The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy Read online

  “What. The. Hell …?” was Mildred’s comment, for she was the first person to see Monie emerge. “What’s. Going. On. Around. Here?” She cast a speculative eye upon Annapurna. Then another upon Monie Reardon Pillerton. “You. Two. Messing. Around. Or. Something? Hey! Maybe. You. Should. Find. Some. Place. More. Private.”

  Annapurna wanted to say that things were not what they looked liked, but she couldn’t quite work out what they did look like and to her horror, several of the Red-Hatted Ladies had at this point risen and looked as if they intended to charge the check out desk for some sort of confrontation. She said hastily to Monie, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Monie said, “Please,” in a tone that suggested heartfelt longing, which indeed it was. “Annapurna, I’ve only so much time.”

  Of course, this was a message that could be read several ways and Mildred Banfry seemed to read it in a way that Monie had not intended. She said, “Aren’t. You. The. Dark. Horse,” to Annapurna, which Annapurna found frankly unfair since she and Mildred had only just met and how Mildred possibly draw any conclusion at all about her metaphorical equine hue?

  Foolishly, she said, “It’s not what you think,” to which Mildred leered and said, “I. Bet. It’s. Not.”

  Thankfully, however, their conversation ended when Monie announced that she’d wait where she was meant to wait and Mildred followed this with an unasked for declaration that for her part, she’d return for some literary recommendations from the librarian when things weren’t so busy. Annapurna watched her leave, shouldering her I’ve Been to Disneyland! bag after shoveling through its contents to put her notebook back into place. She only hoped that Mildred was someone who didn’t share with other people matters about which she’d jumped to entirely inaccurate conclusions. Annapurna, after all, needed her job.

  She repaired to the supply cupboard and found Monie supine as required, her tattered copy of Rebecca opened upon her chest. She confessed that she truly wished there was a wedding night to witness between Maxim de Winter and his blushing bride, but Annapurna told her she would have to make a choice among the library’s few modern romance novels if she wanted to head in that direction. Monie said she hadn’t the time to paw through romance novels at the moment, so her choice of Maxim’s proposal of marriage was going to have to do. She confessed that she could not even remember at this moment of anticipation whether Maxim actually kissed the object of his marital intentions at the end of the proposal. Annapurna would have told her that no, she needed to address herself to Maxim’s tormented scene of confession—a bullet right through Rebecca’s evil heart—if she wanted to see him clasp the soon-to-be world weary wifely narrator in his arms and press his lips upon hers.

  Monie settled herself with a happy squirm and announced that she was ready. Annapurna told her that she hadn’t sent anyone—even herself—on a literary journey in a good many years so she wasn’t sure if she could still manage it. But Monie had faith. She also had a good memory. She said, “It’s welcome me welcome me welcome me home, and all the rest,” and she closed her eyes and folded her hands over Rebecca.

  Carefully, Annapurna created the leash back into reality by means of the doorknob. As the door opened outward, it would be no problem to bring Monie back where she belonged. She wouldn’t need a great deal of time in Monte Carlo with Maxim and the narrator anyway. The proposal hadn’t taken long, after all.

  Once she had the leash in place—with enough play in it to allow her access to the library and its checkout desk—she placed her hand over Monie’s, closed her own eyes, and said the words. She felt the whoosh of Monie’s nearly immediate departure, and when she opened her eyes she saw by the smile that played upon her unconscious friend’s face that her wished-for trip to Monte Carlo had been achieved and she was even at this moment bearing witness to—as far as she herself was concerned—literature’s least romantic proposal of marriage. At least there was Manderley to consider, she thought. Whatever else, the narrator had that to look forward to when Maxim declared his intention to take her if only figuratively to his manly breast.

  She glanced at her watch. She worked out that, since Maxim had dipped into his breakfast before his proposal of marriage, what with all the chewing and swallowing and the fact that these were better days in which people had better table manners, it would probably take a good fifteen minutes for Maxim to get around the point. Given that amount of time and given a “Hey! C’n someone help me?” coming from the direction of the check-out desk, Annupurna thought it would be safe for her to leave Monie to her spate of time in Monte Carlo while she saw to whatever was going on in the bowels of the library itself.

