Chapter 12

"Now, if we remain very, very quiet, we may actually be able to observe the highly ritualized mating dance of the lawyer and the librarian. The incredibly slow mating dance of the lawyer and the librarian. These two first saw each other more than fifteen minutes ago, when the lawyer entered the library. He quickly scanned the room, and then did a double-take when he noticed the librarian sitting behind the circulation desk. Never having hunted in this territory before, he found himself a seat in the periodical reading area, which affords an excellent view of the circulation desk. He picked up a magazine — Time, it appears — and began flipping mindlessly through the pages.

"The librarian noticed him almost immediately after he entered, her senses fully attuned to the presence of the male of her species. There, did you see that? She looks his way again. He looks back. She drops her eyes. He looks back at the magazine. She looks over again. He, however, is concentrating on the magazine, which he has now finished. He puts it back in the rack, and absent-mindedly selects another one. The extent of his interest in the Librarian is now clear to the trained eye. Only now, back in his seat, does he notice that the magazine he's picked is Tiger Beat. A mistake. Can he return it? No, it's too late. What will she think if she sees it? But she notices only that his attention has been diverted. She frowns, and she pushes a pen off her desk. Success! He's watching once again. She stands up, smoothes her skirt, walks around the desk, and picks the pen up with a very lady-like knee bend. She returns to her seat, having been under his careful gaze the entire time. She looks up to see him looking at her. She smiles, he smiles back, and they look away."

"Is this going to take much longer?" Mrs. Parsons asked.

"I'm sorry?" I whispered, still using my nature documentary voice.

"I could have another heart attack before they get together," she complained, looking at her watch.

"You want me to give 'em a shove?"

"How?"

I smiled at her and stood up, immediately attracting the attention of both the lawyer and the librarian. It was another holiday — President's Day, this time — and I was trying to finish my paper on Moby Dick. I had a little bit of an advantage over the other kids in the class on this particular topic, since none them were also in my Religion class. Ishmael was not only the name used by Melville's character, of course, but it was also the name of the first son of Abraham in the book of Genesis, a book on which we had spent a good bit of time in Mrs. Jenkins' class.

That only got me so far, of course. As Mrs. Palmer had pointed out, anybody could look up the name on the Internet. So I decided to go a little further, and look up a book that Mrs. Jenkins had recommended as "supplemental reading" on her syllabus, something called an exegesis — I swear it's a real word — by some guy named Walter Thomas. It was, thankfully, available in the library, and I had arrived there around one o'clock. I had exchanged a few words with Lynn, who confessed that her book club had been disappointingly feminine in composition, not at all what her girlfriend had promised. Then I had found the book I wanted and settled down to work.

Mrs. Parsons had entered about an hour later. I stared at her a little too long, struck by the fact that she seemed to be at the library every day that I was. Maybe she came every day. Or maybe she had just gone through last Monday's book pretty quickly. I had waved to her, and she had waved back. We were library pals now.

A half-hour after that, I had looked up to see Bob Hastings, my good friend Dutch van Carlen's lawyer, walk into the place and look around like he'd never been here before. His gaze had lingered on Lynn Edwards and then he had taken a seat among the periodicals with his Time magazine. Mrs. Parsons and I had watched them separately for ten minutes or so, and then she had sat down next to me.

"Good match, don't you think?" she had said, indicating the two of them.

That's when I had started narrating my faux documentary, much to Mrs. Parson's delight. She was right, though; at this rate, we had a better chance of an earthquake throwing those two together than of one of them making the first move. I walked toward the circulation desk, distracting Lynn in the middle of yet another of her furtive looks toward the periodical area.

"Can I help you?" she asked in a louder than usual voice as I neared the desk.

I smiled and walked around the desk into the back office.

"Patrick?" Lynn called out.

I returned with her coat, glancing over to see Mrs. Parsons nearly convulsed with laughter.

