Mad librarian, p.23
MAD Librarian, page 23
“That might be a future show,” Roberts said. “We might come back here one morning to take questions on-line and see what MAD can do for our viewers.”
“Anytime.”
“The first floor seemed to have customers—”
“Patrons. Customers are people who shop at someone else’s store. This is their MAD, and we are grateful every time they come here. Yes, we have a few patrons downstairs. The MAD doesn’t open until tomorrow morning—but we’re doing a soft launch today. We’re letting a few people in at a time to the first floor now. That’s what the line is outside. At noon, we’re going to open up the second floor on a limited basis.”
Third floor. Serenity showed the business and employment center with mostly open desks and computers with plastic still on them. She gave a run-through and turned to Bowden.
“See, this is what is new and—we hope—revolutionary. We’ve tried business incubators before, and they tied corporations and entrepreneurs together. But this ties it all together: businesses, potential employees, and the services needed to make it work, all together. Maker spaces with three-D printers and other tools so people can prove their concepts without spending a ton of start-up cash. When the businesses get big enough, they’ll move out on their own.”
“And we’ll be there with them even then,” Serenity said, “helping them find or build space, and making sure that they stay connected. Once they’re up and running, every business will have a librarian assigned as their contact, with an office here at the MAD and, if the business chooses, an office at their business making sure that they have all the knowledge they need. And, all the data connectivity they need will be free, coming through the MAD.”
Bowden said, “We’ve had models where we offered free utilities and such in a business zone, but never a city built on free knowledge, of every kind.”
Fourth floor. Serenity showed them the education center, with college prep and early learning centers. A man was testing a camera in the media center and Serenity motioned Roberts into the chair behind the news desk. “And this, Robin, is where we’ll train your replacement.”
Roberts smiled into the MAD camera and looked at her ten-foot image on the big screen across the room. The GMA camera swiveled to her image on the big screen as she said, “This is Robin Roberts, signing off from the future.”
The fifth floor was mostly a mess of men who were assembling furniture.
“This will be a drop-in day care by day and a homeless shelter by night.”
Forbes said, “Single moms can work one floor below their kids, and people trying to get back on their feet won’t lose jobs because they don’t have beds and showers.”
The sixth floor was empty.
“Libraries have always been the only place where anyone can consult with a professional for free, and we’ve done the best we could,” said Serenity. “This will be our medical, legal, and mental health knowledge center. Not a clinic, except in a very basic sense, but a link to professionals who can get people connected.”
Roberts said, “If I were lucky enough to live in Maddington and didn’t have a doctor, but had a strange pain, or if I had a scary legal situation, but didn’t know a lawyer––”
“Come to the MAD. We’ll get you started.”
The seventh floor was a mess with the breeze still blowing through open holes and men climbing around and yelling at each other.
“Our administrative offices will be housed here,” Serenity said, “and, appropriately, it’s just a mess.”
“Perfect.” Roberts turned to the camera and did her closing.
When the camera was off, she came to Serenity with a serious look. “As we were moving up, it occurred to me that there are two reasons why this hasn’t been done before. The first, and most important, is that each of those floors, in their own way, represents a powerful lobby that fights for its own turf. You’re going to have a hard time keeping this from being pulled apart. You’ve got a tough fight ahead of you to keep this, maybe just to survive. Let me know if I can help.”
“Thanks. I hope those are not just polite words. I may call on you,” Serenity said.
“I meant it. Anytime.”
“And the other reason?”
Roberts laughed. “We’ve all put up with these problems too long. No one’s been mad enough before. Pun intended.”
The Forbes guy came up carrying a tablet.
“I thought you might want to see a rough draft of what our cover might look like.”
He turned the tablet around and showed them the screen. The shot was the outside of the MAD with men working on the top floor and a line of people waiting to get in. The Forbes logo was across the top and plastered across the building was, a city of books.
sixty-nine
the power of the book
DEDICATION MORNING: MAD DAY 1. Tuesday, August 19th if you paid attention to the old calendar, which no one in Maddington had for—oh, seven days.
Serenity sat on the podium and looked out over the crowd. Most who lived in the city were there, and it looked like half the people in the state were there, too. Camera crews, bloggers, tweeters, and high-school journalists, along with the Library Journal and other trade publications that were covering the seven-stories-in-seven-days building story were all there. Someone said Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report was there, reporting that Elvis was at the MAD, and threatening to turn Democrat.
In the front row sat Paul Molcut. Serenity had invited him to be on the stage with her, but he demurred and insisted that she should be on stage alone to claim the glory. Other local politicians decided not to be on the stage, either. In the back, she saw an Auburn jacket under a straw hat on a large and nondescript man and recognized him as Molcut’s enforcer. She saw him make head nods to men scattered here and there throughout the crowd.
Americana singer/songwriter Amy McCarley was singing on stage, donating her time to support MAD. She came to the end of “Everything Changed,” which was Serenity’s cue. She stood up with a book in her hand and took the stage as Amy stepped down.
