A Kind of Paradise

by Amy Rebecca Tan

  I poured a bit of water into my hand and he stuck his whole small muzzle right in, lapping up every drop quickly and greedily. I poured more water into my palm, and then more, and he kept drinking. Soon his tongue felt as wet and slick as my palm, which was now dripping with water and dog saliva.

  I poured a quickly dissolving ice cube into my hand and placed it in the shade back between the book-drop bins. The dog sauntered back to his shady, quiet spot and settled next to the ice cube. He sniffed it, pawed it, and then proceeded to lick it, delicately trapping it between his two front paws.

  “So, no collar. And you look like a hot mess, no offense,” I told him. “You all on your own?”

  He just looked at me as I spoke, licked his ice cube a few more times, and then sneezed.

  “I have to actually do my job now,” I told him. As I punched in the code on the audio bin, the dog locked his eyes on me, watching my every move with his head cocked to the side. The ice cube was now down to the size of a green pea on the pavement in front of him. I reached into the drop, pulled out a small stack of DVDs, and then closed the door more gently than usual, trying not to jar the whole metal container and scare the dog. I emptied the book container the same way, stashing the dozen picture books into the library bag alongside the DVDs.

  “All right, I have to go back inside now,” I told him, reaching my fist in front of his furry head again. He stood and leaned toward it, sniffed and licked me a few more times, then circled once and settled back in his perfect spot of shade. The ice cube was gone. He shut his eyes, sighed once heavily, and resumed his nap.

  “I’ll bring you water again before I leave. And I’ll see if I can find you some food.”

  I walked the bag of returns back into the library and unloaded them onto the circ desk for Sonia.

  A patron walked up at the same time and dropped three books loudly onto the counter in front of Sonia.

  “Ready to check out?” Sonia asked politely.

  The patron didn’t answer, and he didn’t even glance at Sonia. He just tossed his card at her and started tapping his fingers against the counter impatiently.

  Sonia had explained to me that there were two kinds of people in the world: those who handed you their card and those who counter-dropped it. The patrons who handed you their card were typically pleasant and respectful and polite. They said please and thank you and wished you well as they left. The patrons who dropped their cards didn’t bother to wish you a thing. They were usually curt and rude and wouldn’t even make eye contact.

  Sonia scanned his card and books and neatly packed them into a bag for him. “Thank you very much, sir. Have a lovely day.” She smiled widely at him. She had also told me she liked to lay it on extra thick with the card-droppers. “Kill them with kindness,” she had said.

  The rude guy swung his bag off the counter and quickly left.

  “Classic card-dropper?” I asked.

  “In the flesh,” she confirmed. “What a treat for me.”

  I laughed. Then I said, “I need to wash my hands,” holding them up, fingers spread, as if I were contaminated with hazardous material.

  “Yes, some of these books come back pretty funky,” Sonia responded.

  “No, I was petting a dog, actually. I found a dog out back.”

  “By the tree? A tall black dog? That’s Mrs. Shiu’s,” Sonia said.

  “No, it wasn’t tied. It was just there. And it was small. It looked like a stray.”

  “Ay, go wash up, mami. You don’t even know what you were touching.” Sonia made a face and backed away from me to make her point.

  “All right, I’m going,” I laughed, and headed downstairs to the staff kitchen.

  I poured a heaping glob of dish soap onto my hands and rubbed until it got foamy. The grime of the dog slid right off under the bubbles of soap. I imagined bringing the dog down to the sink—he would fit in it, no problem—and lathering him up the same way until all the matted dirt was out of his fur and he shone clean and smelled like lemons.

  I wondered if I should call a shelter or animal control. The dog could be sick, or infested with some kind of worm or bug. Obviously no one was taking care of him. But what if the shelter decided to put him down because they didn’t have enough room for him, or enough money to feed one more animal? Was he better off on his own, the way I found him? I couldn’t tell how old he was, but he definitely wasn’t a puppy. My mom would kill me if I mentioned the dog to Aunt Julie. She always said Aunt Julie’s house was only two tails away from turning into a roadside zoo. My mom would also say the dog knew how to deal and was fine on his own. He was smart enough to nap in a safe, shady spot between the two bins, so maybe she was right.