"What are you doing?" Lynn asked as I passed by on my way to the periodicals. I figured that was one of those rhetorical questions, because by that point it should have been pretty clear to her what I was doing.

"Patrick," she hissed, "come back here."

"Mr. Sterling," Bob stood up and offered his hand.

"Mr. Hastings," I smiled as we shook. "Enjoying your magazine?"

He flushed as we both looked down at the Tiger Beat in his hands.

"I, uh, you see —" he stammered.

"Uh-huh," I said.

Lynn joined us as I took the magazine from Bob's hand.

"Patrick, what are you doing?" she asked me in a fake sweet voice. She reached for the coat only to find that I'd thrust it into Bob Hastings' now empty hand.

"What are you doing?" Bob echoed, but a smile began to appear on his lips. Lynn pulled at the coat; Bob refused to let it go.

"Well, frankly, Mrs. Parsons," I nodded at her, still laughing over at our table, "is afraid she'll have a heart attack before you two finally decide to actually speak to one another, so we thought I should give you a bit of a push. Stop trying to take the coat."

This was directed to Lynn, who finally stopped trying to tug it free of Bob's grip.

"Hold it for her," I directed him.

"Slip it on," I told her.

"Now, there's a coffee shop down the street," I said. "Go find out if you want to date."

"But the circulation desk —" Lynn offered one final protest, although she was already fastening the coat.

"I can probably handle it for twenty minutes or so," I said. "Now go. Come on, there's the door."

I shooed them in that direction and bowed to Mrs. Parsons as they left. She was silently applauding me.

"Well done, young man," she said as I collected my book and papers from the table to take them to the desk.

"Just call me Cupid," I smiled. "Only five days after Valentine's Day, too."

Ten minutes later, she was helping me figure out how to check out the murder mystery she had selected when the telephone rang.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Lynn?" came the low, almost whispered response.

"She stepped out," I said. "Can I help you?"

"This is Dottie Simmons," she said. "Do you know when she'll be back?"

"I'm afraid I have no idea," I said. "But I'll be happy to help if I can, Mrs. Simmons."

"Do you know where she is?" she asked.

"Do I know where Ms. Edwards is?" I repeated. "I, uh, can you hold on just a minute, ma'am?"

Mrs. Parsons had been mouthing something to me.

"What?" I asked her with an exaggerated sigh.

"Is that Dottie?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Tell her we sent Lynn off to try to get her laid," Mrs. Parsons said. "Tell her she's been kind of crabby lately."

I handed the phone to Mrs. Parsons. That kind of message was not in the scope of my duties. A minute or two later, Mrs. Parsons returned the phone. Apparently answering the next part of the call was my job.

By the time that Lynn returned twenty minutes later, her hand in Bob's arm, Mrs. Parsons was long gone.

"Did anyone call?" Lynn asked.

"Mrs. Simmons," I nodded.

"Oh, my gosh," she said. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," I said. "They had a birthday party for Ralph yesterday, so she couldn't call then."

Lynn turned to Bob.

"This lovely old lady who lives in the retirement home does the New York Times crossword every Sunday," she said, "and takes a lot of pride in finishing it without using a dictionary. But she always gets stuck on something, so she had her daughter get her a cell phone. She takes it into the bathroom every Sunday afternoon at 3:30 and calls me up for help. I was going to call the home tonight if I didn't hear from her. Were you able to help her?" She looked at me anxiously.

"Yeah," I smiled. "The clue was Castor's twin."

"So you told her Pollux?" Lynn asked.

"No, I told her Olive," I said with what I thought was well-earned sarcasm. "I thought she meant castor oil. Oh, gosh. I hope I have not screwed things up. Whatever will she do with the extra space? Of course I told her Pollux."

Lynn stuck her tongue out at me, and Bob Hastings had a good laugh at the two of us.

"Excuse me," Lynn said. "I just didn't know today's high school students were that familiar with mythology."

