by Maya Rodale, Caroline Linden, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe
She waved at the hat guy. Apparently seeing her through both his newspaper and hat brim, he nodded.
She flipped the lever to open the van’s rear door and lower the step, then shut off the engine and walked to the back of the small white bus with BOOKMOBILE painted across the side.
Books were stacked all around the sides and to the ceiling. A shelf ran down the center of the van, packed spine to spine too. She’d restocked this morning, adding a few more Spanish and Korean kids’ books, some of the thrillers Roy liked, and a few new cookbooks for Maggie and fashion magazines for Masala. She restocked every day now. Despite the naysayers, the bookmobile was thriving. When the Philadelphia big-money Prescott Foundation rejected the grant proposal that she’d spent months helping the library’s grant writer prepare, she’d almost given up hope. Then the library got an anonymous donation from someone who’d read her interview in the City Paper.
She pulled out her director’s chair and set it on the sidewalk dappled with cigarette butts and syringes.
“Open for business,” she hummed to herself. The air was fresh after yesterday’s rain. The cityscape on one side didn’t impress—battered apartment buildings with broken windows—but rose spectacularly on the other, with skyscrapers designed by Stern and Jahn. Behind it all a bright blue sky proclaimed summertime.
The hat guy turned a page.
His legs were long and stretched out in front of him, knees apart, his feet planted firmly on the cement, owning that corner of the park without effort. He wore the usual faded Levis and half-laced work boots too. A hint of dark hair peeked out under the hat above his collar.
Cali silently wished for a heat wave so he’d take off the button-down. The way he moved, like he had every muscle in his body in perfect control, gave her a hunch he’d have great arms. She liked great arms. A lot.
He had big hands, too, strong-looking with prominent veins, proof that he worked out, probably at one of those garage gyms the petty dealers used, where you could trade a fifth of Jack or a gram of crack for a month’s membership.
When she was waiting for bookmobile patrons, like now, sometimes she stared at his hands holding the paper like some guys held a football. Like he’d been born with a newspaper in his hands. Not a smartphone. The actual printed word. At those moments, with her pulse a little quick, she prayed he wasn’t a drug dealer. Having a secret semi-crush on a drug dealer whose face she’d never seen was so completely wrong in so many ways.
It didn’t matter, though. She wasn’t looking for a guy who spent his days sitting around doing nothing. She’d already had a guy like that in her life. It ended badly.
“Miss Cali Blake, where you been all my life?” called a crackly voice from down the sidewalk.
“Right here waiting for you, Roy.” She gave the stooped, retired trash collector a big smile. A woman in a flowing skirt with gold loop earrings walked on his arm like she was strutting a catwalk. “Good morning, Masala,” Cali said. “I brought you a present.” She snatched up From Helen of Troy to Madame Pompadour: Women’s Hair in History. “Orange today. Nice.”
“It’s called Tangerine Dream.” Masala patted her weave and gave Cali’s straight hair tied back in a ponytail the weekly once-over. “Cali girl, you let me do something with that nothing you got there, and you’ll get yourself a man in no time.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. My boss would freak if I walked in with Technicolor hair.” Not that any library patrons ever saw her. Until she’d started taking out the bookmobile, she’d been stuck in the basement stacks mostly. They’d given her this gig because they’d assumed it would flop. Best to keep the failure on a lower rung of the staff ladder.
It hadn’t failed. With the anonymous donation, the mobile unit was set for a trial period of a year, but it’d taken off in only two months. Already Cali was in love with the project and the people she met on her stops. They couldn’t believe she was bringing books right to their doorsteps—for free. Every day she felt like Santa Claus. And she got to spend time in neighborhoods where the families actually knew each other and the businesses had been around for decades.
“For you, sir.” She handed Roy the newest hardcover Dean Koontz.
Maggie appeared across the street, her short, crisp strides reminiscent of days when modest women wore narrow skirts to their ankles.
“This one’s for you, Miss Maggie.” Cali proffered her 15-Minute Recipes. “No more frozen dinners.”
