The One Where Veronica Breaks into a Library

The One Where Veronica Breaks into a Library

“Where are we going?” Veronica asked, shutting the front door behind her.
“It’s a surprise,” Seth said.
“What kind of surprise?”
“Pretty good, I think.”
“So not dinner with your parents?”
“Why would that be a surprise?”
“Your mom could make tuna surprise?”
Seth made a face. “Are we out of sight of your house yet?”
“Sounds exciting.” Veronica looked over her shoulder. The house was about a thousand yards away. There were no street lights. “We’re good,” she said.
“Excellent.” Seth grabbed her hand and pulled her off the gravel road into the tall grass.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s a short cut.”
“My shoes will get muddy.”
“Since when have you been a girl who cared about getting her shoes dirty?” True enough.
Seth pulled Veronica through the tall grass. The field was long but shallow, only a half acre across. The far side of the field was the sin side of Constitution Avenue: bar, hotel, and post office.
The night air was cold. Veronica felt the blood drain away from her face and fingers, chilling the flesh. There were no clouds. The stars punctured the velvety night sky with brief glimpses of ancient light.
Behind the post office but not yet out of the field, Seth stopped. “Okay,” he said, putting a hand in a back pocket. “Put this on.” He handed her a red bandana.
“Are you serious?”
“Never more. Put it on.”
“No.”
“Come on. I want you to be totally surprised.” The way he spoke, the words and their accompanying emotions rolled across his face like dark clouds rolling across a sunny sky.
“Fine.” She tied on the bandana.
“Is it tight?”
“Tight enough.”
“No peaking.”
A large, warm hand clasped hers and cautiously pulled her forward. The bandana smelled of Seth’s hair products.
They walked forward another twenty steps. Veronica counted. He halted. Veronica bumped into him. “Careful,” he said quietly.
“Why are we whispering?”
“Because what we are about to do is frowned upon in the state of Kansas.”
Veronica felt an involuntary, electric thrill surge up her body.
There was the sound of wood scrapping against wood and then a window being opened.
“Okay, take a step up on the box.” His hands guided her feet. Everywhere flesh touched, she felt involuntary excitement and ache.
“Okay, now I need you to crawl in through here.”
“This would be easier if I wasn’t blindfolded.”
“Tough.”
Veronica put her hands forward and felt a rough edge of wood, a window sill littered with peeling paint. She lifted one leg and pulled herself through. On the other side of the window was a large, flat surface. She slid across and sat on the edge, legs dangling impatiently.
“Can I take it off now?”
“No.”
“Why not.”
“Can’t you just wait?”
“No. Come on. Hurry up.”
Lips pressed against hers, quick and clumsy in the dark. “Hold your horses,” he said.
Fine. It was very cold and felt colder than the outside, as if she was waiting impatiently in a large meat locker.
“Doesn’t this place have heat?”
“Um, not really.”
The sound of something else being hauled in through the window.
“Okay. Ready?”
“Oh yeah.” She removed the blindfold.
The room was cold and seemed cavernous in the faint light provided by the lantern. Even through Veronica had not set foot in this building in five years, she knew it immediately.
“The library,” she said quietly. To say it too loudly would be inviting fortune to take the library away again. It was a magical place that existed on the past and somehow she was in its foreign country and the no one had been alerted to her presence.
The Sun City library was boarded up five years ago due to a shrinking tax base. Not enough money for books and librarians.
One table was pushed against the wall, under the window she had crawled through. On the table rested a cooler, a blanket, a lantern, and Seth’s guitar case.
She approached the shelves slowly, as if stalking a prey that might scatter if they saw her. The books were on the shelves, neatly arranged and waiting, as if there had been no end of the world, no library free world outside.
The entire library felt that way. The chairs were pushed under tables. Veronica ran her finger along the backs of the chair, dragging a trail through thick dust. Heavy velvet curtains drawn against the boarded windows. In the middle of the room was a circular desk. Cards were still in drawers. Stamps rested atop dried ink pads. Pens were in a cup and bookmarks were stacked neatly in a little pile. The air about the place was that it was waiting to open for business in the morning, not as if it had been abandoned.
“This is amazing.”
“So how long will it take you to read everything in here?”
Veronica couldn’t find the words so she threw herself at Seth, wrapping her arms around him in a fierce embrace.
“A month? Two months? Tell me it’ll keep you busy until the summer?”
“It’s wonderful! This is the best gift anyone could give anyone ever!”
“That might be over doing it.”
“It’s the perfect gift for me.”
He kissed her. It curled her toes. One time. Her body was aching for sex, crying out in a primordial way that kept her up at night. His hand pressed against her lower back, holding her against him. This was it. She could feel undeniable momentum and knew there was only one destination. Finally.
One time couldn’t hurt, if they were careful. Just like that, Veronica’s convictions to remain a virgin and not get knocked up were compromised with a single thought.
Seth pulled away. Veronica stood there dumbly, her mouth working like a fish gasping air. “Don’t you want to know what’s in the cooler?” he asked.
Derailed. Again. Damn it. Why bother to bring her to a dark, secluded library with a blanket and every opportunity of getting lucky if he was only going to talk about what was in the cooler.
“What’s in the cooler?” she asked, trying not to let disappointment and frustration color the tone of her voice.
“A feast. A movable feast, if you will.” He smiled like the sun breaking out from behind clouds. His gazed fixed on hers. Disappointment vanished. She couldn’t stay mad him, not when his gaze made her felt like the center of the universe, as if she were the sun and not the other way around.
From the cooler emerge a feast of cold fried chicken and cans of beer. A blanket was spread across the floor in true picnic fashion. The lantern flicked across the dusty spines of books, casting shadows on the ceiling. It was perfect.
“So how did you find this place?” Veronica cracked the lid of the can.
“It’s the library,” Seth said in a tone of voice that implied her question was silly.
“I mean, how did you find a way to get in? How did you know the books were just left here?”
“I didn’t. In the midst of petty vandalism and general no-goodery, I noticed the plywood over the window was loose.”
“So naturally, you crawled in through the window.”
“Naturally.”
“Thank you.”
Seth smiled like the clouds rolling across the face of the sun, casting shadows on the prairie. He said, “What are you going to read first?”
“Steinbeck.”
“All this effort for Steinbeck? He’s in the school library.”
“Just The Grapes of Wrath. He wrote more than one book and I plan on reading them.”
“After Steinbeck?”
“Don’t know. I think I’m might start with that shelf over there and work my way across.”
“Why not just start with the letter A?”
“Libraries aren’t arranged that way. Haven’t you ever heard of Dewey decimal?”
“Nope. This is the most time I’ve ever been in a…library, did you call it?”
Veronica threw the empty beer can at his head. He ducked the missile neatly. “I hope you don’t plan on littering,” he said.
She shook her head. She wouldn’t’ dream of littering in this, the most sacred of places.
Seth removed the guitar from the case. “I’ve been working on this, so tell me what you think…”