[Faded, Strong, Mysteriously, Inside, Inspect]
I was true to my word. Amy and I were standing by the front door and it was late enough in June that I didn’t need a jacket. Assuming that Anais still had a rear window. Anais' car pulled in next to mine and before she got out Amy and I headed out the door to meet her. But she still got out of the car.
“Why isn’t your car in the shop?”
“I couldn’t find a good window in any of the junkyards.”
“Well get a new window then.”
“I didn’t want to waste money on a new window if an old one would do, but if I can’t find one tomorrow, I’ll drop it off before the trial. If one of you is going to the trial and will give me a ride.”
“I’m sure we are both going and it’s my turn to drive.”
“Thanks Amy.”
“You don’t have to thank me, I’m looking forward to watching Eve take Jones apart on the witness stand,” Amy replied.
“Yeah, she can be quite brutal to witnesses. I’ve seen here tear apart troopers like they were wet paper towels. She fights really hard for her clients. But she only has about five hours to prepare for the trial.”
“I thought she was all set, she was writing her book today. What do you mean she only has five hours Anais?”
“She submitted her motions and the assistant district attorney submitted replies to those motions. But the judge hasn’t ruled on the motions so she doesn’t know what evidence they have and the extent that the judge decides that Jones's employment history is relevant.”
“So the more we find out tonight the better right.”
“Yes and no, this all comes down to the judge. Is the judge going to try and protect Jones, or is he going to be appalled at what he finds out and grants all of the defense motions. Usually it’s a pretty even split. Judges don’t want to be seen as impartial because it leads to appeals and judges hate it when they are overruled by the judges handling the appeal. I just hope this judge doesn’t make the mistake to think that Eve wouldn’t bother appealing a b misdemeanor case. Because I know her. She’ll pay the filing fees herself and take it all the way to the supreme court. But it’d never get that far.”
“But if we learn stuff then Eve can use it right.”
“Not outright. Let’s say we hear from a deputy that Jones made a false arrest his first day on the job. Eve can’t call you to testify to that, that would be Hearsay. She’d have to call the deputy as a witness. If she asks Jones if he was fired on his first day. The assistant district attorney is going to object, because he doesn’t want the jury to know what a screwup Jones is. So that throws it back into the judges lap. Is this evidence relevant to the arrest in the bar. Judges have a tremendous amount of power. He might already be pissed at Eve for bringing a b misdemeanor to trial, or the fact that some hot shot Boston attorney is in Saranac defending a prostitute.”
“She’s not a prostitute.”
“I know that, you know that. But the judge doesn’t know that. He’ll have to consider why Jones would lie. That’s Eve’s job, to show why Faith is innocent and how Jones did a bad job when he arrested her. But she won’t know what she has to work with until one pm after the hearing. Whatever we learn tonight might help, it might not. Like I said it all comes down to the judge. The jury can be tricky too. Some people believe every word that comes out of a cop's mouth, others are more skeptical. But you have to show the jury why the cop lied or made a mistake, because unlike you they will believe a cop over a person that they arrested. Because they assume that the cop was being fair and impartial. Not that they were racist, or sexist, not unless the defense can put that idea in the jury’s mind. Lastly, almost no one wants to be on jury duty so they start off in a bad mood.”
We pulled into the Boors Head, was the name meant to be ironic? A collection of cars and trucks in various states of repair were scattered throughout the parking lot. None of us had been in the place before. Anais and I hadn’t even heard of it before. We went in and boy there were a lot of uniforms in the place. We found a table that wasn’t littered with beer bottles and sat down. Boy if you wanted the exact opposite of the opulent Saranac Hotel, we had found it. This bar had two things: a pool table and alcohol. It was clear by the empty pool table, what the clients were interested in.
But of course Amy’s eyes lit up right away when she saw a game that could be played. So she went over and racked up the balls while I went and got bottles of beer for the gamer girl and I and a tonic water for our driver. I wondered how to strike up a conversation with one of the deputies. Who were all huddled together like a herd of gazelles for protection, I was the hungry lioness wondering how to cut one of the deputies from his herd. There was one woman deputy, I’d keep my eye on her. Maybe I could corner her in the rest room. Hopefully she has a very small bladder.
She didn’t, her entire frame must be bladder. She sat with her buddies at the bar like her seat was made of gold and someone would steal it if her ass didn’t remain in contact with it. Amy wasn’t content with just the two of us playing pool; she insisted that all three of us play at the same time.