  It was the internet user. He’d run into difficulty. The computer, he announced, was stalled or dead or confused or whatever computers were when everything “froze up on ’em,” he said. He was right in the middle of his research on a vacation to New Guinea—did anyone actually wish to vacation in New Guinea, Annapurna could not help wondering— when “the whole kit ’n’ caboodle of it just went to hell in a hand wagon.” And now he didn’t know what to do because his credit card number was apparently floating somewhere in cyberspace and he “damn well needed to get it back ’fore every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets their mitts on it and decides to book themselves on a slow boat to Antarctica.” Only, his pronounced it Anartica, which Annapurna decided not to correct. She hastened to his side in order to unfreeze the computer, murmuring all the while on the inadvisability of mixing his credit card information and a public computer. Identity theft and all that, she told him. He promised to “kick the fat posterior of anyone trying that kind of business with me, I tell you.”

  Annapurna was bent over the gentleman’s computer, attempting to sort out how he’d managed to make such a hash of merely looking up information when Monie began carrying on in the supply room. It was a little cry at first, which no one who did not know what was going on in that room would have even noticed had not it been followed by a series of yips and then a quite distinct, “But she didn’t mean to! She didn’t know! She was tricked!” that could not be ignored. Something had gone badly wrong with Monie’s journey to Monte Carlo, it seemed.

  Annapurna made short work of nothing with the ageing computer. She excused herself. To the gentleman’s cry of “But what about my credit card?” Annapurna said, “It’s a far, far better thing I do …” before she caught herself. She had to get to Monie before the Red-Hatted Ladies rose as one in protest. They could be an unruly bunch when it came to their book discussion group. They did not like interruptions and when it came to distractions … Most of them were not retired schoolteachers for nothing.

  Annapurna snapped open the supply room door without thinking about how abruptly this was likely to rouse Monie from her literary communion with Maxim and his newly beloved. Monie’s horrified scream as she was whisked from Monte Carlo to Langley, Washington, in an instant electrified everyone gathered in the library. Matters were not helped when Monie’s scream turned to sobs which turned to “It was so awful. It was so humiliating. How did she survive?” which was the first clue that Annapurna had that something had gone very wrong.

  She tried to shush Monie. Monie was not to be shushed. She tried to console her. Monie was not to be consoled. She tried to lock her in the supply closet until she could get control of herself. But this, too, proved to be impossible, for the Red-Hatted Ladies, the computer gentleman, and—God forbid—Mildred Banfry (who had left her electrical bill on the library counter as things happened) all stormed the environs of the supply room door upon which Monie began to bang with great force.

  “It was Mrs. Danvers’ idea for her to dress like Caroline de Winter and how could he possibly be so stupid not to know that?” she cried. “Let me out of here, Annapurna. Send me back there. I want to rip her eyes out.”

  Annapurna understood immediately what had happened but she hardly knew what to do about it. Somehow, her friend had opened to the wrong page in the novel, and instead of finding herse
lf a witness to a marriage proposal, she’d found herself caught up in the nameless heroine’s humiliation on the night of the Manderley ball. Of course she hadn’t intended to torment her husband by dressing as his former, black-hearted wife had done in years past. It was the evil Mrs. Danvers who had suggested it. Had Maxim possessed a conscience less guilty and sense more common, he would have known this. But that would have wrecked the scene’s drama. As, frankly, sending Monie back there to allow her to sort him out would do.

  Not that she could have managed this anyway because there was plenty of explaining to do. And while Annapurna did her best with the idea of her old friend napping her way into a terrible nightmare, she could tell that not everyone was buying that story. But she managed to get the Red-Hatted Ladies to return to their discussion and the computer gentleman to return to his perusal of New Guinea. She didn’t notice Mildred Banfry, however. That was a game changer for her.

