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  About a minute and a half after crossing everything I had while she read the jacket flap she put the book back on the shelf and headed off slowly towards the large print fiction section. The Teachers’ Lounge had impressed a lot of people, but apparently that old lady wasn’t going to be one of them.

  I wanted to bolt out of the library, fleeing a place where I had come so close to possibly being recognized, but then I had an idea. The Jacob’s Bluff Public Library might have been old and not exactly up-to-date with the latest and greatest equipment, but they did manage to go to a computerized catalog at some point. I found the nearest computer station nestled in a corner just outside of the Children’s Section and sat down. The screen was mostly blank with just the words WECOME TO THE JACOB’S BLUFF PUBLIC LIBRARY, and below that, next to an empty search box with a blinking cursor, WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR? I looked around and saw only a red headed girl sitting Indian-style in between two rows flipping through a book. I typed in "Dan Dawkins" and pressed ENTER. There was only one result. I clicked on the link for The Teachers’ Lounge and the screen then displayed the book’s information. I scanned the page and found what I was looking for at the bottom. There I saw COPIES: 1, and then AVAILABLE: 1.

  That was good, the library only had one copy and I knew exactly where it was.

  What I wanted to do would be a risk, but a small risk considering I had already killed two people. I went back to the MOST POPULAR shelf and picked up The Teachers’ Lounge and tucked it under my arm with the other book I had planned on reading. Then I walked casually to the counter where there were two people working, a young boy about sixteen, and a woman who might have been in her forties. My book had apparently been very popular with women. I chose the boy’s line.

  He looked up and saw me coming his way and smiled as I set the books down on the counter.

  "Find everything ok, Sir?" he asked, reaching for the books.

  "I did."

  "Good. If you ever need us to look for something on the computer for you, or if you need to reserve a book that’s been checked out, we’re always glad to help."

  "Sounds good."

  With that, he did a lightening quick scan of my two books into the system, causing a quick two beeps from the computer. He did it so fast I thought there was no way he even knew what I had just checked out. I realized then that I had forgotten to ask to get a card first. Shit, I thought. I didn’t want the delay.

  I brought it up casually, and acted like it was the afterthought that it really was. "Oh shoot," I said. The boy’s head jerked towards me, looking genuinely concerned.

  "Something the matter, sir?"

  I smiled, and then gave a quick laugh. "Oh no, not really. I just moved here about a week ago, I’m actually still living with some friends while I get my new place squared away, and just remembered I probably need to have an actual Library card before you’re going to let me take any books out of here."

  His face relaxed, realizing it was a quick fix, and he reached under the counter and came back with a paper form. "No problem, sir. Here, this takes like two seconds to fill out. I can enter all the info into the system after you leave, won’t make you stand around."

  He slid the form towards me and I looked at the info they wanted. The very first field was NAME. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to put my name down on that sheet when I was checking out a book with the same name printed in big bold letters right across the front. The next field was ADDRESS, followed by HOME PHONE.

  "You know," I said, sliding the form back his way. "I don’t remember my address." He crinkled his brow. "I mean, I don’t have it memorized yet, I haven’t moved in yet, ya know? And since I’m not moved in I don’t have a land line yet either, for the phone."

  I was waiting for him to give me any way out, some way to let me get that damn book out of there so nobody else in Jacob’s Bluff would stumble across my picture in the back and say "Ya know, I think I’ve seen that guy around. Yeah… at the gym," or maybe, "that’s the guy who’s always driving Minnie Sanderson around." I could not have that.

  Luck--one of the last real bits of luck I’d ever come into--was on my side that day and the boy came through for me.

  "How good a friend are you staying with?"

  I looked him in the eye. "What?"

  "I mean, I could check and see if they are in the system, and if you don’t think they’d mind paying the fine if these are late, or if you decide to, I don’t know, steal them or something, I could just use their account."

  I smiled. "Dude, he’s a great friend. He’d be mad as hell if he had to pay a fine, but we’d laugh about it later. Look for Ralph Sanderson, or maybe Minnie."

  Two minutes later I was getting in my jeep back across the street at the bank with two books. One I planned on trying to read. The other I threw in a Dumpster that was outside The Sawmill. After throwing it in I covered it with a couple large Hefty Bags. Hopefully by the end of the next day it would be sitting somewhere at the county landfill, only to be touched again by the whiskers of a scavenging rat, or perhaps a cat.

  Once rid of the book I did manage to calm myself and enjoy the day as best I could, reading a decent chuck of the other book I had gotten.

  I called Jenna about an hour earlier than I had originally planned. I had to get the show on the road and didn’t feel like wasting anymore time.

  After the incident at the library I realized that no matter how small the town might be, I wasn’t going to remain anonymous there forever. I only needed another week, hopefully. Maybe two. It really depended on Jenna, and I was pretty sure I could take care of that.

  Yes, two weeks max. Then Jackson would be finished.

  It all would be finished.

