To the Smell of Old Books and Newspapers

E

EquinoxSol

Guest
Original poster
"Avery, could you lock up tonight, please?" asked Jason, throwing her the keys to the building.

The girl sighed before answering, "Sure. But tomorrow is your turn. You know I don't like staying here late, it feels creepy." She shivered as she imagined what all could go on in the library while she was the only one there. Of course, nobody would want to break into a city library, but she was still scared of the possibilities.

"Fine, fine," the aging man told her, grinning kindheartedly before opening the front doors, and leaving Avery alone in the library with the remaining guests.

After the writing presentation in the meeting room let out, the library was mostly empty, and Avery was able to leave the front desk unattended as she cleaned up in the back room, picking up stray papers and filing things when needed. Afterwards, she began shutting off the computers situated around the library, straightening up the pencils and papers there occasionally.

When she was making her rounds, checking that everything was locked, she saw a man near the back, typing away at a computer, but she didn't pay him much attention. Nearly every day he was in that exact same chair, doing the same thing, and was a regular occurrence in the library. He'd probably be gone by closing, like he was every day, and then Avery could go home.

Humming softly to herself as she began putting away some unshelved books in the children's section, she kept a watch on the time, already feeling the creepiness of being in the library alone.
 
Mace stared intently at the screen, and then the various books he had on the side. They ranged from other novels, a few comics, and some other stuff here and there, like physics books and history books. If he were to just stand up straight, He'd have been a 5,11 fit caucasian man with short to medium dark brown hair and green eyes. At the moment, he was dressed up in an untucked dress shirt with the top three buttons undone, and a loose tie.

He rubbed his eyes as he stared intently at the text before him. Some of that text was apart of a list of ideas, another, a rough draft in the works, and several various other pages, from news articles to other little things. His eyes darted over to the little clock on the screen, causing him to emit a rather loud grumble, as he straightened himself out, and piled all the books into a box with his name on it, a little thing he did incase he found something with really useful information, and left it at that exact computer, as he gathered some lesser things within a sling backpack, and made his way towards the exit, adjusting a pair of black rimmed glasses.

"Ah…" He began nervously, upon noticing the young lady, Avery, standing where she had been the past few minutes. He felt kind of bad spending so much time within a library instead of an office, or his own apartment where he probably should have been home. But this library was full of resources, and he preferred having some physical materials to work with rather than the internet alone. In that sense, he was old fashioned, yet kind of open to the changes occurring everyday.

But hell, what did that matter? There was this attractive librarian standing face to face with him, probably sick of him staying late so many times.

"Sorry about that…" He mumbled, before heading for the exit, only to stop and check one of his pockets. He was missing his keyring.

"Shit." He cursed. "Ahm…Miss? Have you seen a set of keys anywhere?"
 
Avery had waited patiently to answer whatever question the man had, until he said the equivalent of never mind, and left for the exit. Hearing him curse, she looked to him, listening to his question before answering with, "I haven't...Do you want me to help you look? They might be stuck in the chair you were sitting at or something..." She smiled pleasantly, setting down the books she had been shelving.

Brushing her curly dark blonde hair from her eyes, she started walking back to the small grouping of chairs towards the back. As they walked, she asked, "What do you work on all day here? I don't mean to pry, but when you sit in the same chair every day we're not closed, it looks sort of interesting...weird." Fixing her soft brown eyes on him, she smiled, coming to the place where he had been sitting.

The lights in the library were dimmed earlier to save on electricity, but it wasn't too dark, so Avery didn't have to turn on the lights again to search for his keys. Kneeling down in front of the chair, she reached underneath it, trying to feel for his keys. "Do you think you could've dropped them somewhere else, like in the bathrooms or something?"
 
"I'll go check in a second." He managed to get out clearly. "But I highly doubt it."

Now, if he could just find his keys- Wait, she was actually interested in what he had been working on? Most people had just passed by assuming he was simply hard at work and decided to leave him to his business, or he simply didn't answer because he was at a crucial point in his research and writing for the novel he was writing. The reason why he'd been working so hard was because the book he was currently working on, a Fantasy/Sci Fi tale, was a sequel to another bestseller.