Maggie’s wrinkled face was all smiles. “Cali, you’re a ray of sunshine in this old neighborhood.”
“What’d you bring Junior to read?” Roy gestured toward the hat guy.
“He’s got his paper.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve been meaning to ask: why do you call him Junior?”
“Boy’s got the same name as his father,” Roy said. “What else do you want me to call him?”
“Oh. Huh. I wonder what his father thinks of him spending every day in this park reading the paper.” Her father would’ve thought it was peachy, as long as he had a bottle of Hennessy on a bench waiting for him. Later, he’d settled for cough syrup.
But as far as she could tell, the hat guy wasn’t a drunk. His clothes were a little worn but clean, and he didn’t move like a drunk. He moved really … sexy.
Masala gave a rippling chortle. “Oh, Cali girl. Junior don’t come around here every day. Only Friday mornings, when you’re here.”
Cali’s stomach did a little flip. “Really?”
“I think he likes our California,” Maggie said to Roy and Masala.
“So this is either a coincidence,” Cali said, still in a whisper, “or I should call the cops.”
Roy waved his hand. “Junior wouldn’t hurt a fly. Men that read, like we do, only got the most honorable of intentions.”
Cali laughed. “Honorable, huh?”
“Why don’t you go on over there and say hello?” Maggie said.
“Because I’m not looking for a man.” Even if she were, she didn’t have time to date. “Now I’m going to stop whispering about somebody like he’s not within earshot, okay?”
Masala gave her a saucy look, fuchsia lips pursing. Roy shook his head. They all settled on their regular benches, which were divided into individual seats with iron bars so people couldn’t sleep on them.
“What’s going on with you this week, Cali girl?” Masala asked, tucking the book about hair into her enormous spangled purse.
“I got invited to a wedding. A really big society shindig.”
“You gonna take me as your date, sweetheart?” Roy said.
“I would, dear. But I’m not going. It’s in England. It’s going to be a grand party at a huge old mansion with lots of fabulously rich and famous people. The groom is paying for everybody to stay there for a week. He’s a billionaire.”
“Billion?”
“I kid you not. It’s a real fairy-tale wedding. I’d love to go. The bride, Jane, is my old college friend who works at the New York Public library. She’s also a best-selling novelist now. Maggie, I gave you Jane’s book last month. You loved it.”
“That book about the girl who pretended she was engaged to a duke? I did!”
“Why aren’t you going, girl?” Masala demanded.
“I can’t afford it. Home care visits for Zoe would be insanely expensive. And of course the plane ticket would cost a mint. It’s just way too much.” Paying the rent was way too much too. And buying groceries. And the insurance deductible for her sister’s therapy and meds. And pretty much breathing.
Maggie sighed. Masala frowned.
“But the real problem,” Cali said with a mock-sober nod, “is that I don’t have a dress.”
“You don’t have a dress, girl? Now that’s a fib. I seen you in a dress right here.”
“I mean I don’t have a dress that’s appropriate for a party like that. Those women will be wearing stuff that costs hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands, with jewelry and shoes to match.”
Roy whistled
low.
“I bet you have the shoes,” Maggie said.
Cali grinned. “You bet right.” Thank God for the discount shoe warehouse.
“Buys ‘em and never wears ‘em. Women are crazy, I say.”
“A girl’s gotta have her fun,” Masala said with a pat on Cali’s hand. “You keep on buying those shoes, and someday we’ll find someplace nice for you to wear them. Maybe sooner than you think.”
A group of kids burst out of the daycare across the street, followed by two women.
“Hola, Señorita California!” a little one yelled. The rest joined in like a chorus.
“Hola, guys.” Cali met them at the van and started collecting books they’d brought to return. After that they searched for new treasures on the shelves. She stayed busy till eleven, then packed up. Her friends had gone—Masala to her salon, and Maggie and Roy to bingo at the church. She gave the hat guy a wave and climbed into the van.
Her next two stops went well, too, and she returned to the library with a lighter van and a much lighter heart. Almost light enough to forget about how she couldn’t go to the most exciting party she’d ever be invited to in her life.