  Chapter 38

  Women are essentially vulnerable creatures, in my opinion, and I’d say I’ve got enough evidence on the matter to almost graduate it from opinion to fact. When it comes to the opposite sex, women will time and time again--generation after generation--allow themselves to use good judgment and reason to overrule anything that sex-drive and the perpetual fear of ending up alone might decide is a good idea. And then they throw that judgment and reason to the curb, stomping its face into the concrete.

  Point: Jenna McMurray should not have come to Jacob’s Bluff. Our past was tarnished, mine and her’s, and if she had been as strong of a woman as she thought she was, and as intelligent, she would have thought about that past and realized that no good would come from visiting me in a town a thousand miles away. She should have kept things professional--strictly business--and there for a split second during our first phone call that night there had been a snippet of opposition. She knew it would be impossible for us to be normal friends again--not after all that had happened--and she vocalized it for only a brief word or two before I swooped in a cut her off, driving back that good judgment and making sure it knew its place in the back of the bus. By the end of that first conversation I had done all I had sought out. There had been a spark between Jenna and I before hell broke loose--maybe an orgasm or two for all I knew--and it had grown constantly during the days leading up to the Big Accident. The spark was still there--at least on her end, and no matter how badly she would have liked to deny it--and once I knew it was still burning I made a point to pour on the lighter fluid. Gas that baby up and crank up the heat.

  When I called her the second time while I was in Jacob’s Bluff--evening, the day of the library incident--I started out as promised, giving her a quick run down of the new book. Whether it was the agent-side of her or the spark-side of her talking, she was giddy with excitement. She said that it was a tremendous idea, and that my readers would no doubt flock to the bookstores in mass to get their hands on more pages filled with their favorite character from The Teachers’ Lounge.

  "And a full length novel this time! Oh wow, Dan. This will be huge. I’ll let the publishers know in the morning. I think they were afraid you’d lost your mind and they’d never hear from you again."

 
She didn’t know how correct they were.

  We discussed a few more tidbits about the book, and then I told her I didn’t want to give too much away yet, I’d let her read it for herself. With business out of the way, I got to work. I needed to make her as completely comfortable with, and as trusting of me as she was before, maybe even more so. I thought back to how our spark had developed in the first place--initially I was sparking, too. I can’t lie about that--and realized that the spark had pretty much taken care of itself; all we had done was talked. Talked for hours and hours. So that’s what I did.

  And by God, it worked like fucking magic.

  Three days. In three days Jesus rose from the dead and I took the same amount of time to convince a woman to leave her home, fly midway across the country to a state she had never been before, all to go over some of my book with me and see what she thought and give her opinions on what could change and improvements that might be made. That was the professional reason of course, but that was only an excuse. In reality, I had drawn Jenna back in, although this time on purpose.

  We spent each of the next three nights on the phone together, me calling her. The very first night I opened with, "It’s just nice to have a friend to talk to again," and then, "I’ve missed talking to you," and we went from there.

  Needless to say I laid it on pretty thick, but not enough to oversell it, and not enough to sound like an immature High School senior who was trying to get his first trip to the pink taco stand before dining in college. No, I was charming and sweet. I told her time and time again how much I appreciated her and what a great person she was. I told her for the first time how much fun I had that day in New York with her--not mentioning the nighttime events--and how I thought that once the book was finished we should definitely plan on getting together and taking a look at it, in person face-to-face. I could hear her smiling on the other end as she agreed. I said all these things and managed to slide in the required sexual undertones, just enough to get those reason and judgment juices put back in the fridge.

  After mentioning the get together on that third day was when I dropped the bomb.

  "Well, you know… Never mind, " I said, acting embarrassed for saying anything.

  "What is it?"

  "Oh no, stupid idea, don’t worry about it."

  "I’m your agent. I tell you what’s stupid and what’s not, or have you forgotten how this works?"

  I laughed and then started, hesitantly. "Do you think… I don’t know. Its just, talking to you makes me remember what it was like to have friends I could have fun with, you know, back when I was living a normal life."

  She didn’t say anything. "I want to get back to that. I want to get back to living, you know, enjoying myself as much as I can. Ralph and Minnie are great and all, and Ralph and I go out to eat some, but come on, the guy is old! I need to get back into it with my ‘own kind.’ Shrink said the same thing."

  I stopped then, leaving things up to her interpretation. "Well," she said, "what are you saying, Dan. Can I help somehow?"

  I wanted to blurt the words out fast, stop bullshitting, but I held true to my act and said them slowly and timidly. "Jenna, do you think--and I completely understand if you can’t, or don’t want to for that matter--maybe you’d like to take a little trip out to visit me. You know, we can work on the book some, and maybe get me out of this farmhouse for a while afterwards? I’m ready to start trying, but I don’t think I’m ready to go back home, if I ever will be. "

  She sounded completely shocked, which worried me a bit because I thought she had already started to pick up on where I was going before I actually came out and said it. "You want me to come to Oklahoma!"

