The Little Library Page 3

  You could buy premade libraries or kits, but Elliott was relatively handy with a hammer and saw. Besides, this would give them the chance for some brotherly bonding time, which might help ease Ladd’s fears.

  “I think we’ll start with something a little plainer, though.” Elliott handed him the plans for the model he intended to make.

  “Probably wise.” Ladd looked over the construction details. “But why are we doing this?”

  “It’ll help me get rid of a little of my . . . excess.”

  Ladd cast a significant look at the books piled everywhere around them and then held up the plans. “This thing’s gonna hold, what? Maybe twenty books max? That doesn’t even make a tiny dent.”

  “It’s a start, okay?”

  After a pause, Ladd shrugged philosophically. “Fine. I guess anything’s a help.”

  Elliott had prepared everything before Ladd arrived. He’d gone to the home improvement store and, when he returned with supplies, had parked the car in the driveway. He’d dragged his workbench into the middle of the garage so he and Ladd would have more space to maneuver. And he’d set out all the tools they’d need. That was satisfying in itself; he hadn’t really used any of his tools since he and Ladd had completed the major house renovations.

  With the White Stripes playing in the background, Elliott and Ladd soon settled into a comfortable routine. They were well practiced at this kind of thing, even if they hadn’t worked together lately. When they were kids, they used to draft elaborate designs—miniature castles, gravity racers, space ships—and build them from plywood and scraps. Elliott had usually had the patience for the intricate finish painting, while Ladd had climbed their creations or rode them down the street to test their integrity. Multiple trips to the urgent care center hadn’t stopped them. And when a grown-up Elliott bought a house that had been trashed by renters, Ladd had been happy to help him fix it up.

  “So what’s really the deal with this library?” Ladd penciled a line onto a board.

  Elliott was trying to find the right size drill bit. “I told you. To get rid of—”

  “Bullshit.”

  Fine. “I don’t know. It just . . . seemed like something new, I guess. Something that wasn’t just me feeling sorry for myself.”

  “I don’t think you are, really. Feeling sorry for yourself, I mean. Hey, where’s your router?”

  Elliott pointed at a shelf. “If I’m not feeling sorry for myself, what am I doing?”

  At first Ladd didn’t answer. He fetched the router, plugged it into an extension cord, and set up the jig on the workbench. Then, tongue peeking slightly between his lips, he carefully cut a dado into the plywood. Holding the wood up, he blew away the bits of sawdust, inspected the groove, and nodded with satisfaction. “You’re blaming yourself,” he finally said.

  “For what?”

  “For not being perfect. For doing some dumb shit. El, I know you hate to admit it, but you are not some kind of . . . advanced being. You make mistakes sometimes. Welcome to humankind.”

  “I don’t think I’m advanced.” Elliott scowled.

  “No, but you think that just because you’re super smart, you can’t do dumb shit. But you can. You do. Everybody does. I bet Einstein fucked things up too, now and then.” He glanced up from the wood, which he’d set back on the workbench. “You gotta forgive yourself, man.”

  Elliott finally found the right drill bit and set the others aside. “Since when did you become a shrink?” he asked sourly.

  “Since they got me teaching psychology this semester. Incidentally, you want amusement? Try discussing penis envy with thirty-five high school juniors.”

  “Ugh.”

  “No, it’s fun.”

  It didn’t take them much longer to assemble the library’s main structure. They still needed to wait for the glue to dry before they could paint it, and in the meantime they would dig the hole for the support post. But first Elliott fetched a couple of bottles of beer. Ladd stood and drank his while Elliott cleaned up the debris from their project.

  Just as Elliott was about to propose ordering pizza, the mail truck stopped at the end of the driveway and the driver got out, carrying a box. “Wish I could offer you some beer,” Elliott said as the carrier handed over the box.

  “Me too! I’m tired of the heat and ready for cooler weather for sure.”

  “Can I get you a bottle of water?”

  Smiling, he shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m good.” He walked back to his truck and drove away.