“But, Amy pool is a two or four person game.”
“Nonsense there are fifteen balls, I shoot for balls one to five, you have six through ten and Anais is eleven to fifteen. If you miss or you knock in one of your opponents balls your turn is over. The first one to knock in all of their balls wins and has to buy the next round.”
“Shouldn’t the losers buy the drinks?”
“No, there are two losers and only one winner, so it just makes sense that the winner buys.”
“Alright, Amy, but unless Anais is a lot better than me, expect to be buying a lot of beer.”
I broke and sunk one of Anais’s balls so my turn was over. Anais was up next and she missed. Then Amy knocked in all five of her balls. Winning the first game. She bought another round and quickly won the next two games. I kept my eyes on the deputies wondering how I might manage a chat. As ‘she’ deputy looked like she might never get off her stool.
Amy went up to the bar to get her and I another beer. I was already on my third and it seemed I’d be drunk before I ever spoke with a deputy. They must be severely dehydrated. Has the jail been converted into a desert environment. Designed to keep the inmates torpid. It would explain why not one of the herd has left their feeding grounds.
In the end all of my planning and scheming on how to talk to one of the deputies was wasted. Amy just pulled out the old, ‘Hey didn’t I meet you in dispatch about a year ago’ line. After the deputy turned from his buddies to reply Amy handed him the beer she’d purchased for me. Then she started chatting him up.
“Guess who worked at Lake Placid PD for less than a week?”
“Who?”
“Ben Jones. He was assigned a murder case on his second day and somehow he managed to arrest a witness to the crime instead of the killer. Plus some big city attorney kept ripping him a new one, on a daily basis in the police station no less. They fired him in less than a week. I heard he came from you guys, that he was a detective over here. I really thought we were getting a hot shot. Are you guys letting your standards down?”
“No of course not, you can’t blame us for Jones. He only lasted one day as a deputy. In fact it was just a little over a half day.”
“Wow, half a day. What did he do, shoot the sheriff?”
“No worse, he took a cruiser out to buy lunch for the office. We told him it was his initiation, and to make sure the food is hot. So off he goes in the cruiser, thirty minutes later he comes charging back into the parking lot lights flashing and siren blaring and smashes into the sheriff's brand new Mercedes S 65. The food and drinks went flying around the cruiser, an extra large soda spilled on the cruiser's computer, ruining a twenty five hundred dollar piece of equipment. But aside from the slight damage to the cruiser the Mercedes looked like hell. But there wasn’t enough damage to total it so the sheriff is without a car for a month. Jones himself was out the door before lunch, or during lunch. Depending on how you look at it.”
“Wow, I can’t believe that the chief at Placid would even hire him after that.”
“He’s the county executive's son so of course there won’t be any real consequences for his actions. I heard he had a new job at Saranac, the day after your chief fired him.”
“Jeez, I better stay out of Saranac. I don’t have a Mercedes but I also can’t afford to have my car hit.”
That was it, all my plotting, maneuvering, just simply defeated by shared work history and a disdain for a nepo co-worker. Amy and I split the beer and we were back home before the bookstore closed for the day. I typed it all up in my daily note in Obsidian. Then boiled it down to the basics and texted it to Eve. I finished Walden before going to sleep. After listening to Anais talk about judges and juries and their vagaries, I must have been worried when I fell asleep.
I dreamed of Jones, chasing Faith, then an entire jury went after her like a pack of hound dogs, baying. All while a grotesquely fat judge sat before an empty plate sharp knife in one hand fork in the other. As if waiting for the jury to chase her onto his plate so he could feast on her. I woke up in a cold sweat, my first thought was I hope that is the worst thing that happens today. I showered, made and drank an extra strong cup of tea and chatted with Amy before going down to open up the store.
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Lucy was behind the counter looking through the marginalia.
“Do you live here now?”
“No, I had a fight with my father and the only suitable place for me to storm off to was work, so here I am.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“He’s mad that I invited a friend to stay over while he’s away, without running it by him first.”
“I see, well she can always stay at Amy’s and like I said you both should eat here. Amy always cooks more than we need.”
“Hell, no I can have a friend over if I want to. I cleaned up the guest bedroom and everything. This is just my father worrying about his precious image. What are the neighbors going to say? I ought to throw a kegger. That would give the neighbors something to say.”
