Page 16 of Sublimate
After a moment, Nolan walked back over. He was balancing several plates on top of two cups, and I jumped to help him. “I got you a hot chocolate, just in case you might still be thirsty,” he said as we both sat. He gestured to the muffins and scones on the plates. “Help yourself.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Tell me about Nevada.”
“Well, one thing is that my town is on the way to Area 51. Do you know about that?” I asked. Kolter hadn’t, and he had thought I was calling him stupid when I’d offered to explain it.
“I do. Any local secrets you can spill?”
There was so much to say and he told me more about the islands, too, without me having to prompt him with questions about sharks and salt water. It was nice to sit and talk—both of us talked, not just me. I did realize at one point that it was getting late, though. I hadn’t heard from my boyfriend, which probably meant that he wasn’t going to come home to sleep, but it wasn’t a good idea to risk it, either.
“I have to go,” I said reluctantly. “I’m glad that you were able to meet up.”
“Me too,” Nolan said. “I’ll walk you over to where you parked.”
“No, you don’t have to do that. Really,” I stressed. I wasn’t interested in showing him that my car was as glued and taped as Kolter’s furniture. “Maybe we could hang out another time, though. Maybe?”
He nodded. “I’ll be in touch,” he told me, and I smiled.
Good. I would be waiting to hear from him.
Chapter 4
“I’ve been waiting forever!”
“Sorry,” I told her. “I’m really sorry.” I was, because I felt bad that she was so clearly upset. But I was also feeling annoyed. What did she expect me to do about it?
She explained that. “It’s my turn now,” she informed me. “Get off!”
Her last words had been loud enough that the librarian hustled over. “Is there a problem?” Cadence wanted to know, and the other woman started a long story about how she had to use the computer because she had lost both her phone and the power cord for her laptop (so that was dead), and this person (me) was so annoying by not sharing, and why was there only one computer available—there should have been more! Also, she was mad about all the disabled parking outside.
“I don’t see anybody using a wheelchair in this library!” she announced. “It’s unfair to people who don’t have them so we have to park farther away and walk.”
At that point, I was pretty much done with the computer. I also didn’t want to argue in the Whitaker Reading Room, which had become one of my favorite spots to hang out. As winter ended and the weather had warmed, Kolter’s house had gotten more comfortable in terms of temperature. But there were other things about it that were not as comfortable, so I liked to be here instead. I told the girl to go ahead and have it and I moved to one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, although no logs burned there anymore.
I had spent enough time in the Whitaker Reading Room that Cadence, the librarian, and I had gotten to know each other. We had always said ‘hello’ and ‘how are you,’ but we’d also been sharing information. She was aware of my fear of the cemetery that was located near where I lived and she had asked questions about the guys I had dated—she was very interested in my relationship history. I had talked a little about my list of worries, the things about bears but also the idea that someone would mistakenly bury me at a crossroads. I kept the other issues, like Kolter and hunger, to myself.
She had told me stuff that she wanted for her future, like having her own family. “That may not happen and I’m ok with it,” she had said, but she’d turned bright red and then added, “I’m trying to be ok with it.” I was aware that this spring, she was going to try a vegetable garden for the first time. She had also talked about a side career she was trying to start, doing watercolor paintings of babies and children. She had gotten as far as making business cards and she had given one to me althoughI didn’t have a child and I didn’t have any money to pay for a painting, either.
“Keep it just in case,” she’d suggested. “I had fifty made and no one seems to want them.” She was worried that she would never get her enterprise off the ground and she was also worried about the frost date, which gardening websites explained was late in the year this far north. She couldn’t plant her tomato and pepper seedlings outside because they could freeze overnight when the temperature dropped. And yes, it was still chilly at night—I could also feel it even though it was May.
“Sorry,” Cadence said after she had gotten the other patron settled in front of the monitor. “I know that you still had fifteen minutes left on your sign-up.”
“I don’t care.” I really had been close to finished. “How is your mom feeling?”
“Better,” she said, smiling. Her mom had gotten a cold and Cadence had been concerned. They lived together in a house that had first belonged to her great-grandparents and I loved the idea that it had been in their family forever. “How is your situation?” she wanted to know.
“Well…” I thought. “Things have changed a little.”
“Did Kolter calm down?”
I had told her about some problems I’d had over the winter, like how the furnace had been on a march to oblivion and about my attempts to get the oven working for heat and so that I could make bread. My fixes hadn’t worked but I was still making preparations for baking. Slowly, by visiting numerous thriftshops, I had accumulated some of the tools I would need (like a nice bowl, a liquid measuring cup, and a scale to measure ingredients that seemed to work ok).
I had kept other things to myself and I continued to do that today. “He’s all right,” I said. The last time I was here, I had mentioned that he was out of work again and had been pretty upset. I had been upset, too, because it had led to an argument between us about our living situation and about money. He’d been fired two more times after losing the job when he’d thought that his boss had disrespected him (and he had peed in her car). I hadn’t shared that with Cadence, or how he’d lost his latest job after grabbing a coworker’s breast. It had been a joke, he’d said, but she hadn’t thought it was funny. Neither had their boss or the police.
Cadence glanced over at the girl who had crowded me off the library computer. “You can sit at my desk and use mine,” she suggested. “Or I can help you research.”
I knew that she really loved helping people track stuff down, like books whose titles they had forgotten, a great spy movie, new ways to look for jobs, and everything else. Since I’d started spending more time here, I’d heard a lot of weird asks but she was usually thrilled to jump right in and hunt. Poisonous caterpillars in Australia? She could come up with a list. What car is the best in snow? She had websites for that. How many pine cones could a kid eat before it became a problem? She had recommended Poison Control. She had found Nolan Whittaker’s address in a heartbeat, too, because she was a real whiz.