I just grinned at her. I knew them as Cammie Rowe's stars. If they were also characters in mythology, that was fine, too.

"So, are we dating?" I asked.

They smiled at each other.

"Mrs. Parsons wanted me to call and tell her," I said.

"All right, then, yes," Lynn said. "Friday night."

"And thanks," Bob added.

"Sure," I said. "Glad to be of help. Now if you'll excuse me, I hear Ishmael calling."

"As in 'Call me, Ishmael?'" Bob punned.

"Exactly," I said.

I left around five and spent until midnight putting the paper together, interrupted only by a phone call from Tanya, who said she would definitely have rather spent the weekend with me. The next day Jill was standing in the kitchen door while Jeanne and I finished breakfast.

"Can you guys give me a ride to school?" she asked.

"Sure," Jeanne said. "Isn't Andy coming?"

"I don't know," Jill sounded worried. "I'd just rather not ride with him."

"So you mean he might show up here any way?" I asked. "And lean on his horn?"

Jill shrugged.

We all piled into the Civic, Jill in the passenger seat and me in the back. I was at my locker after second period, dumping off my Government and History books and retrieving my Melville paper when I saw a meaty hand planted on the locker next to mine and sensed that its owner wanted a word with me.

He was vaguely familiar. Jesse Tasker or Tacker, something like that. One of my tormenters from ninth grade. From his size, two inches taller and 20 or 30 pounds heavier than me, I figured him for a football player.

"Sterling," he said in a low voice.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Message from Andy," he said.

"What are you, his little message boy?" I asked flippantly.

He looked around and grabbed my arm.

"Did you tell your sister not to hang around Andy any more?" he suggested.

"No," I said slowly. "I think I might have implied that he was a bigoted racist, but I don't tell my sister what to do. Maybe she just inferred that hanging around him wouldn't be a good idea any more."

"Well, maybe you'd better tell her different," he said. He was starting to sound like somebody from a 1940's gangster movie. I grinned at him.

"So you mean Andy isn't a bigoted racist?" I asked him.

He paused. For much too long. The bell went off.

"Sorry," I said as I pulled free. "Gotta go. Have a nice day, Jesse."

"Andy's gonna be angry," he said to my back as I sprinted down the hall toward Mrs. Palmer's class.

Mrs. Palmer smiled as I knocked on the closed door of her classroom.

"Mister Sterling," she said, opening it but standing in the middle to prevent me from passing. "I was afraid you were going to break your record."

"No, ma'am," I gasped, breathing hard.

"Paper?" she held out her hand as she continued to bar the door.

I handed it to her and she slowly walked back to her desk, scanning the paper as she went. I slid into my seat.

"Your thesis is that his name wasn't Ishmael?" she turned back to me with surprise.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"Does anyone else agree with Mr. Sterling?" she asked the rest of the class. "That Ishmael is a pseudonym?"

They did not. I heard Missy Josephs' snort from behind me.

"Miss Josephs," Mrs. Palmer had heard it, too, "why not?"

"Because," Missy sputtered.

"Because?" Mrs. Palmer asked.

"Because he said to call him Ishmael," she blurted. "Why would he say that..."

"If it wasn't his name?" Mrs. Palmer finished. "Well, perhaps Mr. Sterling has an answer. I shall look forward to reading his paper. Of course, we'll never know if he's right or not."

She gave me a big smile, and turned the discussion to the five chapters we were supposed to have read over the weekend — we were up to chapter twenty now, only a hundred and ten from our ultimate goal. In Astronomy, Mr. Carruthers handed out our observatory assignments. Each pair of lab partners was to report to the school's observatory on a specific Friday or Saturday night. Because Cammie and I had different areas of the sky, we were given two nights: on March 3, two Saturdays from now, we'd be looking at Cammie's area, and on April 13, a Friday, we'd be observing mine. In the meantime, of course, we were free to check out either of the school's smaller telescopes any time we wanted.

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A Stitch in Time

Marsh Alien

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