dirty needle, but she’d said what she needed to say. Her sobriety really wasn’t her business. And piling on after she’d used following an NA meeting was just mean and useless. The woman would change when she was ready. Thea could be angry solo. After she left.

  Thea held up her hand and stopped her. “Follow me.”

  “Is this the part where you bury me behind a long-forgotten bookcase and they find my body in ten years while doing renovations?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Thea said. “They’d never find you.”

  “Oh damn.” The woman held out her hand. The one that wasn’t full of syringe. “Well, before I meet my grisly end, my name’s Kit.”

  “Thea.”

  When they arrived at Thea’s office she pointed at the wall opposite the door. Kit dutifully stood while Thea unlocked the door and retrieved the sharps container she kept locked in her desk drawer.

  “Here, put the syringe in here. No more deposits though, okay? This was your one and only get out of jail free card.”

  Thea couldn’t tell what emotion rolled through Kit’s eyes. Whatever it was, it was gone quickly.

  “So, no murder today then?”

  “Afraid not,” Thea said.

  Thea wasn’t sure how, but some of the anger from just a few minutes ago seemed to have lost its bite. Kit was rather charming if Thea didn’t think about what she had been up to in the bathroom fifteen minutes prior.

  “Well, then I’ll get going.” Kit started down the hall, then stopped and turned. “I hope to see you around the next meeting. Every time we meet you add to your mystique. First naloxone, now a sharps container. I’ll admit, I’m intrigued.”