Lost and Found (2 page)

I bumped into him again while I was wrangling my bike up the stairwell from the basement. I looked up and there he was, scowling at me in ugly green hospital scrubs that somehow made his blue eyes bluer.

“I’m not attracted to you,” he said, hands in his hair again as he frowned. “If that’s why you left the cookies. I’m not dating you.”

My hand automatically went to my forehead, and his eyes followed. Stupid move. “That’s okay.” Then I added, “I don’t date,” averting my eyes, feeling even uglier as he stared at me.

He looked at me for a long minute and then said, “Right. Sorry. I tend to say things before thinking them out.”

I forced a smile and then lifted the bike up the flight as fast as I could. “I was just being neighborly. About the cookies,” I added once I was on the landing. “I don’t try to attract men with my baked goods.”

“Because you don’t date?”

“Yes. Well, I did, but I don’t expect it.”

“So you only date unexpectedly?” he said, raising both eyebrows, and I finally looked him right in the eyes and had to look away again when my head felt like it was floating.  He followed me outside and o
nto the sidewalk. “You dress very…” He gestured up and down, and I looked down at myself. I was wearing polka dot gray ankle boots with yellow laces, maroon tights, and a lime green corduroy shirtdress. He exhaled and finished his sentence. “You dress very interestingly.” The way he said it, I knew it wasn’t a compliment.

I nodded. “I know.” Then I gave him my brightest, fakest smile as I stuck out my hand. “I’m Delaney.”

“You said. In your note with the cookies. You also said you just moved here?” He looked deeply suspicious as he shook my hand. His hand was warm and calloused and there was a tingle that ran up my arm, down my spine, and into my toes. He let go and I shivered. “Cold?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“I did just move.
From LA. But I’m not
from
LA. I was just out there for a few years. I’m from Prairie Glen.”

“Why’d you move back?”

I shrugged and told him I liked being in a college town.

He stared at me some more, like he was trying to fi
gure me out. Or maybe he was just looking at my patch, or my streak of gray. “That’s interesting hair. Do you dye it?”

“No.” Then, to avoid the subject, I strapped on the bike helmet that had been dangling from my handlebars and said, “I have a question.” He looked wary but I co
ntinued. “Why did you throw your phone that day? What happened?”

His eyebrows knit together and he simply shook his head.
“Nothing. It was nothing.”

“Really?”
This was the wrong thing to say, as his face went beet red and he said, “REALLY.”

I stepped back a little, my hand still on my bike frame, and nodded, knowing a guy like him was ne
ver going to tell someone like me anything, and I realized I didn’t really want to know. I wanted to know as little about him as I could, and keep a cordial distance from him and his moodiness.

“Well, I have to go,” I said, waving to my bike. “Nice to meet you, uh…”

“Oliver.” He scowled again, and then walked in the opposite direction.

***

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a douche.” Ursula sat on the desk in my cubicle, beautiful blonde waves cascading across the shoulder of her black and white striped blazer. “I mean, ‘interestingly.’ You dress ‘interestingly’?  Who
says
that? To a stranger! To a neighbor!” She chewed on a nail and looked at me, her legs bare and crossed.

“I don’t know that there’s anything
technically
wrong with interesting. It could be a compliment.”

“Was it?”

“No.”

“Douche.
Douche Nozzle,” she said.

“Is it sexist to use the word ‘douche’ as an insult?” I said to Emily, who was swiveling in an office chair across from us.

Emily said, “Yes. Absolutely. Is there an equivalent insult based on a men’s product? Are people going around calling each other Viagra faces? No. It’s demeaning and we should insist on getting rid of it as an insult.”

“At the same time,” I said, “it’s not like douche is a
good
thing. Did you know it increases the risk of STDs? And ectopic pregnancies? It’s not like Ursula’s calling him the Bic Pen for Her. Or something else inherently feminine. Like—”

“
Zooey Deschanel? Cursive handwriting?” Emily said, and Ursula said, “Hey, I
like
Zooey Deschanel. She’s cute!”

“She’s adorable,” I said with a nod.

Emily said, “I think we should just call him Jackass. It’s all encompassing.”

“Fine,” Ursula said, crossing her arms and pouting. “I still like
Zooey.”

