Louisiana Saves the Library Read Free Page A

supposed to get her tenure, Brendan and his young girlfriend—made Louise’s pulse race with barely contained rage. She fished her cell phone out of her purse and dialed his number. Voice mail, of course.
    â€œBrendan, can you please send the check? I really need it. I know you have my work address. Thanks.” She tossed the phone back in her bag and looked up to see Russ Adwell standing in the doorway. The aging professor wore his usual button-up shirt and slightly crooked bow tie.
    â€œSorry,” he said. “I was going to knock.”
    Louise resisted the urge to put her head down on the desk and maybe even bang it a few times. She didn’t need Adwell to hear her angry voice mails. Still, she was glad to see her eccentric colleague. “That’s okay. I was just verbally abusing my ex-husband’s voice mail.”
    Adwell had a tendency to corner unsuspecting students and give long discourses on everything from the history of Masonic persecution in Nazi France to chemical differences between different kinds of fruit. Cataloging was his main area of interest, and he would sometimes launch into a speech about why the Dewey Decimal System was manifestly superior to Library of Congress. Louise had already heard it at least seventeen times. Regardless, he was one of her closest friends. She understood him much better than Trish and her crowd of former debutantes. Adwell said exactly what he was thinking, something Louise found reassuring. With him, what you saw was what you got.
    â€œTwo weeks,” he said now, an ironic smile appearing under his pockmarked nose.
    â€œUntil what?” Louise was muddle-headed, half inside the article she was reading and half thinking about what to feed the kids for dinner.
    â€œThat’s when they’re going to tell us if we’re done.” He made a slashing motion across his throat. “They might not kill the whole program, of course. By which I mean, they might not fire everyone. They could dump some of us into the education school. That is to say, the old farts like me who have tenure.”
    Whenever he deviated from one of his canned lectures, Adwell’s speech slowed down like a clock that needed winding. Louise patiently waited until he was finished. He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know, but it was worse coming from him. “Or maybe they will find some money somewhere and leave us alone,” she said.
    â€œDon’t count on it, sister. I assume you are on the market.” Adwell sounded less like a clock now and more like a robotic synthesizer.
    Louise was surprised to see that he was truly upset. She’d never known him to be bothered by anything. Obnoxious students, pushy administrators, and even the creepy brown American cockroaches that sometimes grew to mouse size in Louisiana had no power to move him. But now his world—and hers—was crumbling. His discomfiture made it all horrifyingly real. “I haven’t looked for jobs yet,” she admitted.
    â€œYou haven’t? Goodness’ sakes. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation this afternoon. You’ve already missed the deadline to apply for some of the jobs. The American Library Association conference is on December twenty-seventh.”
    â€œI know. I just can’t stand the thought of moving again.” Dread collected in the pit of Louise’s stomach. Coming to Louisiana with two little kids was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. The thousand-mile drive alone had been torture. Zoe spent half the trip crying because she wanted out of her car seat. When they stopped at a hotel each night, neither child fell asleep until after midnight. Louise had been so worried about passing out on the road that she drank coffee until her hands shook. She’d arrived in Saint Jude feeling strung out and exhausted. The idea of doing it all again terrified her.
    â€œWell, you need to think about it. Unless