  The box contained part of Elliott’s purchase from the previous day—the flag and the metal stand. Ladd watched with amusement while Elliott unwrapped and assembled them. “Flag-waving now?”

  “Just decorating.” With Ladd trailing along behind, Elliott walked to the front of the house, considered for a moment, and then stuck the flag into the soft soil of the flower garden. It looked good. He turned to Ladd. “That asshole neighbor insisted I take down the Dirty Hoe sign you gave me.”

  “Why?”

  “It violates some kind of stupid rule.”

  “Seriously? And the flag’s okay?”

  “It had better be.” Elliott muttered threats about the ACLU under his breath.

  They finally ordered and ate a pizza—washing it down with another beer—and then, with the sun still searingly warm, they fetched the posthole digger and began to excavate.

  “I fucking hate hardpan,” Ladd said when it was his turn.

  “It hates us too.” Despite wearing heavy gloves, Elliott had developed a blister on his palm. It stung when he flexed his hand.

  Ladd paused, leaned the digger’s handle against his leg, and peeled off his shirt, tossing it aside before returning to his task. When they were little kids, he’d been somewhat chubby, but the fat had turned to heavy muscle as he traveled through his teens. He’d ended up a high school sports star. Now, in addition to teaching whichever classes the principal threw his way, he coached the school football and baseball teams, tasks that kept him in excellent shape.

  Always taller than Ladd, Elliott had been skinny up until college—the stereotypical string-bean nerd. He’d eventually taken up running with a bit of light weight-lifting on the side, but he remained lean. John used to say he liked Elliott’s long, wiry body. But then, John had said a lot of things.

  Ladd grunted as he worked the posthole digger. “Did I mention you’re joining us for dinner next Saturday?”

  “With that Kyle guy, I take it?”

  “Yep. No excuses. We’re going to that Cajun Vietnamese place.”

  “Seriously? You want me to eat a crab boil on a first date? First dates should never involve bibs and plastic gloves.”

  “That’s kinky.” Ladd flashed a grin. “And anyway, it’s not a date, remember? It’s a noncommittal social experience.”

  Elliott snorted and was going to tell Ladd exactly what he could do with his social experience, but then he spied someone turning the corner onto his block. It was that hot guy from the greenbelt, again wearing a tank top and slowly walking with his cane. Ladd didn’t notice—he was too busy swearing at the resistant soil—but Elliott waved when the man drew closer.

  “Hi,” the guy said. He paused on the sidewalk nearby, his gaze traveling between Elliott and Ladd. He had an odd expression Elliott couldn’t read. But he sounded pleasant enough when he chuckled and gestured at the hole in the lawn. “Digging for gold or bodies?”

  “Neither.” Elliott hoped. “At least I don’t think so. Unless they built the subdivision on top of an old burial ground.”

  “They’re here!” Ladd chimed in, using a spooky high-pitched voice.

  They all laughed. “For your sake, I’ll hope for gold,” said the man. Then he gestured at the rainbow flag. “Are you installing a larger version of that?” He was smiling as if the notion made him happy.

  Elliott shook his head. “Nope. At least not today. Hey, I’m Elliott Thompson, by the way. The big galoot over there is Ladd.”
>
  “Simon Odisho.” He shook hands with Elliott, and Elliott pretended the contact neither hurt his blister nor made him feel a bit giddy. Ladd just waved a gloved hand. “I’ll let you guys get back to your excavating,” Simon said. Then he pointed at his knee. “I’ve got two miles to go on this thing today.” After a few short pleasantries, he hobbled away.

  “You can put your tongue back in your mouth,” Ladd said. At least he had waited until Simon was out of earshot.

  “I’m not—”

  “You can’t protest while you’re still watching him, man.”

  With a twinge of regret, Elliott turned away. “He has a nice ass,” he mumbled.