“Tell us more about Jackass,” Emily said, poking me with a shar
pened pencil. “Ow,” I said.

“Talk,” she said. “I have 37 minutes before I have to go back to work.”

“Fine. I think he might have some issues,” I said, trying to stare at the email on my monitor. “He was pretty blunt. Not in his words, but in the way he looked at me.”

“And he thought cookies were a form of sedu
ction,” Ursula said.

“My cookies
are
pretty good.”

“Well, you should bring some to me,” Ursula said.

“Next time I bake I will.”

She leaned over and hugged me. “I’m so glad you took this job. This is so fun. Well, not talking about mean
Jackass, but sharing an office? Working with you? It’s like college again. Well, college before you left.”  

“I know. This is so much better than any other job I’ve ever had.” I was working as a reference l
ibrarian at the university like Ursula. We’d both gone to library school at the same time through an online graduate degree, across the country from each other.

She’d scored a great academic job right away in Prairie Glen, but I’d struggled to find anything more than part-time work in California, maybe because of my less than illustrious academic career. I’d dropped out of Prairie Glen University as a junior before going back to school through community co
llege, and then later a subpar four-year school in California, before I’d applied for my Master’s in Library Science. Being a college dropout didn’t sell my résumé very well. 

So when she told me there was a tenure-track opening back home, I’d jumped at it, crossed my fi
ngers, and told Ursula to talk me up to the Dean of Libraries as much as she could.

It wasn’t my dream job, but it was something. Plus, Prairie Glen University housed the diaries and papers of my favorite author, Jenny Edmonton. She’d written sweeping Regency-era romances that sucked me in, showed me how much fun reading was, and had bonded me with Ursula, a
nother Jenny fan. It wasn’t high art, but it was
good
art, a public good, saving me from myself most days. Plus, she was so prolific and a local author, so I had an unending supply of Edmonton fiction in high school.

“If I could get a job in Special Collections, it would be even better, but that’s not going to ha
ppen,” I said.

“Why?” Emily said.

“I’m not an archivist. I’m not an historian. I’m not even that experienced as a librarian. I have no background, and the Edmonton collection is really valuable, apparently, since she passed away and it was discovered she was really the heiress to that smut magazine.”

“Spread Uncensored,” Emily said with a shake of her head.

“Yeah,” I said. “I still love Jenny. And she couldn’t help who her parents were. I can relate.”

“We know,” Ursula said, patting my arm. “Still, you could probably get a job in Special Collections if you tried. The dean loves you.”

“I just started this job. Maybe in a year,” I said.

“But you’ll try?” Ursula said hopefully.

“The dean told me the last time there was an opening, there were two thousand applicants. And the position didn’t even give benefits,” I said.

“But none of those two thousand people were you,” Ursula said.

“You’re sweet to believe in me,” I said, smiling at my best friend.

“I’m not sweet. I just believe dreams come true,” U
rsula said.

“We know you do,” Emily said. “You’ve come so far, you’re proof.”

I’d met Ursula in high school, sitting near the lost and found and paging through a paperback. Back then she had huge glasses, greasy hair, and acne. She loved
The Hobbit
and romance novels equally, and as a result had as many friends as the Venn diagram of kids who admit to liking both of those had. That would be zero.

When I found her sitting there, reading a free book, I’d known i
nstantly that she wasn’t going to say anything about my hair or my face or my patches. We were two social lepers together, and since then, Ursula had slowly come out of her shell, gotten a scholarship and a job and a better shampoo, and blossomed into one of those sexy librarians that men went crazy for.

“I’m just saying,” Ursula said, “that you can have an
ything you want if you actually believe it.”

“Well, I’m here, aren’t I? And I have an apartment with built-in bookshelves,” I said. “Maybe you can come over later,” I told Ursula.
“After I’m not living out of boxes.”

“And I can come over and perform an exorcism on your neig
hbor,” Emily said.

“As long as you bring wine to an exorcism,” I said, even though I was aware of the very real threat of Emily knoc
king on Oliver’s door and screaming at him until he moved out.

“Wine is included in all exorcisms,” Emily said.

“Then it’s a plan,” I said.