She texted her sister Home soon, and went into the staff room to grab her purse. When her boss stepped into the open doorway, she knew it from the heavy scent of Axe For Men.
“I’m thinking about changing the van’s Friday route,” Dick said, flipping through papers in his hands.
He was only doing this to hurt her because she’d enjoyed her day.
“You can’t,” she said, initialing her mileage in the bookmobile’s logbook. “The donor specified the routes.”
Dick laughed. “Do you really think that the anonymous donor of the bookmobile cares where we drive the thing?”
“Since he specified the routes, I think he must. Or she.” She turned her back on him, pulled her purse out of her locker, and managed to avoid slicing her palm on the broken zipper.
Dick was still standing in the doorway. Now the papers were stuffed in his pocket and he jingled car keys in his palm.
“Going out tonight, Cali?”
“Every night, Dick.”
“You’re so hot in those jeans, Cali.”
“You can get fired for saying that to me, Dick.” She’d once spoken about his inappropriate comments to the director of the library, Cara Schaeffer. Cara had taken Cali’s complaint very seriously. But Dick had stellar ratings from all his female employees except Cali. Cara documented the complaint, then privately told Cali she should try to get hard proof of the harassment. Overwhelmed with complications in Zoe’s medical needs at the time, Cali couldn’t fight both battles at once, and she’d let it drop. Anyway, Dick’s father was a state representative, with all sorts of political connections. She’d never win.
“Don’t be so sensitive. You know it’s all in fun,” Dick said. He knew she couldn’t afford to lose this job or hire a lawyer. He gave her a smile just patronizing enough to prickle under her skin. “Got a date tonight?”
“I sure do.” She always did when he asked.
He twirled his keys around his forefinger, the Mercedes logo prominent on the fob. “Does he pick you up in a CLS63 Benz?”
She pulled her purse tight over her shoulder and faced him. “He picks me up in a limo, actually.”
His eyes slithered down her body. “Do you do him in the limo, Cali? With the driver watching? I bet you like it when the driver watches.”
She walked toward him. “Move, please.”
Some nights he didn’t step aside right away. Some nights he made her ask nicely.
He didn’t make her ask this time and she went into the corridor.
“After you bring the van back tomorrow,” he said behind her, “I want you to start the claimed-returned list. It needs to be finished by Monday night.”
“Fine.” Drudge work. Depending on the collection, it would take hours. She’d have to ask her neighbor, Mrs. Fletcher, to grocery shop for her and Zoe again. Third time this month so far. But Dick always made her pay for rejecting him. This time she was getting off easy.
Later, while helping her sister wash her hair, she invented stories about the sexy hat guy to distract herself from worries and amuse Zoe.
“Maybe he’s a spy hired by Dick to take incriminating vids to send to the anonymous donor so I’ll get fired.”
“Or he’s a really lazy drug dealer,” Zoe said, rubbing her spiky locks with a towel. Four years younger than Cali, she was infinitely hipper.
“Or maybe beneath the hat he has three eyes and an alien brow ridge, and he’s just hanging around in the park to study humans before the big invasion.” She shook two pills from a bottle and dropped them onto Zoe’s palm.
“You should tell him go to the mall instead.” Zoe swallowed the pills with water from a plastic Iron Man cup. Zoe had a thing for Tony Stark. “More people there.”
Cali smiled.
“But I like the other scenario best.” Zoe ran the three fingers on her left hand through her damp hair. “The one where he’s the anonymous patron of the mobile library just checking up on his investment. Wouldn’t that be great? If it’d been him all along?”
“Sure. Other than the alien explanation, it’s the most likely.”
“He’s hot, right?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen his face.”
“But you said he’s got a hot body.”
“I think so.” The Levis and loose button-down didn’t reveal much. But his shoulders were broad. And once, when he’d gotten a phone call, stood up, and loped out of the park, the chamois shirt had caught in his belt. She’d liked the way his jeans hugged his hips. A lot. Too much. “He’s got a great butt.” Tight. Hot.
