The man kneeling in the bus aisle looked up at Celia and said, “Would you mind holding that door? I’m about to do something badly.”
She had expected Imogen. She had expected, at most, to shake hands with a few volunteers and pretend she was a person who had slept.
Instead there was a cardboard box jammed beneath a bus seat, a man with a screwdriver, and a small silver-haired woman watching him with open dissatisfaction.
“He thinks removing the seat will help,” the woman told Celia.
“Removing the seat will help,” he said. “Getting the box out is the point.”
“The seat has to stay.”
Celia held the door. Rain blew against the back of her jeans. The depot was an old maintenance building at the edge of town, full of cold air and the smell of rubber. She’d nearly stayed in the car when she saw the bus. A bus was large. A bus suggested a whole new collection of things she knew nothing about.
“What’s in the box?” she asked.
“Curtain samples,” the woman said.
“We don’t need curtains,” the man said.
“We need to find out whether we need curtains.”
Celia stepped farther in, allowing the door to fold shut behind her. He had a long face, dark untidy hair flattened on one side, and a damp patch on the shoulder of his navy sweater. There was nothing imposing about him while he crouched with one knee wedged against a seat support. He looked like an otherwise sensible person who had made a mistake and refused to abandon it.
“May I?” she asked.
He shifted backward. She crouched, held the loose cardboard flap out of the way and slid the box lengthwise through the gap. It came free with an unpleasant scrape.
“You were pulling it across,” she said. “The corner was catching.”
He looked at the empty space, then at the screwdriver. “I was hoping no one would see that.”
“I saw it,” the older woman said.
“Yes, Mom. I knew you did.”
Celia laughed. It escaped too loudly in the enclosed space. She hadn’t expected to make that sound today.
He smiled at her, not triumphantly, simply pleased. His front teeth were a little uneven. “Adrian Sato. This is Margaret.”
“Celia Bellamy.”
“Our librarian,” Margaret said, shaking her hand with both of hers.
“Not yet.”
“Not officially. Imogen had to take a call. She’ll be here shortly. There’s tea, except Adrian has moved the kettle.”
“It was under a leak.”
“Which we had put a bucket beneath.”
Celia took off her coat and draped it over a seat. They were standing in an ordinary single-deck bus with most of its seats still installed. Blue cloth, poles worn smooth by hands, windows misted at the edges. On one side somebody had taped up drawings of shelves. At the back was a little square marked QUIET CORNER.
It wasn’t much like a library. That was what made her want to walk all the way through.
“They’ll take the rest of these seats out?” she asked.
Adrian set the screwdriver on a newspaper. “Most. Professionally. After today, I think I’ll stop demonstrating.”
“You could empty the boxes before they’re moved,” Celia said. “If you’re looking for something useful.”
Margaret beamed. “Excellent.”
Adrian looked at Celia. “I deserved that.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, you did. Where do you want them?”
For the next twenty minutes she forgot why she’d had to borrow her sister’s jeans. There were books in crates beneath a folding table, some donated, some rescued from the school, some hopelessly unsuitable. Adrian carried crates to the middle of the bus while Celia sorted. Margaret had opinions about all of them.
“That one was very popular when I taught,” she said, handing Celia a hardback with a split spine.
“It’s missing the last forty pages.”
“Oh. That would be disappointing.”
Adrian opened a book of experiments and a dead moth fell onto his shoe.
“That one’s practical,” he said.
Celia reached to take it, smiling despite herself. Their fingers touched around the cover. His hand was warm from carrying things. She noticed that with a disconcerting clarity and moved to make room for the next crate.
Yesterday her engagement had ended. Today she should not be noticing anyone’s hands.
Imogen arrived with a phone at her ear and a paper bag under one arm. She was compact, brisk, and dressed as though every pocket contained something necessary. She finished her call, apologized once for being late and put the bag down.
“I’ve bought breakfast for people who claim they’ve already eaten. Help yourselves. Celia, can we talk?”
She led her down the bus steps to a small office overlooking the depot. There was a heater beneath the desk and a faded aerial photograph of Saltmere on the wall. The harbor looked almost tropical in the old summer light.
“You know what we’re trying to do?” Imogen asked.
“Serve the three temporary sites until the school library reopens.”
“That’s the beginning. We have a seed grant through December. If it works, we’d like to continue something afterward. But I won’t promise you a permanent job I haven’t funded.”
Celia liked her more for saying it.
Imogen explained the paid temporary assignment, the school’s agreement, the ordinary arrangements Celia would need to confirm. Collections, programs, children. A driver would drive the bus. Specialists would make it safe and accessible. Celia would not be expected to fix an engine because she knew where to shelve a book about one.
“Why you?” Imogen asked.
It was a reasonable question. Celia had prepared a reasonable answer on the way: qualifications, experience, knowing the pupils. Instead she pictured the school library with the water halfway up the low shelves, a book of dog stories floating face-down beneath the desk.
