The Nearness of You

by Dorothy Garlock

  And so, sidestepping Ethel’s gripe about Sherman, she asked, “What was it that you needed me to work on?”

  “The card catalog is an absolute mess!” the older woman snapped. “I started to insert the ones I just finished typing and found an inch-width of J’s stuck in the middle of the F’s. It’s a disgrace! It has to be fixed immediately.”

  By some miracle, Lily didn’t sigh. This was the same job Ethel had had her doing two weeks ago, and the month before that, and then back in midsummer. Whenever she found even one card out of place, it was an excuse to start Lily combing through the whole thing. Ethel considered herself above such menial work.

  “I’ll get right on it,” Lily replied and started to walk away, not because she was excited to begin collating the card catalog, but because she’d reached the absolute limit of how long she could stand Ethel’s company.

  “One more thing,” the older woman said before Lily got very far. “As you know, that wretched fall festival starts tomorrow,” she began, wrinkling up her nose with disgust, as if she’d just found a dead fly in her sandwich. “Just an excuse for everyone to act like utter savages, if you ask me!”

  Lily wished she could point out that no one had.

  “That means that there will be plenty of strangers coming in from out of town,” Ethel continued, echoing a similar sentiment made by Lily’s father the night before. “Whenever you see someone in the library who you don’t recognize, pay close attention to them. Likely, they’ll be here to steal things!”

  “I don’t think that anyone would—”

  “Why, if we let them, they’d likely rob us blind,” Ethel continued as if Lily hadn’t spoken a word. “Whole shelves of books would be gone in an instant. Imagine the sad state of affairs then! Who would pay to replace them? The town? I think not!” Before Lily could respond, the old librarian stalked off, throwing a disapproving glance at Sherman Banks for good measure.

  Lily wondered why Ethel was getting so worked up about people coming to town for the festival. Odds were, this year wouldn’t be all that different from any other. A bunch of visitors would come to eat, drink, dance, and dress in Halloween costumes, and then they’d all leave. Two weeks from now, everything would be back to normal, at least until next October. Ethel, and her father for that matter, were worrying about nothing.

  But before Lily could start dealing with Ethel’s “emergency” at the card catalog, she felt a tug on her sleeve. Sherman had returned.

  “What’s the biggest export of the Belgian Congo?” he asked.

  Here we go again…

  Lily rose from her stool in front of the card catalog and stretched, trying to alleviate the dull ache in her lower back. She’d been leaning over the sliding drawers for hours now, searching for the disorganization Ethel had described, but so far had found little out of place, only a stray entry here and there; the “inch-width” the older librarian had described turned out to be one card for a book about the history of Japan. Still, Lily would keep at it until the job was finished.

  And then I’ll do it again in a month or two, then a few after that…

  Over the course of her morning, Lily had checked out patrons and answered the telephone. Maybe it was because she’d nearly left Hooper’s Crossing with Jane the night before, but today it seemed as if every conversation she had, every smiling face that greeted her on the other side of the counter, reinforced all the things she loved about her job, about her town. People asked about her father, wondered whether she was excited about the festival, or commented about the warm autumn weather. Even Sherman had warmed her heart a little by offering thanks for all of her help as he puttered toward the door, his crossword puzzle finally completed. This was what had drawn her toward being a librarian: to help people, to share in their day, no matter how briefly.

  And so, Lily had slowly begun to convince herself that she’d made the right decision after all. She still wanted to leave someday, to discover what sort of excitement could be found outside her little corner of the world, but not yet, not now. She would wait until she was well and truly ready. And then she’d—

  Her thoughts were interrupted as the telephone began to ring. Lily answered it with a practiced, “Hooper’s Crossing Library.”

  “Hello from the big city!” the voice on the other end of the line greeted her.

  Lily’s heart felt as if it had come to a sudden stop before it started pounding away at triple time. For an instant, she was speechless. “Jane?” she blurted loudly when she rediscovered her voice. Lily nervously glanced around the library, hoping with all her heart that Ethel wasn’t nearby. “Is it really you?” she whispered into the receiver.