  That was a good name, actually: Shady.

  I finished rinsing a second round of soap off my hands and wrists and dried myself on a paper towel that was rough as bark, absorbing pretty much no water at all, exactly like the sad paper towels at the middle school. I dried my hands the rest of the way on my shorts and climbed the steps back to the main floor of the library.

  Sonia

  “What a surprise!” Sonia greeted me as I walked through the library door on Friday morning. I had already met my hours for the week, so I bet she wasn’t expecting me to come in today.

  “And look at you—wicked side braid.” She smiled at me and raised her eyebrows.

  “I didn’t have anything else to do today, so . . .” I tried to say it so it wouldn’t sound as pathetic as it was. A thirteen-year-old girl on summer vacation with nothing better to do than volunteer extra hours at her public library? I had hit an all-time low.

  “Good timing, then, because there’s lots to do in the children’s room today,” Sonia said. “We had day camp visitors, preschool age.”

  “That’s cool,” I replied.

  “Cool? Oh, Jamie, you have no idea.” She shook her head at me.

  “It’s cool that they would bring them here, to a library, I mean. That’s a good field trip,” I explained.

  “Yes, a great field trip. But I have never seen so many runny noses in my life. And it’s summer! That’s not supposed to happen in summertime, right?” She ducked under the desk and then popped back up with two containers of sani-wipes, one in each hand. “Pretty much every inch of the room needs a wipe-down.”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad, Sonia.” Lenny appeared out of the back room, laughing and rolling an empty cart back to the circ desk. “All those germs make your immunity stronger.”

  “I’ve worked here forever. My immunity is iron-plated,” Sonia bragged. “I still like my library clean.”

  Lenny laughed again and took the containers from her hands. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’d start with the puzzles,” Sonia added, “and the blocks table. I’ll do the touch screens myself with the special wipes.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.” Lenny bowed at her, then stopped short as he read the label on one of the containers she’d handed him. “Jeez, Sonia, you gave me the hard stuff. This’ll peel paint off the walls.”

  “Then my professional advice is,” Sonia said, as she scrolled a new roll of receipt tape into the printer, “do not use them on the walls.”

  “Very funny,” Lenny said, then headed toward the employee staircase. “I’m putting rubber gloves on before I reach into this vessel of toxic cleanser.”

  “Disinfecting toxic cleanser!” Sonia said, a little too loud for a library.

  “I’ll risk the chemical exposure,” Lenny said to Sonia as he disappeared downstairs, “but only for you.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Sonia.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she warned, purposely not making eye contact with me. “Lenny’s a nice guy. He’s like that with everyone.”

  “If you say so.” I smirked back.

  “So Lenny’s dealing with the children’s toys”—Sonia ignored me—“which means we’ll put you to work here. You can help with returns. I’m going to scan in this pile”—she gestured to
three tall stacks of books and DVDs on the counter to her left—“and then hand them to you to scan again. Every item should be double-checked before it gets shelved.”

  “Okay,” I said, excited to finally get to use a circulation computer.

  “Here’s the inventory check screen. Just run the bar code under here”—she demonstrated, and the scanner let out a high-pitched beep—“and then pile them on the cart behind you here.”

  “Got it.”

  “You have to look at the screen, though, to see each title register. Sometimes it beeps but it doesn’t scan, so you have to see it on the screen with your eyes.”

  “Okay.”

  “And take your time. You don’t have to go as fast as me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Better to be slow and accurate.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think I should buy you a special coffee mug that says ‘Okay’ on it,” Sonia teased me.

  “Okay,” I teased her back.

  And then the bell jingled and a man in a bright blue tie entered the library and walked straight up to Sonia.

