Sweet Revenge

Chapter 1-3

Who indeed. Julian and I had spent hours happily cutting out reindeer, snowflakes, Santas, trees, wreaths, and bells, which we’d then frosted and frozen. Before the luncheon, I had one last baking chore to complete: the making of the gingerbread-house door prizes, to be given to three lucky ticket holders when things wrapped up. My other server had canceled, claiming her husband had surprised her with a ski trip. Julian had promised to look for a replacement. I doubted he would be successful. And if the weather turned suddenly frigid, I was worried about Julian’s and my ability to zip around serving sixty women without anything getting cold. But we would manage, I reassured myself. We always did.

Still, the library event came first … chronologically, anyway. Roberta had said that the staff would love to have a Dickens-themed party to celebrate the end of another year of dealing with budget cuts, book damage, thefts of movies, and folks who had to be kicked out of the library for drinking pop, eating pizza, and being disruptive … usually when there was a fight over cell-phone usage.

So in the end we’d decided on several dishes: French toast, made in the library kitchen and kept warm in their oven. I’d also be offering the cheese pies, slices of coffee cake, chocolate cookie bars, bowls of fresh fruit, and for the meat lovers, spiral-cut ham. Roberta gave me free rein to use Dickens titles for the dishes. I said what I always did when clients wanted something: No problem!

To drink, I’d be serving coffee, tea, rum-laced eggnog, and champagne. At breakfast. On a workday. I had learned that librarians could be naughty, too.

Because I was going to be making the French toast and cheese pies fresh the morning of the event, Roberta and I had agreed that the evening before, she and a couple of staff members and volunteers would help me put out all the long tables, folding chairs, linen, and tableware. We were set to do this between four and five o’clock, which was closing time on Fridays. I’d been more than happy to do the afternoon setup, as I’d had an extremely busy week. That Friday evening, the one obligation of Goldilocks’ Catering was a six-course vegetarian dinner for two that was paying more than a buffet for twenty. It was being ably handled by Julian.

Directly after the reading room was set up, I was looking forward to the night off. While I was involved with the tables, linens, and china, Arch, whose room was still a wreck, was going to study in a carrel at the library. Then he was spending the night with Todd Druckman, his best friend. Arch and Gus Vikarios, Arch’s newly discovered half brother, had become very close over the last six months, and I’d been a bit worried about Todd feeling like a fifth wheel. But the three boys had bonded so well that I’d been pleased, if only because it meant we had one more set of drivers when it came to skating, snowboarding, and staying or sleeping over—the boys’ term for slumber parties, an expression way too girlish for cool guys to use.

This sleepover was ostensibly for the boys to study together for their Latin exam, their last test before the holiday break. Todd’s mother had offered to drive them to and from the exam. I was so grateful I could have kissed her, but instead I gave her several bags of frozen cookies. We had plenty.

Tom did not have any pressing investigations under way, and he had promised to come home Friday night and make a ragout “just for the two of us,” which we would enjoy, he said, before a roaring fire—the real kind. The rest of the night, he’d warned, was also “just for the two of us.” Maybe I wouldn’t be going to sleep early. But we would be in bed. Yes!

I put Sandee, or whoever she was, out of my head … at least during the day. I ordered food, worked with clients, put on a flurry of parties, and looked forward to my husband’s ragout … and whatever else he had in mind.

When Friday, December 15, finally rolled around, I was exhausted and wanted to get set up for the library breakfast as quickly as possible. Arch told me I should be careful. The Latin for “as quickly as possible” was quam celerrime. Julius Caesar, Arch explained, had been exceedingly fond of doing things quam celerrime—and look what had happened to him.

Was today the Ides of December? I asked as the van’s tires crunched through the packed snow on Main Street. It was not, Arch replied. The fifteenth of March, May, July, and October were the Ides. It was the thirteenth of every other month, including December. But he didn’t think the teacher would ask that, he added, since their teacher had just explained it to them two days ago.

Well, at least we got that straightened out, I thought as I circled the packed library parking lot for the staff entrance. Unfortunately, that door was blocked by a library van and an SUV. Peeved, I did another two laps of the lot before someone finally backed out and I snagged a space. As Arch and I stepped out of my van, I took a deep breath. The air had turned cold and sharp, and the snow that had begun to swirl down in the early afternoon was now falling steadily, blown sideways by a frigid wind. At least Arch, who had a learner’s permit, had not wanted to practice his driving skills by piloting the van through the white stuff. For this I was thankful.

