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Amid Shelves
Simmons Library was a melting pot of haves and have-nots, a mixture of homeless people and older residents of nearby neighborhoods. Many of them with heads down, engrossed in various books. Others using computers, particularly printers which were available for internet usage.
Gwen didn’t like to think of herself as particularly well off, sometimes she struggled but did dwell in a house. Close to six years since Ted passed. Her biggest problem, a car loan Ted took out. Too big a car for her and too uncomfortable in traffic. Blood pressure went up, gave her shaking fingers, not like reading one of those bodice ripper tales she occasionally stumbled across among Simmons stock. Mind, only to demonstrate wide reading, balance out proper literature.
Too embarrassed those few times she couldn’t find her vehicle in car parks. Needing to ring someone or get a smirking shopping centre security person to help her find where she’d parked. Wasn’t dementia. Too young for such problems. All those parking bays looked similar. Simply forgot, level purple 2 or blue 3. No need to get in a knot with worry about a bigger darkness looming. Still she loved reading, and this was a search for new books.
You could tell when Fredrick arrived, he announced to everyone, ‘My name is Fredrick…in house of books.’
On departure, ‘Fredrick is leaving. See you tomorrow…with bells on.’
Don’t stand too close as spit accompanied second half of his name. At least he didn’t smell homeless, an aroma of campfire grit, road dirt and general unwashed. Gwen wondered how this young man kept so clean. Mostly shaved, without disheveled or matted hair. Yet his general noise did annoy students cruising between textbook shelves, who responded to loud announcements with barely stifled giggles. Elderly neighborhoods didn’t pay him too much attention. Caught in their own animated exchanges. But quietly or else the librarian would tell them to be quiet. This was often done with a finger over lips, and a repulsive Shhh… or she would walk up to them and demand they leave the library as they were making too much noise.
Watching Frederick flick magazine pages Gwen decided he might be hungry. After all a café served low-cost treats right inside. She justified approaching him and making this offer under a guise of building bridges between disparate community groups, like clothing drop boxes, or charity donations. She and Ted used to do deliveries for Meals on Wheels. In his brand-new shiny car. Gwen congratulated herself on not being incapacitated like those people.
Chuffed with her offer, Fredrick smiled widely. ‘Oh, thank you, be nice.’
‘Cappuccino, extra hot, with one sugar.’ His too loud order.
Random shush noises, and a titter in response. Luckily the librarian didn’t pay much attention to the café orders.
‘That’s right, Fredrick, your usual order,’ said a teenage barista. With what Gwen thought an expression bordering on interrogative.
‘Would you like a cake?’
‘Oh no, too fattening,’ he replied, patting his thin belly.
Soon Fredrick sipped and uttered too loudly, ‘aaah…’ getting froth on his lips, and licking nosily. Attracting glaring looks other patrons. He slowly stirred liquid, in a sensual manner and winked at Gwen. She was not used to this response.
Another grey-haired woman on an adjacent table waved demurely at Fredrick.
‘Hello Daisy! Love you much. See you again soon…in a bathroom…with bells on.’
Gwen detected a smirk across her lips, as if history exists between these two. Yet she remained silent and too polite to enquire how Fredrick knew Daisy Heatherton. Again the librarian did not pay too much attention, as if she was used to Fredrick making a little too much noise.
With a half empty cup, he asked, ‘can I see where you live?’
‘Why not, and meet my cat, Hendrix.’
Fredrick’s head wobbled reminiscent of Reggae dancing. ‘Love Jimmy Hendrix.’
‘I’d like to get some books before we go.’
Almost jumping up right away, ‘I’ll show you…Fredrick knows good ones.’
He bends much quicker than Gwen might manage.
‘This book is about …two brothers, one is called Clay. Funny name. Not clay as in pottery.’
‘Yes, I’ve read Zusak’s The Book Thief. So, Bridges of Clay, worth a read. Thick book, though, how will I manage to carry it?’