  “Good morning. How are you today?” he asked.

  “Fine, thank you. How can I help you?” she replied, putting down the book she was holding and giving her full attention to him.

  “I’m here to see Beverly Cooper. I’m Edward Trippley.”

  “Oh.” Sonia looked skeptical. “I didn’t realize she had a meeting this morning.”

  “Oh, she’s not expecting me. I just wanted to have a face-to-face.” He straightened his tie then and unbuttoned his suit jacket. “I started as mayor earlier this year, as you may know, and I’m here to talk about how to best serve our wonderful town of Foxfield.”

  “Of course,” Sonia said, looking more doubtful still but putting on her best welcoming smile. “I’m Sonia, and this is our volunteer, Jamie. We both live here in town.” Sonia reached across the counter and shook Mayor Trippley’s hand.

  He shook her hand back, and then shook mine as well. “Very nice to meet you, of course.” It felt like his glance lingered on me for an extra moment, like maybe he was trying to remember something he might have heard about a student “working” at the library. My palms started to itch, and I rubbed them against the sides of my shorts the way Beverly rubbed her hands against her corduroys.

  “I’ll just phone Beverly, in her office, to let her know you’re here.”

  “Don’t go to any trouble. I’ll just head on back myself. Just a friendly visit.” And with that he excused himself, quickly finding his way back to Beverly’s office, Sonia still holding the phone to her ear.

  She dialed anyway. “Maybe she’ll pick up before he reaches the door,” she whispered to me. And then quietly, to herself, “She deserves a little warning.”

  The phone rang and rang, and then we heard a door open and close. “He got to her first.” Sonia bit her lip in frustration and hung up the phone.

  Lenny came out of the children’s room, his hands in bright yellow gloves. “Was that the new mayor?”

  I nodded yes.

  A thoughtful “hmm” came from Lenny as he stared at the closed door. Then he looked over to Sonia.

  “What do you think?” he asked her.

  “I think he’s getting the wrong idea, coming now when we’re empty. Most of the day we’re so busy with patrons,” she said, as if Lenny didn’t already know this. “And I think I’m not feeling the friendly in that friendly visit.”

  Lenny thought for a moment, then said, “Let’s not jump to conclusions. You never know.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, completely baffled.

  “Nothing, Jamie,” Lenny answered me before Sonia could. “So far, nothing’s going on.” And then his voice got louder as he declared, “It’s just another beautiful morning in the library.” He raised his long arms out to the sides, one yellow-sheathed hand still holding a canister of sani-wipes, and beamed a broad, goofy smile, turning in a circle like Moses on top of a mountain.

  Sonia laughed and her shoulders relaxed. “What would we do without you, Lenny?”

  And Lenny beamed even more.

  An hour later Mayor Trippley walked out of Beverly’s office. He lifted his hand at me like he was waving from a parade float and walked briskly out of the library.

  Beverly stepped out of her office a minute later. Her eyes were glazed and her cheeks were flushed. She looked smaller, like a balloon that had lost some of its air.

  Lenny froze at the circ desk, his mouth open like he was about to say something but then changed his mind. Sonia emerged from the staff stairway at the exact moment that Beverly cleared her throat, brushed her hands down the sides of her pants, and then cleared her throat again, more forcefully this time.

  She looked down at the floor and then back up. “We have a problem,” she said.

  All I heard after that was the crack of Sonia’s coffee mug hitting the floor.

  I cleaned up the spilled coffee while Lenny, Sonia, and Beverly all sat down in Beverly’s office. They closed the door, so I was alone, just me and a handful of patrons.

  I straightened my posture behind the circ desk and tucked my hair behind my ears. I scanned the room and noticed some magazines left behind on a chair. I stacked them in order and returned them to their shelf, then pushed in a chair at a computer desk so it wouldn’t block the aisle.

  When a man on a computer looked up at me, I smiled and nodded at him, the same way Beverly would.

  A woman in a suit and heels strolled into the library with a pile of books.