Once Arch was seated at a carrel outside the big reading room, Roberta, two staff members, three volunteers, and I began our work. Roberta promised to ask the library van driver to hurry his unloading so I could back my own vehicle up to the staff entrance and off-load my supplies. The library was busy. Roberta’s curls all bounced at once as she told me heightened activity on Friday afternoon was normal. Folks wanted to snag their books, CDs, and DVDs before the weekend began. With the return to standard time, the days shortening, and darkness falling earlier and earlier, folks were reading more. Of course, I was also aware that people were eating more, and for that I was grateful.

The trio of patrons in the reading room when Roberta and I started working were all men, all beavering away on laptops. Two were gray-haired and one, working in the area with wi-fi, was bald. They sat as far as possible from one another. It didn’t look as if a single one of them was using library materials. These fellows were hunched over their keyboards, I surmised, because they were working on résumés. With their furrowed brows and secretive manner, I recognized the desperate look of the unemployed. I knew; I’d been there once myself. Sadly, Roberta whispered to me, once folks were dumped from their places of work, they often made the library their office.

When Roberta politely asked them to take their computers elsewhere so we could get ready for a staff breakfast, every one of the men balked. Even though there was less than an hour before the library closed, they didn’t have time to move their … stuff, as they called it, and get set up again. They needed to use every minute, they insisted. After squabbling with Roberta for a moment, the bald one stalked out with his laptop under his arm. The obstinacy from the two remaining men melted when I offered them Christmas cookies, which they could take home. Inside my van, I just happened to have a couple of extra treat bags.

It never ceased to amaze me how useful food bribes could be.

I dutifully trooped with the two fellows to the parking lot, where I handed them their cookies. The profusion of thanks they gave me made me wish I could fix them dinner, too. I remembered thinking: Too bad that angry bald fellow hadn’t stayed, so I could have offered him a treat.

But I had, as we say in food service, other fish to fry. Back in the library, Roberta, the staff, the volunteers, and I hustled around setting up. By four-fifteen, we had moved the chairs and end tables, plus the desks, out of the reading room. I raced back outside. The library van was gone from the staff entrance, but the clown with the SUV had parked it halfway between two places, and I had to maneuver and reverse, maneuver and reverse, just to get my van to a decent unloading position.

With ten minutes lost, the volunteers and I worked frantically to carry in all my dishes, linen, and serving paraphernalia. When the first warning came over the loudspeakers that the library would be closing in fifteen minutes, I jumped. Ominous blinks from the overhead fluorescents illuminated the fact that the reading room was not even close to being ready for the next morning. The workers and I waited until the announcement concluded and the library lighting returned to normal before cracking open the serving tables and covering them with tablecloths.

“Oh, dear, I thought you all would be further along by now.” When Roberta spoke and nodded at the same time, all her hair’s red ringlets bobbed in agreement. “I’d love to help you finish, but it’s my job to go around and make sure patrons are aware we’re shutting down.”

“We’ll manage while you round up the stragglers,” I replied, although I sure couldn’t understand why the blaring announcement and flashing lights weren’t enough to scare any soul out of the stacks.

Roberta sensed my doubt and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. “I have to make sure people aren’t ignoring us, and that we’ve allowed enough time to clean up. Last week at this time, somebody had brought in fried chicken, coleslaw, and beans, and spilled it all over one of the tables. Can you believe it? It took us an hour to make things presentable again.” I nodded; I’d seen food messes—including ones spilled over books—that would have straightened Roberta’s hair. “The single fear the food smugglers have is that a real human is coming around to chuck them out. That usually forces them to clean up their act.” Her thin strawberry eyebrows climbed her pink forehead. “Still other folks are so soothed by the quiet and warmth of the library, they fall asleep. It can take the dozers the full fifteen minutes until we close to wake up. I keep threatening to buy an electric cattle prod, and use it to give the stragglers and secret eaters a real shock.”

“Okeydoke,” I replied, not wanting to conjure up that particular mental picture. The workers and I unfurled the first of the white tablecloths. “We’ll be fine.”

No sooner had Roberta left the reading room than a sudden shout split the air. “Hey!” a man yelled. This was followed by “Hey, shut up!”

“Would you please cool it?” Arch asked, a bit too loudly.

My skin prickled with gooseflesh. I raced out of the reading room and tried to remember the location of the carrel where I’d left Arch.

The man’s voice rose. “Don’t tell me what to do, kid! I’m on a very important call to an attorney!”

“I don’t care!” Arch replied at the same volume. “You need to turn off your stupid cell phone!”

I looked around but felt disoriented. Where was Arch?

“Shut up, kid!”

“Cool it!”

Ahead I finally saw the cluster of carrels where I’d left my son … except he wasn’t working. He was standing up, his jaw thrust in the direction of the bald fellow from the reading room, the one who’d stomped off when Roberta had first asked him to leave. He was large, stocky, and muscle-bound, and Arch looked short, slender, and wholly inadequate to hold his own in this fight.