  ***

  It wasn’t until the next day, Sunday, that the paint was dry enough for Elliott to mount the library onto the post. He took a few minutes to critically examine the finished product. Nice. The design was simple, just a miniature house with a sloped roof, but most of it matched the burgundy of his front door, while the trim was the same beige as his house’s exterior walls. The lettering on the roof and side was also beige, and he’d used stencils to get it perfect. Mini Neighborhood Library. Take one, leave one. Maybe he’d plant something around the base of the post—purple and white alyssum, perhaps. Late October was still a good time to get things in the ground.

  Satisfied that the library was ready for occupancy, he went inside for the next task—the most important and the most difficult. It was time to choose which books to leave outside.

  He’d actually been mulling over this topic since he decided to build the library, and he’d already come to a few decisions. No textbooks or academic books on obscure subjects nobody but him cared about. No books on cooking, gardening, or home improvement. He wanted to provide literature and quality nonfiction, not how-to. None of the yaoi books he’d squirreled away in his bedroom. He didn’t want some little kid to pick one up, thinking it was an ordinary comic, and then be confused or horrified.

  But even those criteria left him with hundreds of volumes to choose from. With a beer in hand to fortify himself, he began to peruse his shelves and stacks.

  The first several choices were surprisingly easy. Two of them, both sci-fi, were titles he’d accidentally bought twice. Another was an omnibus collection of Mark Twain stories, most of which were duplicated in his other holdings. One book was a translation of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, left over from his college days and never touched since. And one was the first in a series about vampire cowboys. He hadn’t enjoyed it enough to read the next installment.

  He set those five books aside and reckoned he still had space for ten more. But those presented a much bigger challenge. It was important to choose titles that might appeal to his neighbors, yet he wanted an interesting variation in genres. And it turned out that parting with each of his beloved books was a bit like giving away a favorite pet.

  Okay. A couple of different volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. He could spare those. Ivo Andric’s fictional portrayal of Bosnian history was wonderful, but Elliott had read it three times, so it could go. One of Neil Gaiman’s novels—yeah, that one was painful to give up, but Elliott could handle it, mostly because he thought everyone should enjoy Gaiman. And a couple of Gabriel García Márquez’s books, holdovers from when Elliott had gone through a serious magical realism phase.

  The rest should be nonfiction. After considerable hesitation, and then a repeated holding of books and returning them to the shelves, he settled on something by Oliver Sacks, a biography of Justice Blackmun, an exploration of the microclimates in an average house—that one had creeped him out a little—and a history of dogs.

  Which left him with room for, he estimated, only one more.

  As if of its own accord, his hand reached for a familiar volume. Balkan Ghosts. It wasn’t the most recent edition, which had been published near the end of the messy wars that had torn Yugoslavia apart. Instead, it was the original version, written when blood was still wet on the ground. This book, its jacket a little tattered around the edges, had been a gift from a faculty member to his favorite graduate student, an inducement to settle on the Balkans as a dissertation topic. Nothing was inscribed inside the book, no personal note at all—John had been too careful for that—but Elliott still remembered the thrill when the handsome prof had handed it to him. Had chosen him to receive the gift.

  Elliott left Balkan Ghosts on the shelf and pulled the book next to it, even though it was another novel. It was The Cellist of Sarajevo, and Elliott had bought it for himself. It could go into the library.

  Darkness had fallen, giving him a slightly furtive sense as he filled the library. He stepped back and took a long look. Yes. Good.

  But when he went back inside, he felt oddly empty and bereft.

  Chapter Four

  Elliott liked to keep to a schedule. Although he could have completed his tasks whenever he liked, doing them at particular times made him feel less as if he was falling apart. He started every morning with coffee and a light breakfast and, three times a week, a date with his weight machine. Then he showered before logging in to his work accounts and reading panicky, barely literate emails from students. What chapters where we supossed to read for the test? Or I turned the assignment in on time but now Blackboard is saying i didnt hand it in. He pointed them to the parts of the syllabus that answered their questions, and he dealt with their various technical issues, although sometimes he needed more coffee before he could be patient about it.