  “None other,” her friend replied. “I’m all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed even though I drove almost the whole night. I stopped about halfway in some nowhere town whose name I’ll never remember and caught a few winks in a grocery store parking lot,” Jane explained, talking a mile a minute. “When I woke up a couple of hours later, I got back on the road and now, here I am!”

  “You’re there? In New York City?” Lily asked, having trouble believing that her best friend had actually followed through with their plan.

  “Can’t you hear it?” Jane asked, then turned the pay phone’s receiver toward the street. Lily could make out the frenzied sounds of vehicles honking, people talking, and feet click-clacking on the sidewalk, all the noises that were part of a metropolitan city as it went about its day. For a couple of seconds, Lily felt as if she was there, too, a part of the hustle and bustle.

  But she wasn’t. Not really.

  Not at all.

  “You won’t believe the things I’ve seen already,” Jane told her. “There was a man selling peanuts from a cart who threw packets up to the second floor of a building, then caught the money people tossed back down to him. Then this woman got out of a fancy car wearing a necklace with a diamond on it that I swear was as big as my fist. Oh, and I even saw a musician grinding a hand organ for a dancing monkey. He took a dime right out of my hand!”

  The moment before Lily had answered the telephone, she had come to understand that she’d made the right choice by staying in Hooper’s Crossing. Now she felt the exact opposite. A pang of jealousy flared in Lily’s stomach, but she stamped it down. What right did she have to be upset? After all, it was her choice to remain behind, too scared to chase her dream.

  “Did you find your cousin’s apartment?” Lily asked, wanting to change the subject, if only a little. Part of their plan had been to stay with Jane’s distant relative Samantha, who lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at least until they got their feet under them and could find a place of their own.

  “Piece of cake,” Jane answered. “The only trouble was that I had to drive around the block five times before I could find a place to park. Samantha’s apartment is small and the room I’m staying in isn’t much more than a closet, but I don’t care. If everything goes the way I hope, I won’t be there for long.”

  Lily thought her friend was probably right. If confidence was currency, Jane was as rich as the lady she said she’d seen with the big diamond. In no time at all, her face would be up on a movie marquee or billboard, advertising a Broadway show.

  “What about you?” Jane asked. “Did you have any trouble with your dad?”

  As she answered, Lily couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. The story of hiding her suitcase in the bushes, being scared by Garrett, and then listening to her father’s speech into the wee hours of the night seemed childish to her ears. “I’m sorry I didn’t go with you,” she finished.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jane replied. “Like I said, this isn’t forever. Whenever you’re ready, let me know and I’ll be at the airport, the bus station, the train depot, or out on the sidewalk waiting for you.”

  “Okay,” Lily said, fighting back tears.

  “Hey, there’s one more thing I wanted to tell you,” her friend said.

  “What’s that?”

 
“Remember how you wrote your father a letter telling him that you were leaving town and going to the city?”

  “Yes,” Lily answered, remembering how relieved she’d been to find it still on her pillow, and how she had then torn it into hundreds of pieces.

  “Well, what I wrote will make sure that no one around town will ask about where I am, at least for a little while. But part of that explanation involves you. See, I…” but as Lily listened, static hissed across the connection, making Jane’s words a garbled mess. All she heard was, “…left it…mentions that…just thought that you should know that…but only if…least I could do for…”

  “I didn’t catch much of that,” Lily said, instinctively knowing that whatever Jane had said, it was important. “Tell me again.”

  But before another word could be said, Ethel Wilkinson rounded the stacks and noticed that Lily wasn’t at the card catalog. She looked toward the front desk, caught Lily’s eye, and glared. Immediately, she began to march over.

  Panicked, Lily said, “We’ll call you as soon as the book arrives,” and slammed the receiver into its cradle with a bang, hanging up on Jane.

  “I should have known you’d be shirking your duties,” the older librarian commented.

  “I was helping someone find a book,” Lily lied, her head still swimming from her conversation.