  Honestly uncertain of how she really felt--she may have been putting on an act herself--I backpedalled a little. "No, sorry! I told you it was stupid. I just thought…"

  I let the words hang, waiting for her to jump in and fill the silence. Praying for her to say the right thing. After what seemed like a long time of me sitting on the bed, cell phone pressed to my ear and hearing nothing but what sounded like her drumming her fingers on a tabletop, she said, "When?"

  "Whenever," I said, knowing I had her. "The sooner the better. Next week maybe? I’ll cover the costs."

  "Next week? Wow, you’re not one for notice are you?"

  I didn’t say anything.

  I imagined her sitting alone in her apartment, pondering the invitation with an imaginary angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other, grabbing her ears and tugging her back and forth.

  "Let me check my schedule tomorrow morning and I’ll let you know around lunchtime."

  The devil won.

  Chapter 39

  Jenna didn’t call me at lunch time the next day, and for an hour or two I had worried myself over whether I had rushed things too much. I knew it might be a delicate process to get her to Oklahoma, I wasn’t stupid, and I had planned on taking my time, but then the library thing happened and it just shot my nerves a little. By three o’clock I was actually considering changing my whole plan and figuring out the best way to go to New Jersey and get things done there. I would have to change my novel some, but hey, Jackson would understand. We usually saw eye to eye.

  She called at four, and things quickly fell right back into place.

  "I’ve got to cancel a few appointments, but it’s nothing major and won’t be hard to reschedule for the following week." That was how she told me she was coming. "There’s a flight that gets me there--and by there I mean Oklahoma, closest airport to your "town" is almost three hours away--around eleven a.m. next Thursday? Will that work."

  It was Saturday. I’d only have to wait another five days for her to get there. I smiled a huge grin into the phone.

  "That’s perfectly fine. I’m not going anywhere, so it’s completely up to what’s easiest for you. I’ll be there at the airport to pick you up. After making you fly all the way out here I’m definitely not going to make you rent a car and drive the rest of the way."

  "First off," she said with the sassy voice that the old Dan had started crushing on. "You aren’t making me do anything. I’m doing this because I want to. Because I want to help you do…whatever it is you need to do."

  If she knew what exactly it was she’d be helping with she might have had a different view on the situation.

  "Well I can’t thank you enough, really."

  "I’m not asking for thanks. Just promise me there’s something fun to do out there in…where is it again? Something bluff?"

  "Jacob’s. Jacob’s Bluff," I said. "Best little town that nobody’s ever heard of."

  Although they’d soon hear plenty about it. Plenty.

  My mood was the best it had been since Amy had been alive. Immediately after Jenna and mine’s conversation--the one where she told me she was coming--I went to the fridge and cracked a beer to celebrate my achievement with myself. Even the beer tasted better than usual.

  Soon after, I made dinner, enough for two in case Minnie might decide that she wanted an actual meal that day, although I doubted it. She had spoken to me a few days earlier and asked if I ever planned on watching the little TV that was in my room. I said I didn’t and then I helped her set it up in Ralph and her’s bedroom, right in front of the bed. With a TV now available from the bed, and one or two trips from the kitchen and back--arms full of sugar and carbs and chocolate--Minnie had very little reason to ever come downstairs anymore. It was almost like living alone again. I fixed myself a plate and then headed into the living room, flipping on Ralph’s impressive television and finding a movie to watch. I think it was Return of the Jedi. I seem to remember Jabba the Hutt.

  After I had eaten my fill I cleaned up the kitchen, put the extra food on another plate, wrapped it in foil and put it in the fridge for either Ralph to eat later that night, or as maybe my lunch tomorrow. I grabbed another beer from the fridge--I cut out a lot of beer in my diet since I had started working out, but again, I was celebrating--and then went back into the living roo
m to finish watching the movie. At some point I fell asleep.

  I woke up a few hours later, the TV still on and providing the only light in the room. I got up and cleared my beer bottles from the coffee table and saw it that it was almost ten o’clock. Ralph wasn’t home yet, of course, and although I wasn’t exactly tired, I decided to go on up to bed. I read a few chapters of the book I had borrowed and then went to sleep happy--and with a full belly.

  Five days.

  All I needed was five days.

  Chapter 40

  On the following Tuesday--two days short of my required five--I decided that me and my good mood needed to go do something. I hadn’t been anywhere in a while except the Sanderson Homestead, and back and forth to the gym and the grocery store--oh and one nerve wracking trip to the Public Library, lets not forget--and I was starting to get a little stir-crazy. I had finished the book I had gotten, and my own book was still on hold, of course, until all the characters got together for the end. So, I decided that I would get up, go work out as usual, shower at the gym and then head out to Larendale for a late lunch and catch a movie at the theater. It would be my third film at said theater according to the tales I had told Ralph and Minnie, but in actuality it would be my first. I had no idea what was playing, but I’d settle for anything. I just needed to get out.