“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens of the MAD, welcome to a new day,” said Serenity, who paused for a scream from the crowd. “I’m not going to talk long because I’m as excited as you are to get inside.” More cheers. She saw Molcut’s enforcer make a “get ready” signal to his men and knew something big was coming.
She took a deep breath and savored the smell of paint and sawdust. She realized that there was book dust in it, too, and smiled.
Scanning the crowd, she realized that Joe was nowhere to be seen. Just as well. She didn’t want him caught up in this. She smiled again, thinking of what their last memory of each other might be.
She knew what she wanted her last moment to be, if this was it. She took a deep breath.
“For years, here at the MAD we’ve done our best living on scraps and crumbs, afraid to ask for more. Despite that, we’ve always had a library that was a shining beacon for ‘what’ and sometimes ‘why.’ Throughout cutbacks and policy shifts, patrons always knew they could go to the library and our overworked librarians would do their best.
“But our best often wasn’t good enough because we didn’t have the time, the money, or the tools. Worse, if someone needed an answer to a ‘how’ question—how do I find a job, how do I start a business, how do I heal my broken family, they had nowhere to turn. Our librarians had one heartbroken day after another filled with people asking for help that we didn’t have the tools to provide.
“And all of us paid the price.” She paused, looked up from her notes, and then directly at Molcut. “We paid the price as a community, because none of us could face the price we might have to pay to do better.” She looked back at the crowd. “Because we were afraid to face our own suffering, our children suffered, people who wanted to work suffered, businesses suffered, and teachers suffered.
“No more. The city of Maddington has stood up, led by civic leaders such as Ron Powell, and businessmen like Seth Burroughs and a thousand other citizens who went from saying this couldn’t be done, to finding the courage to make the impossible real. That shining building in front of us, waiting for us, is an enormous toolshed for us all: Tools to build, tools to learn, tools to heal, and tools to grow a future beyond our wildest dreams.”
She locked eyes with Molcut. The crowd cheered and she wound up for her finish. Molcut’s enforcer saw the end coming and signaled his men. Serenity saw them shift so each had a clear line of fire toward the stage.
She raised her book over her head with two hands and shook it at them.
“Other cities are built on councils, and chambers, and committees of the absurd. But Maddington is built on books.” She caught the eye of the enforcer and jerked her head up to the sky. He and his men followed her eyes up and saw OHR and his men appearing in the trees, watching and ready. Molcut’s men sat down. For now.
Except for one. The enforcer himself got up quietly and edged through the crowd to a small notch in the building that held the side courtyard. Early in the morning, the courtyard was dark, and out of sight of OHR’s men. A couple of them were scrambling, but it would take them time to follow him.
Serenity saw the enforcer lean against a wall, just a shadow to anyone not watching him. She saw a gleam of metal as he raised a long-barreled pistol.
Fine. But they’ll never kill my books.
At the top of her lungs, she screamed, “Books. Books and courage and strength. Citizens of Maddington, welcome to your MAD.”
The crowd leaped to their feet, cheering. Serenity was listening for another sound over the crowd, and she heard it. A gun boomed but she felt nothing. He must have missed. Then the long-barreled gun dropped, and the shadowy man collapsed into a heap. Joe stepped out into the sunlight, putting his gun away, and was swept away with the crowd.
seventy
meet the new boss
TUESDAY MORNING, seven days after Serenity had promised the MAD, a workman on the seventh floor said, “We’ll put the real desk in tomorrow, ma’am.”
Serenity smiled. “We’re good. Leave it.”
The man looked at the two sheets of interior plywood on sawhorses they had sat in an “L” as a makeshift desk for her. “You sure? They’ve got a desk coming in tomorrow that they say is really fancy.”
“Put it somewhere on the first floor, where people can see it. There’s plenty of room on this for me to work.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He took his toolbox and walked out.
Serenity sat Faulkner’s habitat down on the side of the ‘L’ and opened his door. “Go explore your new home.” He stuck his nose out and sniffed the air. “Sorry,” she said. “No rum. I’m done with those days.” She paused. “Maybe.”
She looked around her new office, set in the corner with a view of the city through two large glass panes. Although smaller than most corporate offices, it was still palatial for a librarian. She walked to the big video screen that took up most of the wall facing her desk and picked up the remote control to flick through the views. Floor by floor, she watched crowds exploring their new home. She came to one that showed a twice-as-big-as-life view of herself, a high-tech supermirror, one she could adjust lighting and backgrounds as she prepared for future interviews.
The face she saw seemed to sag with tired grayness. She thought it looked like an aging amateur prizefighter wearing a bright red wig as a joke. No chance of running away to the beach and getting a job as a cocktail waitress with that face.
She punched a button and the screen filled with an external shot of the MAD and the big American flag flapping proudly in the breeze. Workmen were climbing on the roof as patrons crowded the doors downstairs and families played in the park that surrounded the building.
Her building. Her life. More than the sad flesh she had just seen, this was her real face and her future now.
A shadow crossed the monitor and she jumped and turned. A figure was at the door.
“Joe,” she said, “you scared me.”
“I understand there’s a lot for you to be scared of these days.”
