Libby the Librarian: A Rom Com Novella (2 page)

“I plan to be here all day,” Shasta said.

That’s what I’d been afraid of. I wondered if Adam was going to insist on hanging around, too, until the bitter end.

“When you get to a stopping place—“ I
had to raise my voice to compete with the blow-dryer, “—I’d like to put a load of laundry in the wash.”

“Speaking of laundry—“ Adam said, “—
next
Sunday we’re going shopping.”   

“I don’t need any new clothes.”

“You say that, but I’ve never seen you in anything I’d call sexy. Librarian, maybe. Middle-aged fashioned-challenged Librarian. ”

I looked up at Shasta. She avoided my eye. She obviously agreed with Adam
, but didn’t like to say so.

“I think you always look nice
. Very neat. Very clean,” she said. “But we thought it might be fun to pick out a few new outfits.”

“A few?” Adam
can be rude, sometimes. 

“Yes. A few—“ Shasta said, “—the girl’s a librarian. She’s not made of money. Unless you’re planning on buying her a whole new wardrobe—“

That shut Adam up.

“Don’t
listen to him,” Shasta said. “You probably have lots of cute things in your closet that you never wear. After we get done in here, we’ll take a look. ”

I do tend to have a uniform. Kaki trousers and a button-down shirt.
Red, blue or green. It’s very convenient. You can do anything in kakis and a button-down. Sometimes, when I shop at big box stores, I get mistaken for a customer service representative. That’s alright. Customer service is a respectable profession.

I escaped long enough to put my dirty laundry in the wash
, and when I returned to the kitchen, Adam was rummaging through my refrigerator.

“
Still not much of a cook, I see?”

I’m not
, actually, but I didn’t see how that was relevant.

“There’s stuff to make sandwiches—“ I told him.

My hair was trimmed and highlighted—although, I hadn’t been allowed to look at it—and Shasta moved on to my face.

She scrubbed and called it “exfoliating.” Then she waxed my eyebrows. That hurt.
Finally, she smeared my whole face with green goo.

“I made you a sandwich,” Adam said. “Pickle, lettuce and tomato. No mustard.
Cut on the diagonal.”

That’s the nice thing about good friends, they know what you like.

“I’m not sure I can eat with all this muck on my face.”

“You can if you’re careful,” Shasta said and went over to the counter to make herself a sandwich.

I thought
Shasta and Adam would never go home. Shasta made a unilateral decision to postpone makeup lessons until the next Sunday. She said that I wouldn’t be able to commit to my new look until I was competent at applying makeup. I never knew that applying makeup required a great deal of skill and expertise, but Shasta seemed to think so. She obviously didn’t believe I’d be a natural. Instead of moving on to makeup, she decided that an assessment of my wardrobe was in order.

I have my closet organized just so, and I don’t really like other people touching my stuff. Shasta seemed to get that, but Adam didn’t. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care.

Shasta was shocked that I had so many dresses.

“But I’ve never seen you in a dress,” she said.

“I wore dresses in high-school.”

“You’ve kept these since high-school?”

I had.

“You can really still fit into these?”

I could.

“Some of these are really cute.” Shasta seemed surprised. “I mean they are totally back in style.”

“Really?” I don’t pay much attention to things like that, but Shasta does, so I took her word for it.

“Try one on,” Adam said.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“I’d like to see this one on,” Shasta said. She handed me a slim red dress that used to be a favorite of mine, way back when. “Hold on, you need shoes.” There was a pair of heels in the very back of my shoe shelf. Leftovers from my cousin Tabitha’s wedding, in which I had served as a very reluctant bride’s maid. I don’t know why I kept them.

I went in
to the bathroom and put the dress on. I felt ridiculous, like I was wearing a costume. I came back out, carrying the heels in one hand.

“Well?” I
demanded, daring either of them to laugh at me.

“That looks great!” Shasta said.

“Put the shoes on,” Adam said. I stepped into the heels. I felt awkward. Gangly. I hoped I didn’t fall over. I hadn’t worn heels since Tabitha’s wedding, where I’d spent the whole time up front gripping the elbow of Bride’s Maid Number Three. She probably still has the bruises.

Adam wasn’t satisfied. “What do you think of these?” he asked, holding up an old pair of glasses with thick b
rown frames. “I found them in your top drawer.”