  “Lollygagging is more like it. Why, I bet that—”

  “The phone rang and I went to answer it,” Lily interrupted, irritation getting the better of her. “What was I supposed to do? Ignore it?”

  Ethel’s mask of smug superiority slipped as she was momentarily caught off-guard by Lily’s outburst, but she quickly recovered. “There’s no need for smart talk,” she complained haughtily. “Your work is slipping, that’s all. Why, if you can’t accept a little criticism now and then, maybe you should start thinking about another career.” Without giving Lily a chance to respond, Ethel turned on her heel and quickly walked away.

  Lily sighed. What was she thinking? She knew better than to argue with Ethel. No good would come of it, that was for sure. But she wasn’t thinking straight. It was bad enough that she’d nearly left town last night and had lied to both Garrett and her father. Her talk with Jane had upended the work she had done convincing herself she’d made the right decision. So while her friend was in a city teeming with people, adventure beckoning in every direction, Lily remained in Hooper’s Crossing, convinced that nothing exciting was ever going to happen to her.

  No matter what choice she made, it seemed like it was the wrong one.

  “That’s one heck of a deposit. You must’ve been saving up for quite a while.”

  Gladys Martin smiled warmly at Lily from the other side of her teller window at the Hooper’s Crossing Bank and Trust. Laid out between them was a stack of bills, almost two hundred dollars’ worth, all the money Lily had painstakingly set aside to help get her started in New York City.

  “I was,” she admitted, offering a sliver of the truth. “I thought I knew what I wanted to do with it, but at the last second, I changed my mind.”

  “Probably a good thing you brought it back, then,” the teller said. “Whenever I have a couple of extra dollars in my purse, they always seem to get spent, no matter how hard I try to hold on to them.”

  Lily nodded but didn’t say more. Bringing the money back to the bank had been a hard decision to make. She could have kept it at home, secreted in her closet or somewhere else thought it would be safe, but there’d always be the worry that her father might accidentally stumble across it and start asking questions. Lily was sure she could have come up with an excuse, that she was setting it aside for something or other, but she’d already done enough lying. In the end, the bank seemed the best choice. It wasn’t as if she was going to change her mind and hop on the next bus or train to join in Jane’s adventures. No, she was going to be in Hooper’s Crossing for a while longer. It would be here if she needed it.

  Once she’d finished her business, Lily headed for the door. There were a few other people in the bank and she nodded and smiled on her way out, but she was distracted, her thoughts a swirling mix of her conversation with Jane, whether there’d be trouble with Ethel when she got back to the library, and even what she might order for lunch at the diner.

  That was why when she stepped outside, the autumn sun bright in her eyes, Lily didn’t pay any attention to man coming toward her down the sidewalk.

  But he definitely noticed her.

  Chapter Five

  WHEN RANDALL KANE saw the blonde walk out of the bank, he couldn’t help but whistle; fortunately, or was it unfortunately, the gal was too far away to hear. Damn, she was a looker. Just his type, as a matter of fact. She wasn’t a Hollywood starlet, the sort of gal who turned the heads of every guy she met, a broad who knew she was the bee’s knees. No, this one seemed quiet, innocent even. Randall wondered if she was a schoolteacher or a librarian, prim and proper on the outside but a real minx in the sack. As she walked toward him, her attention obviously elsewhere, he smiled, showing some teeth.

  I may get in trouble for this, but what the hell…

  Just before the woman reached him, Randall inched to his left, straight into her path. Their collision was strong enough to force a gasp of surprise from her lips and cause her purse to drop to the sidewalk. She would’ve fallen, too, if Randall hadn’t grabbed her elbow and kept her upright.

  “Sorry about that, darlin’,” he offered with fake sincerity. “I wasn’t payin’ attention to where I was goin’.”

  “No, it was my fault,” she apologized, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “I…I was lost in thought…”

  “That can happen on a beautiful day like this,” Randall said, laying it on thick. “Here, let me get your bag.” He knelt down, making sure to take a long look at her legs on the way, definitely liking what he saw, and picked up her purse. “There you go,” he said, handing it back.