She tried to read his face. “Maybe not, as long as I’ve got my cowboy.”
He ignored her and waved his hand at the screen. “You did it. You got your dream.”
She looked at him. “There’s a lot to my dream, babe. You know that.”
She looked at him.
He looked down, then looked up at her, squarely. “We’ve made a lot of dreams come true ourselves, haven’t we? But this is that core for just you, even when neither of us knew it. This is what you were born for.”
He crossed over and stood beside her, looking at the library on the screen, at the men and women and children drifting in. He started to say something, couldn’t, and just pointed. Finally, he said it. “Looks like there’s a place for everybody in your library.”
She put a hand on his arm and looked up at him. “A place for everybody, Joe.” Her eyes filled with hope and tears.
“No.” There was a long pause. “Almost everybody. You know me, babe. I know where all this is coming from, or I at least know enough to know I can’t be a part of it.” His mouth moved but nothing more came out.
Serenity said, “I saw you at the dedication.”
“Let’s hope you were the only one.”
She nodded. “I know how much it hurts you to do something that has to be kept a secret.”
“Not as much as it would hurt me to see something happen to my Sweet…” He took a breath.
She reached up to wipe his eyes and that seemed to trigger the flood.
“I’m sorry, Serenity.” His voice was breaking and fighting through the sobs. “Sorry as hell for both of us. Mostly for me. I’ll always love you, but I can’t be a part of this. I know I just said that twice now, but it feels like a song stuck in my head and it’s a sad, bitter song for me, but it’s the only one I hear, over and over. I’ll move my stuff out today. I can’t do this anymore.”
She looked at him and wanted to argue. “I don’t know if I would love you if you could. And part of me—a big part of me—wishes I could be different.”
“I don’t. This is the Serenity I fell in love with, written in a big, big book.”
She could barely see as he walked away. Twenty years gone and only one thing left to say one last time. “I will always love me my cowboy.”
He turned partway and looked at the floor. “And I’ll always love me my Sweetblossom.”
“Maybe someday—”
There was a knock on the door and Joy, Doom and OHR came in without waiting. Joe slipped past them and out the door. Joy said, “First staff meeting in the palace,” and they pulled folding chairs up to the plywood.
Oddly, it felt like an ordinary day to Serenity. No rum, no crisis, just details of running the MAD: Life and death, and all that.
“We’re wasting the roof,” said Doom.
“Jesus, Doom,” said Joy. “We expanded times seven in every direction already. Give us a break.”
“No, listen to me. They’ve got these drones to deliver small packages. We could put a fleet of them on the roof and deliver books to homes and schools.”
“So we could,” said Serenity.
“We can use the roof for security, too,” said OHR. He gave the security status and talked about various weapons and their placements and backups.
“This feels like Eisenhower planning for D-Day,” Joy said.
“Just business,” said Serenity.
Joy closed her notebook and Doom smiled a slight smile as she held up a book.
“We’re not done with enemies,” she said.
“No,” said Serenity.
“So we need a weapon they won’t expect. A library weapon.”
She sat the book in her lap, opened it, and a white powder floated out in a cloud.
“Talcum powder,” she said. “But I’ve got a source that can make ricin—a powerful poison from beans of castor plants—in the back of her farm. We can send someone a book. After they open it, we carefully retrieve the book. And fade away.”
Joy and OHR exchanged shocked looks but Serenity just shook her head.
“There’s a line we’re not going to cross, Doom,” she said. “Somewhere.”
They all watched as Faulkner jumped into his wheel and started spinning faster and faster.
Turn the page
for a bonus chapter
from Michael Guillebeau’s next book
EMERALD COAST:
FREE MONEY
one
LIZZIE HAD NEVER in her life taken a thing that didn’t belong to her, and this is where it got her: grouchy from being up too early, tired from staying up too late—and the wig itched like hell. It was just her luck to get stuck wearing a god-damned cheap, sweaty, platinum blonde wig while going out into the searing Florida Panhandle heat and back into freezing hotel rooms. Over and over, all day long, trying to save money working on minimum wage cleaning rooms at the Emerald Coast Beach Hilton.
She tapped on the door to room 415 twice.
“Housekeeping,” she said in a clear, cheerful voice, the way the corporate trainer had told her.
There was no sound from the room. She stepped inside to the residue of a night of joy and margaritas and coconut oil––just like every other Florida hotel room. She peeled the gloves off her clammy hands and took the wig off to scratch her head. In the mirror, an angry young woman with a bright red mohawk and brown stubble on each side of her head stared back at her.
The mohawk had worked when she was in Los Angeles. There it was all about attitude and style. Lizzie Borden had been the future of rock and roll and she strutted out there, a cute, ballsy, fresh-faced little girl doing Florida blues rock with an L.A. edge to it. Both the crowds and the suits told her she was the new Janis Joplin.
Critics loved her first album. But then the record company was sold, and the new owner didn’t love her. He pulled the album, kept the rights to Lizzie’s music and her name, and told her she could buy it all back for a hundred thousand dollars.