“Yes to my cousin, who’d come over and arrest the two of you for underage drinking. It often feels like the only crime these cops can solve. You both could stay at Amy’s if it comes down to it.”
“Thanks Laura, I appreciate it.” Then she stopped dead, before continuing, “Laura, you are going to want to see this.”
“You know I loved this idea when you dreamed it up but now. I’m not so sure. Is it another threat?”
She just handed me the book. “I’m Ok, You’re Ok” on page eighty four, “Not all of us want to do this anymore, can you help us?” Underneath I wrote, ‘I will try. Can we meet? Can you name who is forcing you?’
“Sorry, I’m back to liking the idea again. If you see any young ladies close to the marginalia books, try and make note of their appearance. It could help narrow down who is sending these messages and I have a good idea what bar she works out of so any details could make a huge difference.”
“I will, Laura, but the problem is that our clientele are almost all women.”
“I know, I don’t understand why men stopped reading. Is it video games back in the nineteen seventies about sixty to seventy percent of men read for pleasure versus thirty percent today. According to surveys I’ve read. But some men consider reading non-fiction, reading for pleasure. So that means even less than thirty percent read fiction. While women hover around sixty percent. That’s why the romance section has grown so much and men’s adventure has continued to shrink. We adjusted our inventory, but haven’t done anything to address the problem.”
“How could you address the problem?”
“Do you want the hippy rant or from an editor's point of view?”
“Always the hippie rant, they are so much more entertaining.”
“Rant it is, completely tear up the English literature requirements. The people that love the classics will still get to read them in college or have a high school elective for the classics but in just plain high school English class teach books like It, Carrie or the Shining. Rebecca Yarro's books like Fourth Wing and Onyx Storm. If you want people to read for pleasure you have to first show them that reading can be fun. Would you rather write a book report about the Tale of Two Cities or Scott Pilgrim. Once you have the reader hooked, then you can amp up the required list. Even if you teach a classics course, it should include stuff that is universally loved like the Lord of the Rings, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Books that resonate with people. Boys and girls shouldn’t be forced to read the same books. Assign two books, tell the class to pick which they would like to read and write a report about what you like and didn’t like. Plot summaries are unnecessary, just your own thoughts on the book. No required word count for a paper, that just makes people use a lot of Very and other adverbs and adjectives to pad out the word count. Don’t make every reading assignment a novel. Short stories are great. I read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and I like them very much but it wasn’t until I read Twain's ‘How I Edited an Agricultural Journal’ that I actually laughed out loud and not just once. Later in life I thought back and wondered if I became an editor because of that story. That’s how I’d get kids reading again, once you have the kids, most will keep on reading if they find it enjoyable. Rant finished.”
“That wasn’t very hippy, more common sense, but I like it. Do you think you could ever sell it to the schools though?”
“No, probably not, but just because an idea isn’t adopted doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea. Just that it is ahead of its time. In the dark ages of the nineteen fifties, some people had an idea that gay people ought to be treated with respect not arrest. In the nineteen sixties some people believed in civil rights also that women have a right to choose what happens to their bodies. All ideas ahead of their time. It didn’t make them wrong. My idea of teaching books that kids may actually like instead of classics that a tiny portion will enjoy, while teaching the vast majority of students to detest reading. Finding nothing pleasurable about it at all. That doesn’t stack up to gay, civil or women's rights but I do hope that it is just ahead of its time.”
Lucy got a video call and I got to thinking about teaching the ‘Hunger Games’ and the Japanese novel, "Battle Royale". But I wondered would the kids actually read the books or just watch the movies. If the reading trend keeps up tomorrow’s writers may well be pleading A I to read their work, as no one else will be.
“Eight more books, this video link is like magic.”
“You are like magic Lucy. I feel like I should get you a pair of AR glasses and a headset.”
“Will you?”
“Absoultely not. I don’t want to feel like I work in a Black Mirror episode. Besides it’s the personal touch that gets you the great sales you have been getting not the tech. I have to go down to the library. I’ll be back in just a little while.”
I saw our resident romance writer Em in the romance section.
“Hi Em, scoping out the competition or are you trying to avoid the current hot trends?”
“A little of both, I definitely want to avoid hockey romances, but I also don’t want to just switch it to baseball, football or basketball. I do like sports because it’s easy to show the character as a rising star or an over the hill person who has been looking for that career after the sport. Millionaires and billionaire romances are always hot. Just a few lines can show just how successful the character is. Let me pick your brain. How do you like the male main characters super capable, super rich, average joes?”
