An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [53]
“How do you make the leap from there to Francis?”
“Put two and two together. As soon as they announced the archives would be merged with Special Collections, we never heard another word from Norah Myrick. Francis more or less took over my position. They claimed I didn’t have the resources to manage the archives properly. They didn’t know what they were talking about.” She waves to someone again. “Just a second.” She walks over to talk to a man.
I recognize him from the library and wave. He doesn’t recognize me. I lean back on the bench and watch a boys’ soccer team. They look like five-year-olds wearing eight-year-olds’ uniforms. A man blows a whistle and the boys crowd around him. The parents sit on blankets or fold-up lawn chairs along the sidelines. When I was in school, I wanted to be on a sports team but I didn’t bother to try out. “You’ll only get hurt,” Papa said. He knew from experience what it was like to be too tall, too skinny and too uncoordinated on the field.
“That was Peter Harrison from circulation,” Edith says. She reaches her arms into the sleeves of her sweater. “Wife’s in chemo. Breast cancer. God help us. Another one.”
“Is that it then about Francis’ second friend?”
She puts her hands on her waist and turns to face me. “You’re some curious, aren’t you? What have you been doing all summer? Tell me.”
A ball rolls under the bench. I throw it out into the field. “Nothing. Why?”
“Did you visit Blackhead by chance?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s an itsy-bitsy world. Can’t keep secrets from Edie.” She nudges me with her shoulder.
“I’m not sure what secrets people in Blackhead have about me.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“What are you getting at, Edith?”
A young girl passes by with a metal detector. Edith throws a toonie in her path. “Thanks, miss,” the girl says.
“You still haven’t answered my question about Blackhead, have you?”
“I bought something at the store, yes.”
“That’s a long way to the corner store when you live on Gower Street.”
The girl with the metal detector goes past again. She points it towards Edith. I throw her what I have in my pocket – a dime and a nickel. She ignores them.
“Let’s get a hotdog before the guy leaves,” Edith says. She grabs my arm to drag me up from the bench. We walk over to the stand and wait in line. We take the two-for-one special, all-dressed. I eat leaning against a tree trunk. A leaf blows into my relish. Someone in the apartment building across the street closes a window. Edith pulls a tissue from her sleeve then wipes the corner of my mouth. “You had a gob of mustard there.” The wind rustles the leaves in the branches above our heads. A young couple rolls up their blanket. They lay their toddler in a stroller and jog across the field. I poke my hands in my pockets to warm them. Edith twines her arm into mine. “Come for supper. We’ll go downtown afterwards, make a night of it. Just as friends. What do you say?”
“I’m really not in the mood. Thanks, Edith.”
She lets go of my arm, looks for something inside her purse, then pulls out her car keys. “Too bad. We would have had a great evening. By the way, you’re not the only gentleman who visits my cousin’s store in Blackhead for baking powder and ladies’ scented soaps.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She looks over her shoulder as she walks towards the cars lining the road. “That’s up to you to decide.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
mis-information services
LONG BEFORE THE END OF October, scarecrows, pumpkins and skeletons sprout like dandelions in front gardens. Cyril tells me about his plans to install speakers in the front windows to play Halloween sound effects. Mercedes puts a stop to it and they settle on miniature pumpkin lights around the front door. “None for me, thanks anyway, Cyril. No, not