  Having conquered the emails, he next made sure his courses were up-to-date. Sometimes he tinkered with PowerPoints and other materials, and occasionally he recorded a lecture for the students to download. He prepared exams and assignments, then graded the ones the students had already completed. This generally took him well past lunchtime, which he ate in front of his laptop.

  Every Tuesday, he dutifully scanned for new job openings and submitted his materials to any he was remotely qualified for. He wasn’t picky about geographical location or type of institution, which meant he’d sent his CV everywhere from Alaska to Florida, from tiny private colleges to huge state universities. The only places he avoided were the types of religious schools that were apt to object to his being gay; he wouldn’t go into the closet no matter how desperate he became. So far, he’d advanced to the phone interview stage three times, but never beyond. He kept on trying, though.

  During the hottest months, he’d run early in the morning to avoid being roasted alive, but at this time of year, he jogged in late afternoon instead. If he had energy when he was done, he spent some time doing yard work. He hadn’t done much with the backyard aside from keeping the grass mowed and the weeds tamed, but he hoped to begin some more ambitious projects in the spring. A shaded patio, maybe, and a xeriscape garden.

  Unless his teaching duties were heavy, Elliott spent the evenings reading in front of the TV. And then, if the spirit moved him, watching some porn.

  It would have been an exciting and fulfilling life—if he were eighty years old.

  This week he added one minor task to his daily schedule: he checked the mini library. He did that twice a day, in fact. Once in the morning, on the off-chance someone had wandered the neighborhood in the wee hours, frantic to find new reading material. And once before dinner, when he walked to the mailbox across the street. Each visit had found the library untouched, and Elliott’s heart had sunk a little more.

  But on Thursday, returning from the mailbox with some bills and a catalog in hand, he’d been delighted to discover gaps on the wooden shelf. One of the fantasy/horror collections was gone, as was the dog book and the Gaiman novel. But even better, a new volume was there. It was a well-worn paperback.

  He set his mail on the grass so he could examine the new book. It turned out to be a romance. He grinned at the cover, which featured an extremely buff shirtless man in tight jeans and chaps, his face hidden behind the brim of a Stetson. Rounding up cattle without a shirt on was probably dangerous—too much risk for sunburn, rope
injuries, and the like. The model was very pretty, though.

  With a sigh, Elliott returned the book to the shelf and shut the plexiglass door. He was tickled that someone had discovered the library and had gotten into the spirit enough to contribute a book of their own. He was not happy, though, that his biggest sexual thrill of the week involved ogling a fake cowboy on a paperback.

  “His name’s probably Brock Steele,” Elliott said as he gathered his mail. “Or Rex Remington. He’s a gruff billionaire who reveals his tender heart when he tames mustangs. And his love interest is Lark Starr. She is a wild hellion who secretly wants to get married, have babies, and hold Tupperware parties. While wearing jewel-studded ball gowns, her chestnut mane tumbling over her bare shoulders.”

  Elliott looked around guiltily, but there were no neighbors to hear his blathering.

  Inside the house, he tossed the mail onto the kitchen counter. Then he poked around inside the fridge and through the cupboard, trying to decide what to make for dinner. But instead of finding creative new ways with chicken breasts and pasta, he found himself thinking about that romance novel. It bothered him. Not because he had anything against the genre—every reader deserved to find his or her own joy—but because of that damned half-naked rancher and the no-doubt-clichéd relationship he eventually built with the beautiful but headstrong young woman. Did anyone in real life have love stories like that? Nobody he knew, that was for sure. Ladd and Anna had met in college when they sat next to each other in American Government. And Elliott and John . . . Well, nobody was going to write a romance about that shit.

  But. People had written books about the diversity of love, hadn’t they? And some of those stories were sitting on his shelves right now.

  Temporarily abandoning his meal plans, Elliott strode into the living room. With barely any hesitation, he pulled two volumes: Paul Monette’s memoir and Maurice. Then he trotted outside and slipped them into the empty spaces on the shelf. He’d made sure to put Maurice next to the cowboy, just because.