“Honestly Em, if they are super capable, it has to be something niche for me. Like a lute player that knows every french romantic lute piece. I have never and will never read a billionaire, millionaire romance. I really dislike the trope, same with the mafia / biker romances. I don’t believe that protagonists like those won't turn violent with their partner eventually. It’d be like crawling into bed with a bomb. Sooner or later it’ll blow. To be honest my favorite characters are the really quirky ones. Bill and Ted come to mind, good natured to a fault. Not really talented in any particular thing but somehow the writer finds a path for them through the story, they get the main character through to a win at the end.”
“Yeah but Bill and Ted, I’m not sure they should have partners because those partners will never share as strong of a bond that Bill and Ted share with each other. Like they are characters that would die for each other, but they also know everything about each other. There is no mystery between Bill and Ted, those guys share everything.”
“I get what you mean, Bill’s partner is forever going to be jealous of Ted. Bill and Ted will be clueless that this is even an issue and just continue on their merry way until the partner just can’t take it any more. In a mystery the partner kills Ted, in science fiction they somehow become him. But what can you do with them in a romance? You’re right together they just don’t work for a romance. How about Ted as the owner of a pot dispensary no Bill, never has been a Bill. The female main character has cancer, bad and she’s undergoing chemo and she’s not sure what is worse, the chemo or the cancer. She is so sick to her stomach constantly that she can’t eat, she’s losing weight which is making everything worse. Her BFF recommends she visit Cosmic Weed to try and find just a little relief. Where after however old Wilimina is she finally meets the love of her life. Then you the author gets to choose, the tragic ending where she dies in the hospital at the end. A sobbing Ted sitting by her side or the rom-com ending, the chemo heals her body, the weed heals her mind, and Ted heals her soul. She leaves the hospital and they run Cosmic Weed together. The tragedy would sell like gangbusters, but the one I’d like to read is the rom-com. If you’ll write it, I’ll read it Em, I mean it.”
“You're a romantic Laura. But I can’t steal your idea.”
“You are not stealing, it’s just a thought of something I’d like to read amd maybe I’m romantic or maybe I just like really nice characters. I mean not in every scene, but in general really nice. Tom Hanks, Jimmy Stewart, they made movies you could expect their characters to be nice in general. Jimmy Stewart even made a movie with a quote about it. He played Elwood P. Dowd. ‘Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.’ He plays a guy you are supposed to think sees things, and he drinks too much and his family wants to put him away. It’s called Harvey and it’s my favorite Jimmy Stewart movie.”
Em went up to write and I ran down to the library. I only hope she has a weed farm in her next romance. The library was crowded as usual and there was a line to check out materials. So I stood off to the side until Sarah was down to her last patron and then I got inline behind her.
“Well, hello Laura are you here to root around in the basement microfiche files again?”
“No, I came here to ask you a favor.”
“The bookseller wants a favor from the librarian. I don’t know, I try not to deal with dirty capitalists like you. Profiting from people’s reading addiction, it should be illegal. But as long as you are here you might as well ask.”
“First I want you to know that I did take a shower this morning and I haven’t yet made a sale. So the capitalist stink shouldn’t be too bad. But as I’m aging rapidly and afraid for my legacy into perpetuity I have set up a foundation to run the writers collective. I would be very honored if you would agree to be a member of the board. Right now it’s myself, Amy and Anais, you if you’ll accept and a writer to be determined by the writers.”
“Are you kidding, are you hippies actually going legitimate?”
“Yeah, fifty years and still going strong, we sputtered a little bit. But I found a financial wiz who forsake the darkside and set the writer’s collective back to rights and I’d really like for that to continue. I don’t think that we will meet any more than four times a year, maybe just twice. But I can promise Amy’s fresh home baked goods for snacking while we listen to the minutes being read.”
“Laura, I’d be honored, thank you and congratulations on fifty years. Your aunt would be really proud and you and Amy, still best friends too.”
“She actually donated her house to the foundation and moved in as the cook after retiring from the county.”
“You don’t expect me to donate my house now that I’m a board member do you?”
“No, you don’t have to donate anything except your time and expertise.”
“Good, I was afraid this was some grift to get my house.”
“Nope I promise, just your time and expertise.”