  Monie was not to be consoled. Once Annapurna had the supply room door open, Monie’s outrage at Mrs. Danvers turned itself on poor Annapurna. This was to have been her blessed escape from her life among rambunctious children and a husband who, it had to be said, had all the passion and imagination of a Texan horsefly in the middle of summer. To have arranged her schedule; to have dressed herself in a time-appropriate costume; to have managed what it took when it came to laundry, cleaning toilets, ironing, baking brownies for the church group, and all the rest and all the rest … only to have her one escape from all that to be turned into a tormented witnessing of such a scene of horror …

  Annapurna listened to all of this with patience. What she wanted to say was “You want horror? I’ll show you horror,” while she plopped a copy of The Gulag Archipelago upon Monie Reardon Pillerton’s chest. But what she said was, “Oh dear. Monie, it was the page! You were supposed to be sure you had the right page, you know.”

  To which Monie said, “You’ve got to make it right. I can’t go home feeling like this, knowing what it was like, witnessing first hand her utter and complete humiliation and you know he wasn’t the least understanding, Annapurna. Did he really think she would be so heartless? Didn’t he even know her?”

  Well, considering that all they’d done was drive around Monaco for a few days before he asked her to marry him, no he didn’t know her, Annapurna wanted to say. But Monie was in such a state of outrage and umbrage and disappointment that it seemed to Annapurna that the only answer was to whisk her back into the supply closet as quickly as possible and send her to that breakfast terrace in Monte Carlo where the marriage proposal had taken place.

  She hurried her back in. She went in after her. She got her settled. She made absolutely certain that the page was correct (“He was ready, as he had promised, in five minutes. ‘Come down to the terrace while I eat my breakfast,’ he said.”) before she set the book on Monie’s chest, folded her hands over, murmured the incantation, and prayed her journey would be sweet and swift. The whoosh was instantaneous once more. But this time, Annapurna stayed at Monie’s side.

  Her friend’s pinched features softened out. She gave a little sigh. She squirmed delightedly on the cot. She made a kissy noise. She sighed again. Annapurna glanced at her watch and counted the moments. She tried to remember everything that had gone into that scene but other than Maxim’s shaving, breakfast on the terrace and something about tangerines, she couldn’t come up with it. So she gave it five minutes and then ten and when Monie cooed, she decided she’d witnessed it all. It wouldn’t do to allow the scene to go on because the next one, as she recalled, dealt with the unpleasant comments that Mrs. Van Hopper had made about the whys and wherefores of Maxim’s interest in the narrator and God knew she didn’t want Monie seeing that.

  Gently, then, she gave a tug on the line that would bring Monie back to the supply room. When she’d accomplished this, she even took another few minutes to sit with her so that Monie could tell her about the sights and the smells and Maxim’s manliness and the narrator’s hair which wasn’t mousey at all but just in need of a good product to bring out its gloss and oh, Monie wished that she could travel back there and slip her a little John Frieda because, really, that was all it would take.

  Monie thanked Annapurna tearfully. She hugged her close and called her the best friend she’d ever had. Then she straightened her clothing and made her exit from the supply room as surreptitiously as a woman curiously costumed could do. Annapurna followed her, breathing deeply to center herself once more after the excitement of Monie’s journey.

  “What. Was. That. Exactly?”

  Oh Lord, Annapurna thought. She’d forgotten about Mildred Banfry.

  Mildred was still on the other side of the checkout counter—thank God for small favors—and her previously forgotten electricity bill was clutched in what seemed to be a very self-righteously perturbed fist. “What. Were. You. Two. Up. To. In. There?” was a demand that garnered the attention of the Red-Hatted Ladies once again. “Don’t. You. Shush. Me,” didn’t do much to alter their displeasure, either.