“Because when we moved the children, we thought first about where they’d sit and how they’d get lunch. We had to. But then I saw a boy at the temporary site carrying the same comic for four days because he’d left it in his backpack before the flood. He told me he didn’t mind that the ending was torn out. He’d made up another one.”
Imogen folded her hands.
“I want him to have another comic,” Celia said. “I know it isn’t the whole job.”
“It is a fair amount of the point.”
Through the glass, Adrian moved past carrying an armload of curtain samples. Margaret followed him, talking. His mother had dust on the back of her coat. Celia wondered whether he had spent his morning this way willingly or had been drafted.
“You’ve brought ideas?” Imogen asked.
Celia pulled out her notebook. She had almost left it at Ruth’s because it seemed too eager.
They discussed a collection children could choose from without spending half their short stop asking an adult’s permission. No display so precious that touching it was an offense. Places for picture books that wouldn’t send a small child face-first into the floor when the bus turned a corner. Imogen questioned two of her suggestions and wrote down a third.
When they had finished, Celia was warm from the heater and the unfamiliar pleasure of wanting the conversation to continue.
“Go home and think,” Imogen said. “We can speak again Monday. There’s no glory in accepting work without considering the hours.”
“I don’t have much else on my calendar.”
It sounded sadder aloud than she’d intended. Imogen did not tilt her head or ask a personal question. She handed her a page with the terms and said, “Then decide whether you want this on it.”
Outside the office, Adrian had found the kettle. It stood on a crate far from the leak, plugged into a socket someone had checked. He held up an empty mug as Celia came down the steps.
“Coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
“I’m going to have one. Unless you’d rather escape before Mom finds the swatches again.”
“I should probably go.”
“All right.” He put down the mug. “Is it the coffee or the company?”
She looked at him. There was no grievance in the question, but his expression had lost some of its ease.
“The coffee,” she admitted. The smell had begun bothering her three days ago. She couldn’t say that without inviting another question. “And I haven’t slept very well.”
“There’s tea. Peppermint, something with a picture of a mountain, and ginger. I can’t promise the mountain is in there.”
“Ginger would be lovely.”
He tore the packet badly and had to fish the little paper tag out from beneath the crate. Celia watched him with a growing, unwelcome fondness for his competence at the wrong things. He had restored the loose hinge of the folding table without fuss. A tea packet had beaten him.
They took their mugs to the open depot doorway. Beyond the yard, sea mist blurred the trees. A gull walked along the roof of a parked van with the proprietary air of someone inspecting an inheritance.
“Do you live here?” she asked.
“Part of the time. My mother does. I’m usually in Seattle.”
“So she made you come.”
“She told me she’d be lifting boxes. I came to prevent that. So far I’ve watched her lift boxes while I broke furniture.”
“You didn’t break it.”
“You arrived in time.”
He drank his coffee, leaning against the doorway, looking out rather than requiring her to entertain him. His hair had dried in a little ridge above one ear. Celia had the odd, intimate thought that she could smooth it with her palm.
She looked away, annoyed at herself.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“I’m a school librarian.”
“I know. I meant when there aren’t children asking you questions.”
She opened her mouth and found nothing ready. She cooked, remembered birthdays, organized Quentin’s mother’s lunch, waited for travel schedules before buying tickets. She didn’t want to hear herself list those things.
“I like the beach in bad weather,” she said finally. “Not dangerous weather. Just enough to make everyone else stay home. And old movies where women wear implausible clothes to buy groceries.”
“Hats?”
“Always hats.”
“I’d like a job that required a hat.”
“You’ve just spent an hour inside a bus. Driver’s hat.”
“Can’t drive it. Apparently ordinary licenses don’t cover enthusiasm.”
She laughed again. He looked at her then, his mouth still curved, and her laughter faltered beneath the pleasure of being watched.
“What about you?” she asked too quickly.
“I like boats. I don’t know enough to sail one. I buy books about it and then feel productive.”
“That’s one of our principal services.”
He laughed properly, a little surprised, and she liked that most of all.
Margaret emerged behind them carrying her own cup. “Adrian, before you go, will you tell Nora where you put those samples? She thinks I’ve lost them.”
“You said you didn’t want them.”
“That was before she came.”
He closed his eyes briefly. Celia hid her smile in her mug.
“I’ll return it,” he told her, pointing toward the tea.
“I can do that.”
“I know.” He took the empty mug when she held it out. “Will you be here Monday?”
“I think so.”
“Then perhaps I’ll improve before you see me again.”
There was an invitation in it, light enough that she could choose to miss it. She didn’t.
“Don’t improve too much,” she said. “Margaret needs someone to blame.”
She walked to her car feeling the damp settle into her borrowed jeans. At the door she looked back. Adrian had set the mugs down and was listening to his mother with his head bent toward hers. Then he glanced up and saw Celia still there.
He lifted a hand.
She lifted hers before she could think of a reason not to.
The interview page lay on the passenger seat. Celia set her notebook beside it and turned on the engine. She had arrived afraid of being asked too much. For the first time in months, she drove away wishing she’d stayed a little longer.