May Day Read Online Free Page A

for hunters. It was like having a stadium for agoraphobics.
    I peeled off my favorite suede jacket on my way to the library’s front desk, the spring air of lilacs and green melting away from me. After a little fumbling in all of my pockets, I found a damp piece of cinnamon gum, hidden under a glow-in-the-dark fish from a twenty-five-cent machine, a crushed Jägermeister cap, and a tattered fortune cookie strip that said, “You enjoy the fun” above my guaranteed winning lottery numbers. I draped my coat on the back of the swivel chair behind the desk and chewed tentatively on the gravelly Trident.
    I flicked my dark, disheveled hair over my shoulder, settled in the captain’s chair, and clicked on the front desk computer. I was now the mistress of this domain. I considered creating a new printing sign. The “NO COLOR PRINTING!!!!! BLACK AND WHITE 10¢ A PAGE!!!!” had way too many exclamation marks and seemed rude with all the caps. I made a mental note to get to that later. Pushing back from the desk with a little whirring sound that propelled me the fifteen feet to the front entrance, I flipped the sign to Open, unlocked the single glass door with my keys-on-a-spiral unit, grabbed the four books resting askew in the overnight dropoff bin and the newspapers off the ground, and scooted back.
    For a small-town library, it was pretty well stocked. The new fiction section was kitty-corner from the front desk, next to the newspaper and magazine racks. On the other side of the reading carrels were the metal turning displays stuffed with paperback romance and mystery books, so popular with the tourists and the elderly. Twelve tall wooden bookshelves were filled with the more scholarly works: the Dickens, the Hemingway, the I’m Not Crazy, I’m Angry: How to Cope with a Bad Temper .
    The reference section was tucked into a dark spot near the storage room. The children’s area, with its Lilliputian blue and yellow chairs, ratty stuffed animals, and big-lettered books, was parked in a cozy corner under the windows. This was my favorite spot, because of the sunlight and because the kids always got so excited about the books. It was comforting in my current situation—single, barely employed, and mildly superior with no one to appreciate it. You see, I now considered myself a cosmopolitan gal. It was easier to pretend that I was biding my time and finding my wings in a small town rather than to face that I had failed in the big city.
    I finished the setup routine as Lartel had taught me—put away the books, make sure sufficient pencils are lined up on the counter, dust the tables—and then settled in behind the counter. The cheery chime of the door opening revved my heart up a little, I’m ashamed to say. Here I was, a city girl excited about dealing solo with my first library patron. I turned to see who the eager reader was but also reached for a magazine so we could both pretend I wasn’t snooping. The library can be like a doctor’s office. Patrons reveal deeply personal information about themselves by what they choose to read, and discretion is a must, especially in a small Minnesota town. The married mother of four who checks out The Joy of Sex paces nervously, paging through the new fiction section until the gas station owner has left, himself shoving Prozac Nation between a book on fly-fishing lures and Chilton’s latest. I loved looking inside people’s windows, so to speak.
    And speaking of love, it just so happened I was wondering if I was going to get any in this town I was tied to, at least for the summer. My only hope was the massive tourist population bringing in some dark-haired male who knew that the word “seen” couldn’t be used without a helping verb, as in “I seen the biggest buck in the woods today!” Maybe I was shooting too high.
    I studied today’s first solo library patron out of the corner of my eye and corrected myself. Here was a stranger with brown hair that curled around his ears,