  “Thank you,” she replied, still a bit out of sorts.

  “Now, where are my manners?” Randall asked, reading the next line of a script he’d performed dozens of times before. “I’m Mike,” he lied, offering her his hand. “Mike Detmer.”

  “Lily,” she replied, giving him a shake but no last name. Being a pretty perceptive guy, Randall noticed the way her eyes kept roaming away from his, to the street and back again, like an animal that sensed danger, that wanted to run. But he wasn’t going to let her get away that easily.

  Randall turned his smile up to full wattage. He knew he was a good-looking man with no shortage of charm. Just barely thirty, he was trim and well dressed with a conservative haircut. But the feature that most woman he met noticed was the hint of danger lurking in his dark eyes. Hell, that was what attracted most of them in the first place, that chance to walk on the wild side. It was intoxicating. He liked things raw and rough, but he could be kind, suave, even sophisticated if he needed to be. He had a gift of gab, too, just as likely to talk himself out of trouble as into it.

  “I just got into town for the festival,” Randall said, which was the honest-to-God truth, “and was thinking about getting a bite to eat. Might be nice to have some company. How about I buy you lunch? Make up for bumping into you?”

  He’d been hoping to see a glimmer of a smile, a flicker of curiosity in Lily’s eyes that might end up with them spending the afternoon in a hotel room bed. It had happened before. Instead, her expression soured.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need to get back to work. It was nice to meet you,” she added, a polite formality, and then started to walk away.

  Randall stood there and watched her go, paying particular attention to the way her ass swiveled in her skirt.

  “You win some, you lose some…” he muttered to himself.

  Though he was a bit disappointed, Randall knew that it was probably better this way. If she’d accepted his offer and they had headed off down the sidewalk, there would’ve been trouble. Lots of it. After all, Randall was in
Hooper’s Crossing for a very specific reason. He had a job to do.

  He was there to rob a bank.

  For as long as Randall could remember, he’d liked to steal things. It didn’t matter if it was a kid’s prized marble, an apple at the grocer, a bicycle or car, a family member’s trust, some young girl’s innocence, or a wad of money, he got an electrifying thrill out of taking something that didn’t belong to him. Stealing was a drug coursing through his veins; when he was high on it, he left chaos and confusion in his wake. And Randall was good at it, too. He might escape by the skin of his teeth, dropping out of a window into the dark of night right as a light was turned on, or racing around a corner just as the sound of police sirens rose in the distance.

  But he always got away.

  What Randall was best at, though, was cracking safes. He had an ear for it, literally. Whenever his fingers held a tumbler, spinning it first one way, then another, he swore he could hear the lock fall into place. When he landed on the right number, it was as if an alarm had gone off, sending an electrical jolt coursing down his arm. To this day, he’d yet to meet a safe he couldn’t get into. The criminal who had taken him on as a sort of apprentice was an old con named Tom Muntz, who claimed that he’d once worked with John Dillinger, but by the time his path crossed with Randall’s, he’d been ruined by drink. Tom often claimed that safecracking was a lot like courting a young woman.

  “If you pay attention to her, if you give a listen to what she’s tryin’ to tell you, odds are she’ll give you what you’re after,” he’d said.

  For more than a decade, Randall had hopscotched the country, running whatever cons and jobs would put money in his pocket. He’d stolen cars in Maryland. He had scammed a widow out of her life savings in Kentucky. For almost four months, he’d pretended to be a preacher in Indiana, bilking his naive “followers” for more and more “contributions.” During the war, he had illegally trafficked in gasoline, rubber, and ration cards, always managing to stay one step ahead of the law, as well as the draft board. And he’d cracked safes from Iowa to New Hampshire. He’d been known as Mitchell Givens, Carlton Bow, Freddie Spencer, Boyd Reeder, and another alias he had dusted off that very afternoon, Mike Detmer. But no matter how many crimes he committed, no matter how much money he made, Randall never seemed to have enough.