“You went through my drawers? That’s an invasion of privacy.”

Adam looked slightly chastened—maybe he just doesn’t have a good grasp on protocol when in women’s bedrooms—scratch that. More likely he doesn’t think I count as “women.” I can’t imagine him going through his girlfriends’ dressers like that.

“Did he do this to you?” I asked Shasta. “Did he demonstrate such a wanton lack of
respect for the sanctity of a woman’s boudoir?”

Shasta didn’t want to get involved, but I
’m guessing from her expression that the answer is no. It’s just me, then. My desire for privacy doesn’t count.

Shasta took the glasses from Adam and held them up. “These are perfect!”

“Perfect for what?”

“They scream
Sexy Librarian.”

“They scream myopic ninth-grader, is what they scream.”  That was
n’t a year I was eager to revisit. I thought the glasses were hideous, but I took off my sensible wire-frames and replaced them with the chunky brown monstrosities, just to show how ridiculous they looked.

Adam and Shasta weren’t laughing.

“They really are great!” Shasta said.     

“You’ve got to be kidding!“ I protested.

“No, put some makeup on you. Put your hair up and you’re perfect,” Shasta said.

“Perfect? Perfectly laughable.”

“Nobody is going to laugh at you. Trust me,” said Adam.

I was heading back to the bathroom, when I heard Adam say, “I never noticed what a nice ass—“

“—assets Libby has. Yes, she does. Very nice assets.” Shasta finished his statement for him, like she knew I could hear them talking about me.

It’s very weird to overhear your friends assessing the shape of your assorted
anatomy like that. It made me feel like a horse at auction, all over again.
 

B
y the time Shasta and Adam left, I was exhausted. I was too tired, even, to reorganize my books. It’s hard work trying to be nice to people who have your best interests at heart, but are probably leading you down a path to public humiliation. I was glad I wouldn’t have to deal with any more “personal transformation” tomfoolery until next Sunday.

All week I avoided Adam. It wasn’t hard. It was finals week
, and that meant he was busy. I wasn’t. Everyone suspends their research during finals week, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I wasted a lot of time at work—when I should have been enriching my mind or catching up on my filing—looking at those websites where they teach you makeup techniques. I was going to feel pretty silly if I could recite the complete works of Poe, but couldn’t learn to apply eyeliner.   

By the next Sunday, I’d almost regained my composure and gotten used to my new hair. It wasn’t much different from my old hair, really
, except that it was shinier and had streaks in it. I’d made a halfhearted attempt to practice putting it up the way Shasta had shown me, but I never managed to make it look as good as she had. I had also—per Shasta’s instructions—started weaning myself off my pair-of-kakis-and-button-down-a-day habit. It hadn’t been easy. All I had to do, Shasta insisted, was wear one item every day that I wouldn’t normally wear. Her theory was that it was less of a shock—to me and everybody who had to look at me—to transition a little at a time. It was sort of working. On Friday, I wore black trousers and a white blouse that had, up until now, lived a life of isolation and quiet despair in the darkest recesses of my closet. But I couldn’t bring myself to add the set of bangle bracelets my aunt had given me last Christmas. It was asking too much of myself to go around clinking all day.

On Sunday, Adam arrived
before Shasta. I was still eating breakfast. I let him in and shuffled back to the kitchen in my robe and slippers. I sat down to finish my coffee. Adam poured himself a cup and kicked Kipling—who hissed at him—out of my other chair.

“How are you feeling?” Adam asked.

“Fine. Why
shouldn’t I be?”

“Well, I know you. You don’t like change.”

“I do like change. Just yesterday, I rearranged my living room.”

“
The compulsion to constantly rearrange your furniture is not quite analogous to embracing drastic alterations to your lifestyle.”

“I wouldn’t call a new haircut a drastic alteration to my lifestyle.”

“It’s not just a new haircut.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Seriously—“ Adam did look serious. “I think you are going to discover that men are starting seeing you in a whole new light.”

“I don’t think I’m too interested in the sort of men who are impressed by a little primping.”

“You say that now, but I believe you are going to be severely disoriented by the attention that’s going to start coming your way.”

“That was the general idea
, wasn’t it? Doll Libby up. Slather her with makeup. Dress her up pretty. All so men won’t run away screaming.”

