Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [214]
Sam smiled. 'I take it you're the librarian?'
'I am she,' Mrs Lortz said, and smiled at him. But Sam didn't think her eyes were smiling; her eyes seemed to be watching him carefully, almost coldly. 'And you are ... ?'
'Sam Peebles.'
'Oh yes! Real estate and insurance! That's your game!'
'Guilty as charged.'
'I'm sorry you found the main section of the library deserted - you must have thought we were closed and someone left the door open by mistake.'
'Actually,' he said, 'the idea did cross my mind.'
'From two until seven there are three of us on duty,' said Mrs Lortz. 'Two is when the schools begin to let out, you know - the grammar school at two, the middle school at two-thirty, the high school at two-fortyfive. The children are our most faithful clients, and the most welcome, as far as I am concerned. I love the little ones. I used to have an all-day assistant, but last year the Town Council cut our budget by eight hundred dollars and . . .' Mrs Lortz put her hands together and mimed a bird flying away. It was an amusing, charming gesture.
So why, Sam wondered, aren't I charmed or amused?
The posters, he supposed. He was still trying to make Red Riding Hood, the screaming child in the car, and the grim-eyed Library Policeman jibe with this smiling small-town librarian.
She put her left hand out - a small hand, as plump and round as the rest of her -with perfect unstudied confidence. He looked at the third finger and saw it was ringless; she wasn't Mrs Lortz after all. The fact of her spinsterhood struck him as utterly typical, utterly small-town. Almost a caricature, really. Sam shook it.
'You haven't been to our library before, have you, Mr Peebles?'
'No, I'm afraid not. And please make it Sam.' He did not know if he really wanted to be Sam to this woman or not, but he was a businessman in a small town - a salesman, when you got right down to it - and the offer of his first name was automatic.
'Why, thank you, Sam.'
He waited for her to respond by offering her own first name, but she only looked at him expectantly.
'I've gotten myself into a bit of a bind,' he said. 'Our scheduled speaker tonight at Rotary Club had an accident, and -'
'Oh, that's too bad!'
'For me as well as him. I got drafted to take his place.'
'Oh-oh!' Ms Lortz said. Her tone was alarmed, but her eyes crinkled with amusement. And still Sam did not find himself warming to her, although he was a person who warmed up to other people quickly (if superficially) as a rule; the kind of man who had few close friends but felt compelled nonetheless to start conversations with strangers in elevators.
'I wrote a speech last night and this morning I read it to the young woman who takes dictation and types up my correspondence -'
'Naomi Higgins, I'll bet.'
'Yes - how did you know that?'
'Naomi is a regular. She borrows a great many romance novels - Jennifer Blake, Rosemary Rogers, Paul Sheldon, people like that.' She lowered her voice and said, 'She says they're for her mother, but actually I think she reads them herself.'
Sam laughed. Naomi did have the dreamy eyes of a closet romance reader.
'Anyway, I know she's what would be called an office temporary in a big city. I imagine that here in Junction City she's the whole secretarial pool. It seemed reasonable that she was the young woman of whom you spoke.'
'Yes. She liked my speech - or so she said - but she thought it was a bit dry. She suggested - '
'The Speaker's Companion, I'll bet!'
'Well, she couldn't remember the exact title, but that sure sounds right.' He paused, then asked a little anxiously: 'Does it have jokes?'
'Only three hundred pages of them,' she said. She reached out her right hand - it was as innocent of rings as her left - and tugged at his sleeve with it. 'Right this way.' She led him toward the door by the sleeve. 'I am going to solve all your problems, Sam. I only hope it won't