Unfortunately for Mason Madigan, this was not the story he at heart, wanted to get out to the public. But his publishers and everyone had demanded he write a brand new title, lest they go 'bankrupt' as they believed, truthfully simply wanting the money. And for most others, a continuation of the weaker story he'd written a while ago. Well, they wanted a GOOD book, then by the heavens they'd get one. This was a book that Mace was working around the clock to ensure would actually gain critical acclaim, if not the same amount of moolah the first had.

"Ah, just a novel… Big Wigs need it done ASAP…" He mumbled.
 
"What's the book about?" she asked, straightening in order to take the seat's cushion out. Reaching between the arms and the seat, Avery tried to feel for the cool metal of keys, but felt nothing. Sighing softly, she stifled a yawn as she checked the other side, her fingers just barely brushing against something that might have been his keys. Not sure, she tried to find it again, but it must have fallen down further into the seat.

Taking out a handful of change, all taken from the seat, she set it down on the floor near her before reaching her hand in again, splaying her fingers out to find the keys. "Can you give me a hand here?" she asked, turning around slightly to look at him. Smiling briefly, she moved over slightly as she showed him where she thought his keys were. "I could just barely reach them...do you think you could give it a go?"
 
"Just my next paycheck." He joked. "Honestly, my publisher wants me to write another best-seller. Namely a sequel to a book that came out in the last eight months: You've heard of Steel Heart, right? The Sci Fi fantasy story that was really popular? They want another one. Only this time, I'm going to write a better story as opposed to the napkin scrawl of my last work…"

Here he was, explaining everything while searching for his keys. And he was glancing at her every now and then, seeing as she was a fine young woman. He moved over to reach for the keys himself, managing to find them, as well as what appeared to be a condom pack. Unused, too. But Mace wouldn't dare admit it was his. An eager friend had offered him some earlier in the day (and by offer, it was more like a pack was forced upon him in his friend's belief that he was going to get laid by some fan of his works rather soon).

"Some people, y'know?…" He chuckled, tossing the pack towards the trash can nearby, but missing, and watching it bounce off the rim...

"I wonder what else you could find down there. It's like a goldmine of little things people lose…"
 
"You did Steel Heart?" Avery asked, smiling, purposefully ignoring the condom pack. "I thought you looked familiar." She had read the book upon recommendation from Jason, and probably still had it sitting on one of her shelves at home. To be honest, now she was surprised that Jason hadn't said something.

Struggling to remember his name, in order to not seem like she was lying, she nervously tugged at her lanyard, where her name tag hung from around her neck. "Your name's, uh...Grayson...er, Mason, right?" she asked, smiling apologetically for her mistake. "I'm sorry; I can't remember your last name." Chuckling sheepishly, she said, "I'm Avery."

Straightening, she stood up, stifling back a yawn. She had been in the library since it opened that morning, and was longing for her bed at home. Rolling her shoulders, she checked the time, realizing it was already passed closing. "Here, I can walk you to the front...I need to finish up closing up." She smiled at him, already straightening up the chair.
 
"Yeah, Mason Madigan. Mace is fine, and thanks for recognizing me and my awful first book. And following that waste of time- thank you for my keys, I'd be more than happy to head out now. This lone writer has to get his sleep, and let attarctive young librarians get home for whatever it is they do these days..."

Mace was already making his way to the door once his things were collected. He had no intention of wasting any more time on holding up the kindly librarian who'd been nice enough to read his first and nearly worst work. Of course, being so caught up in his work, he failed to remember the storm warning, and would likely be soaked on his way outside, and probably wait 20 minutes while drenched to the bone.

"Don't suppose you know where I could grab some of these?" Asked Ryan, referring to a short grocery list. "It's late, I've been forgetting, and The brands aren't common ones..."
 
"Um..." Avery said, a light blush still covering her cheeks from his compliment, as she looked at his list. "I think there's an Asian store off of West St...They might have some of these..." she trailed off. She knew that she had seen a couple of the things on his list, but she didn't know where. "If you don't mind waiting for a few minutes, I can walk you out to your car and show you where it is. I brought an umbrella." She smiled at him, turning towards the front desk. "You can sit over here, if you want." She gestured towards one of the chairs behind the front desk, before attending to her duties.

Shutting down the computers behind it, she turned off the bar-code scanners before straightening up the papers on the desk. Heading into one of the back offices, she grabbed her things, slinging her bag over her shoulder and picking up her umbrella.
 
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