I knew I was getting sarcastic, but I couldn’t help it. I get sarcastic when I get scared. I
know it’s neither logical nor sensible to be scared, but that doesn’t change the way I feel.

The doorbell was ringing, so I sent Adam to let Shasta in.   

Shasta had been correct. Makeup was harder than it looked. I did alright with my base layer. You just have to rub that on and check for streaks. Contouring and blusher were more difficult. Then we got to the eyes, and I made a hopeless mess.

The Sexy Librarian call
s for something Shasta called Cat Eyes. Cat Eyes involve liquid eyeliner. Liquid eyeliner was created by the devil himself, probably formulated somewhere in the deepest recesses of hell. The sole purpose of liquid eyeliner is to make otherwise coordinated and capable people feel like they’ve sprouted flippers instead of hands.

Adam thought it was hilarious. Shasta didn’t like him laughing at me, so she gave up
, cleaned off my mess and redid my eyes herself. She’d demonstrated on herself first. She looked great. Of course.

When she finished
with me, she handed me the mirror. When I looked at myself, I no longer looked like me.

“What do you think?”

“This is very weird.”

“I think you look beautiful.”
Shasta said. I think she was just being kind, but still, it was nice to hear.

Adam
was staring at me like I’d been replaced by an extraterrestrial or transformed myself into a disembodied head.

“Stop gaping at the poor girl like that and tell her how good she looks
!” Shasta scolded him.

He didn’t stop gaping, but he did, at least, parrot back the line about how good I looked. “I had no idea makeup was so effective
,” he added.

That was pretty offensive.

“Worried that all those beautiful girls you’ve dated over the years may just have been ugly girls with a good makeup job?” I asked.

“You’re not the least bit ugly,” Shasta said. “With or without makeup.”

I waited for Adam to say something reassuring like that, but he didn’t. Adam’s not that great at reassuring.

“Let’s go shopping!” Shasta said.

Shasta loves shopping. I hate it. I order on-line whenever possible. I’d order groceries on-line if I could.

“
You want me to go out in public like this?” I asked, pointing to my face.

“Of course. It’s going to take a while for you to get used to it. Might as well get started right now.”

I couldn’t go out in my robe and slippers, so Shasta put together an outfit for me.

Adam wanted me to wear the ninth-grade ugly glasses, but I insisted that the prescription of the lenses was so old that I’d be better off wearing no glasses at all. He knew better than to try and talk me into that, so I
stuck with my sensible wire-frames. 

“Who’s your optometrist?” Adam asked.

“Dr. Webber. Why?”

“No reason,” he said and put the ninth-grade uglies into
his pocket.
 

Shopping was worse
than I’d anticipated. I wasn’t even allowed to do any actual shopping. I spent the whole time in the fitting room while Shasta handed me stuff to try on. Every once in a while, I could hear Adam lobbying for something he’d found. Shasta vetoed most of his choices. That was probably a good thing. Judging by the reasons Shasta gave for her rejections, Adam was trying to turn me into Slutty Librarian.

Shasta and I finally came up with four outfits we could both agree on. They all involved something Shasta called a Pencil Skirt and more feminine variations o
n my beloved button-downs. They weren’t bad, and, as I twirled in front of the mirror, even I could see that they did great things for my—assets. So far, so good. But we hadn’t even started looking for shoes yet, and I had a terrible foreboding that Shasta was never going to sanction combining Pencil Skirts with my favorite worn-in penny loafers.     

“Don’t I get to see anything?” Adam asked as we emerged from the fitting room.

“I’m not going to make the poor girl try on everything all over again just for your benefit,” Shasta said.

We moved on to shoes, which was
every bit as traumatic as I’d anticipated. I can’t walk in heels. We finally compromised. One pair of ballet flats and one pair of heels, which Shasta admonished me to practice in around the house, before attempting their public debut.

“You really wear these things on a regular basis?” I asked.

“You’ll get used to them.”

I d
on’t think I will. In a couple of months I’ll be back to my customer-service-representative-persona.  But Shasta is having fun. Adam is hanging around her. That’s all that really matters. I’m just orchestrating the reunification of two people I’m fond of. The more time I spend around Shasta, the more convinced I become that she is perfect for Adam. They were meant for each other.