I was trying to nap in the doctors’ lounge when Avery came in and lifted my feet, scooting under my legs to rest at the other end of the uncomfortable sofa, her long brown ponytail tickling my legs as she leaned over me.

“Fuck off,” I said with my eyes closed.

“Wow, you’re in a sunshiny mood.”

“Fuck. Off.” I opened my eyes and hit her hand.

“No. Tell me about this wedding,” she said and I groaned. I’d mentioned the phone call with my mom to Avery during a lull between patients. I’d also told her about Brad and Mia’s wedding present.

They were saving all their money to buy a small house just outside of the city, in Berwyn, which was almost i
mpossible to do when both of them worked for a nonprofit. When Mia had told me about their finances, she’d bitten her lip in embarrassment and explained that Brad hadn’t wanted to ask for the help they needed. That had been all the convincing I’d needed before writing her a check for a down payment, wiping out my savings. Brad had told me it was too much, but he took the check. He hugged me and said I was a hero. Not exactly.

I played that moment of special idiocy on my personal blooper reel, which repeated with relentless frequency in my head. 

“No. I’m not going to talk about the wedding, or think about the wedding, or even
go
to the wedding.”

“Wait, but I thought you had to go to the wedding,” she said. When I didn’t answer she slapped me on the leg with surprising force for such a tiny wo
man.

“
Ow?”

“How can you get out of going to the wedding?” she said.

“Leave me alone.”

“You’re rude.”

“I’m tired. GO. AWAY. I’m trying to sleep.”

“Whatever, you never sleep.
Talk.”

“Fine.
I told my mom in a voicemail I couldn’t get off of work and travel that far. Then she called back and said that if I didn’t have the decency to come up with a good lie to not go to the wedding, it was fine, since the wedding is, in her words, ‘a joke.’ Since she’s in charge of paying for the rehearsal dinner, though, she wanted to make sure I was coming. It makes her look bad, apparently.”

“Your mom sounds like a viper.”

“Then I’m describing her correctly.”

“Still, she’s right. Everyone knows the best part of working in the ER is the flexible schedule. That’s why I got into it.” She paused and then added, “Besides saving lives. That’s a pretty good perk, too.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m still not going.”

“Hmm,” Avery said. “Tell me more about your brot
her.”

“Brad? He’s a good guy.”

“He’s a good guy whose brother won’t go to his wedding? I don’t think so. What did he do to you?”

“Nothing,” I said, shutting my eyes. “Trust
me, Bradley is the epitome of a perfect brother.”

“Uh oh.”

“What?” I cracked one eye open to peer at her. She had high cheekbones and natural pink lips, and smart, too. She went to Johns Hopkins, whereas I had barely stayed out of the Caribbean for med school. She was probably the smartest doctor I knew. She was definitely the prettiest. It was too bad she wasn’t Mia.

“The ‘epitome of a perfect brother’?
Nuh uh. Whenever someone talks about perfection, that’s exactly where the trouble is. Either you’re lying to me, he’s lying to you, or you’re lying to him. Which one is it?” She cocked her head and waited for my response.

“Perfection is suddenly a bad thing?”

“It’s not a bad thing. It’s an impossible thing. It’s like the future, a figment of our imaginations. When someone utters the word ‘perfect,’ they’re delusional. Or putting someone on a pedestal. Or, in your case, lying about something.”

I sat up. “Hey, I could just be delusional.”

“You’re not. You’re way too realistic and truthful for that.”

I thought about what she’d said. “You’re right,” I said. “But I’m not telling you what’s going on. It’s too emba
rrassing.” I slumped back down and closed my eyes, but my body was no longer tired. Actually, my body ached with tiredness after too many voluntary night shifts, but my mind wouldn’t shut up.

“Oh,” she said with sadness in her tone.

“Hmm?”

“It’s your brother’s wedding, and he’s perfect, so it’s you. You’re the one who did something.”

I rolled on my side to face the cushions, kicking Avery as I went. “Not talking about it.”

“Night,” Avery said as the weight of her left the sofa. She said, “Oliver, maybe you should tell your brother whatever it was that you did. I bet he’d u
nderstand.”

Then I was left alone again with my blooper reel of mistakes and the knowledge that Brad would de
finitely
not
understand them.