  Monie was oblivious to all of this: Mildred and her electricity bill, Mildred and her stentorian demands, the Red-Hatted Ladies and their unhappiness with yet another interruption to their discussion of what Annapurna knew very well was a wretched piece of vaguely pornographic fan fiction self-published by a wretched non-writer on the wretched and deplorable internet. As if they needed silence to concentrate on their discussion! was what Annapurna thought, but as the librarian she could hardly say this. What she did say was, “Terrible dream plus stomach cramps,” although she didn’t know where the stomach cramps had come from, merely the inspiration of the moment based on Monie’s clutching Rebecca to her stomach as if this action alone could transport her back into the novel, which it could not.

  Mildred, however, did not buy either bad dreams or stomach cramps, especially once she’d snatched Rebecca from Monie’s damp grasp and peered at the title. It was then she said what Annapurna had hoped never to hear upon her return to Whidbey Island:

  “Hey. I. Thought. I. Knew. You. You’re. That. Janet. Shore. You. Took. Kids. Into. The. Cemetery. And—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ms. Banfry,” didn’t achieve its intended purpose.

  “Don’t. Give. Me. That. Mizz. Nonsense,” established Mildred among the non-believers, which might have given Annapurna an entrée into a brisk discussion of women’s equality had Mildred not gone on with, “And. Don’t. Deny. It. Because. Your. Sister. Told. Me. All. About. You.”

  Monie mouthed the word sorry at Annapurna and pointed to her watch. She had to go, she was saying. Her trips into Rebecca had taken up what little free time she had and as there were brownies to remove from the pan and then frost individually before carting them off to an evening meeting of her church’s women’s group … She had to depart.

  This left Annapurna as alone with Mildred Banfry as she could be in a public library with a tittering discussion among elderly women on the subject of a borderline pornographic novel going on in the not-distant-enough distant alcove used for this purpose. As for the elderly gentleman and his computer problems, he was long gone, having either resigned himself to the loss of his credit card information via the internet—and wasn’t he a fool to be using his credit card to buy something on a public computer, as far as Annapurna was concerned—or having given up on the entire idea of ever having the librarian’s attention which was fixed, at this point, upon Mildred Banfry.

  Annapurna said, because she could think of nothing else, “My sister?”

  And thus it unfolded that Jeannie Shore Heggenes—third eldest of the Shore brood and six years Annapurna’s senior—had not only been a classmate of Mildred Banfry at South Whidbey High School but had also in a marijuana-induced afternoon of bonhomie in the company of Mildred at Double Bluff Beach where a cleverly constructed driftwood hut hid them from sight actually told Mildred of young Janet Shore’s supposed talent. This, apparently, Jeannie had learned about from her star-of-the
-wrestling team boyfriend who himself had heard it from a fellow wrestler who had learned about it from his little sister. Who, as of course Annapurna had known would be the case, happened to be Monie Reardon Pillerton, although at the time, of course, she had only been Monie Reardon.

  While the revelation made Annapurna want to do violence somewhere, she had learned long ago that violence solved nothing. After all, she had only herself to blame, along with her perverse need to prove to Monie that Boo Radley and not Bob Ewell had been the person to effect the death of that latter man beneath the oak tree on Halloween night, thus saving Jem and Scout Finch from being murdered by their father’s sworn enemy. Had she just let that whole thing go and allowed Monie to believe what she would … But she had not done so and once again she was faced with the result of Monie’s wagging tongue, all these years later.

  “It’s just a hypnotism thing,” Annapurna said to Mildred. And to get rid of her and her megaphone voice, she offered to meet the blasted woman for coffee “sometime in the future” to explain how it worked if she was interested. She declared it a hobby. She said she’d given it up long ago and had no intention of taking it up again but as Monie was her dearest friend and as she’d begged for old time’s sake … Well, she assumed Mildred knew what she meant.

  Her fatal words that late morning were, of course, “sometime in the future,” for Mildred Banfry was not a woman who let the future drift into being the future without firm plans. There and then at the checkout desk, she unearthed from I’ve Been to Disneyland! a tattered wall calendar from the Humane Society, which she opened at once to the appropriate month. “Let’s. Just. See. What. We. Have,” was spoken at Mildred’s accustomed sans hearing aid volume. “Next. Tuesday. Ten. A.M.”