  “Are those returns? I can take them for you,” I offered.

  “Thank you very much,” she said, and then strolled right back out.

  An older man came down the staircase from the loft and made a beeline for me. “Excuse me, miss. Do you have travel books?”

  “We do. Right this way.” I walked him to the travel section, in the 900s. I knew exactly where they were because I had spent a half hour shelf-reading that section the other day.

  On my way back to the circ desk, I caught my reflection on a dark computer screen that had gone to sleep. At first I didn’t recognize myself, because the person in the reflection looked happy. The person in the reflection looked like someone who belonged exactly where they were.

  A pang of guilt shot through me when I remembered how I’d felt just a few weeks ago: that it would be great if the library closed and I didn’t have to work here.

  Suddenly, that was the absolute last thing I wanted.

  Trina

  We were always swamped with returns on Mondays, since we were closed all weekend long in the summer months. It took me four trips just to empty the book drop, and almost an hour to get the books put away.

  After that was done, I watched the circ desk while Sonia hunted for printer ink in the supply closet downstairs and Beverly helped a patron on a computer. Lenny wouldn’t be in for another hour.

  I took a long sip of water from the bottle I kept over the money drawer, right next to Sonia’s coffee mug. I was mid-swallow when the bells on the front door jangled like a cymbal crashing to the ground. I looked up from the circ desk and found myself face-to-face with Trina.

  My stomach did a complete flip and landed on itself, hard and flat and without mercy, like a belly flop at a very crowded public pool.

  The heat began its creep up my neck. I wished I could stop it, that red flush, before it got to my cheeks and broadcast my humiliation. I thought of Sonia. Poised, professional, knowledgeable Sonia, who treated every patron equally and respectfully, no matter who they were. Sonia, who just had to leave the circ desk about ten seconds before Trina walked in.

  I channeled the power of Sonia and forced out the only four words I could think of: “Can I help you?”

  I could not muster a Sonia smile, though.

  I watched as Trina’s eyes went to the top of my head. She was checking out my hair, the inverted French braid my mom had styled for me before leaving for work this morn
ing. I still couldn’t manage this kind of braid myself, so occasionally I would sit on the coffee table in front of the TV, watching whatever awful talk show was on at that hour while my mom worked her hairstyling magic on me. I handed her comb, brush, hair ties at her command, like a nurse handing over a scalpel, swab, clamp in surgery. That had been our routine since I was little. I always sat right in that same spot on the corner of the low table while she did my hair for the day. Having the TV on kept me still and cooperative when I was little, but now it was just part of our tradition.

  Earlier that morning, we couldn’t find anything decent to watch.

  “An entire morning segment on the correct length of capris for your leg type?” my mom managed to say around the hairband she held clenched between her teeth.

  “Well, thank God we know,” I answered, giggling at how dumb it was.

  “These shows are getting worse by the day,” my mom exclaimed. “They are ruining us as a people.”

  “They are ruining us as a country!” I continued. “As capris-wearing citizens!”

  “It’s a travesty,” my mom decided.

  “Should I turn it off?” I offered.

  “God no! It’s so bad it’s almost good.” And she continued braiding while we watched the next segment, which explained how to decorate a summer patio in a country-rustic style.

  I saw Trina’s eyes follow the curve of my braid all the way to the end. She was probably disappointed that it looked too good to make fun of later when she saw her posse. I was instantly grateful that I had started to make the effort to come to the library not looking like I had just rolled out of bed.

  “I’m returning these,” Trina said, staring me right in the eyes. She dropped two cookbooks on the counter in front of me. “We had an amazing party over the weekend. Everyone said my food was awesome.”

  Wow, Trina sure was comfortable bragging about herself. It must be nice to have that much self-confidence.

  I managed to say “Thank you” the same way Sonia did when she took returns from patrons. I turned away, thinking it would be a great time to take a break downstairs in the staff kitchen where I could recover, but Trina called me back.