“Nobody says butt anymore, Cal. Do you ever read those magazines you check out of the library?”
“I get them for the ads.” She paged through Cartier watches, Manolo Blahnik shoes, and DKNY lingerie. And fantasized. “Ass. He’s got a great ass. Are you happy?”
A sleepy smile creased the scars around Zoe’s lips. The meds were kicking in. “When’s Jane’s wedding, again?”
“In four weeks.”
“You have to go. Cut loose for a change.” Zoe’s eyelids drooped. “You’ve got a week of paid vacation you’ll lose if you don’t use it.”
She’d been saving it for emergencies. The more Zoe healed, though, the less she thought she’d need it. But it was always best to be careful.
“Cutting loose isn’t my style, Zoe.”
“You’re going to England, Cali. You’re going to meet a hot, rich guy, have a crazy whirlwind romance, and he’s going to fall in love with you,” her sister said dreamily. “Then we’ll get to live in a mansion like we would’ve if Dad hadn’t turned into such a fuckup.”
Cali brushed a lock of hair off her sister’s brow, fingers scraping over the hard skin where the burns had penetrated to the bone. “Night, goofball,” she whispered.
The next day, after Cali brought the bookmobile back to the library, she sent a quick text to Zoe, Have a good time watching junk TV w Mrs. F. Then she got to work on the claimed-returned list. An hour into the project, Dick showed up and tried to crowd her up against a shelf. She slammed the heel of her palm into the side of his face, slipped out while he was cursing, and ran to the bus stop, shaking with fear and rage all the way home.
The minute she got inside the apartment, the bad night got worse. Zoe’s eyes were glassy.
“It hurts, California.”
Cali knelt beside the wheelchair, wrapped her arms around her sister’s shoulders, and tucked her face against Zoe’s leathery cheek.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” But inside she was weeping the same words she always wept on nights like this: Damn that drunken bastard to hell.
After she got Zoe to sleep, she sat beside the bed holding her hand for a while, dozing. She couldn’t turn in yet. Too many things to do first. Bills to pay that Medicaid wouldn’t cover. Dishes that�
�d been stacking up for days. Laundry. She would put in the clothes first. If she was lucky, the guys from 3G wouldn’t be smoking joints in the laundry room and everything she owned wouldn’t smell like pot for the next week.
Slipping her hand out of Zoe’s, she shut off the light and gathered up the dirty clothes and towels from the floor. Throwing them all in the plastic laundry basket, she grabbed last month’s Vanity Fair to read while the machine filled up, and opened the apartment door. Her foot slipped on paper on the threshold. It was a thick envelope. Across the front in neat, bold type was CALIFORNIA BLAKE.
It couldn’t be an eviction notice. She’d paid the rent. Last month. But their landlord knew she’d get it to him as soon as she got paid, and he was always cool about it.
She stuck the envelope in her back pocket and went downstairs. Smoke hovered around the open door of the laundry room and she almost reversed direction. But she had exactly one clean pair of panties left.
Trying not to breathe, she said “Hey” to the guys from 3G, opened a washer, and dumped in the clothes. Then she put her quarters in the slot and measured the soap. Waiting for the basin to fill, she pulled the envelope out of her back pocket and opened it.
And stared.
She shook her head, but the contents remained the same. One round-trip ticket to London Heathrow Airport in her name for the week of Jane’s wedding. One contract for a week of nursing care from the five-star home care company Cali wished she could afford, with her name at the top and PAID marked after the hefty total at the bottom. And one $800 gift certificate to Joan Shepp, an upscale women’s designer boutique.
The washer clicked into cycle and started to gyrate against her hipbones. Numbly, she poured the soap in a careful ring and shut the lid.
Then she looked through the documents again.
This could not be real.
She didn’t believe in fairy godmothers. She didn’t believe in miracles. And she sure as heck didn’t believe that a little secondhand marijuana smoke inhalation could turn an eviction notice into a dream come true. Which meant that Maggie, Masala, and Roy had pooled their money for this. She’d no idea where they could’ve scrounged up this kind of cash. Probably from under their mattresses.