He winked and laughed, open mouthed. ‘Fredrick help…with bell’s on!’
Back outside, caught in an icy wind, Gwen leads Fredrick across the busy highway, taking his hand like escorting a much younger child. Only a few blocks from her street, she notices uncollected local newspapers on ground near letterboxes. Don’t residents know about half priced discount vouchers? Valuable resource, too precious to waste.
Fredrick remarked about collecting newspapers, ‘…you want to spend vouchers… with bells on…’so Gwen didn’t take too many this time.
She’d barely bent over before becoming aware of whoop-whoop of a police car. What just happened, did she stumble? Nope, else Fredrick would be helping her up. Thud of doors, swish of polyester uniformed legs as they confront her. Is she being targeted for lack of youthful vigor? Or her escort? This must be akin to Ray Bradbury’s protagonist in that short story, The Pedestrian. Except Gwen stood in late morning sunshine, rather than night-time with flickering televisions creating jumbled colors from various peopled buildings.
‘Helping yourself to someone else’s mail, are you?’ Came a gruff confrontation.
‘Just picking up discarded papers. I wasn’t helping myself to other’s people’s mail. You have no right to confront me about this.’
‘Where do you live?’ Asked a younger, more pleasant, faced constable.
‘Just down this hill, in Jackson Street.’
‘Not at John Paul Age Care Village?’
‘No. I am still in my own house. Down there.’
Police then launched into string of questions meant to establish if she was an escaped Alzheimer case. What day; Prime Minister’s name; this highway is called? They weren’t asking rather interrogating. Despite also enduring this intrusion Fredrick looked nervous, his trembling arm brushing hers. Maybe authority figures caused him anxiety. Gwen hated to think he might be targeted by anyone with a grudge, poor harmless Fredrick. Yet there wasn’t anything she could do to take away the fear which obviously existed in poor Fredrick.
‘Did you go through proper steps to buy this book?’ A grumpier one asks. She wonders if good-cop bad-cop is a real thing. Or just a crime fiction construction device.
‘I took the correct steps to borrow it from the library. Fredrick helped me to pick it out.’
‘Is he your son? Nephew?’
Animated head shakes. ‘I am her much younger lover. She is taking me back to her place to make soft, gentle love. I’m excited…’
A hopefully unnoticed glance into his groin region and Gwen accredited truth in this statement. Cheeks hot, quivering at consideration of notions she can still affect a man in such a way.
‘…Afterwards, I will enjoy a long hot shower,’ Fredrick ran his fingers across on just visible chin stubble. ‘Use a lady razor for a nice shave, and maybe even dry my hair with a blow dryer. That will be my bell ringing reward.’
She couldn’t believe that earlier panic had been shaken off, he was talking to the police as if they were close friends. If she’d know this about Fredrick, no doubt she wouldn’t have taken him home from the library. She began to wonder how many other women he’d asked to see their houses, and if this trick was the way he kept so clean.
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Hi Karen. I’ve been asked to critique your story. I’ve read it carefully, and I think you’ve thought up an interesting situation to write about, so well done on that. Definitely the most important thing to have when sitting down to write, is something to say! You have described an interesting location, and a couple of interesting characters, and the story builds up to an ending that explains the mystery you wanted to have explained. All good things to have in the story.
I do have some feedback on points you could work on as well. 1. There are unfortunately rather a lot of grammatical errors. 2. It would have been good if you’d been clearer about what the mystery is when you were telling us about it – I only really understood that this was the mystery we needed to have solved at the very end, where you were solving it! 3. I would have found it easier to feel the character’s situation with a bit more information about them up front. Sometimes leaving that sort of information and only revealing it bit by bit (or perhaps never,) can be an interesting literary device. But here it would have made a lot more sense if I knew Gwen was an old lady from the beginning. And what age was Fredrick? To start with I thought he might be around his teens or early twenties, but that idea got challenged the more I read. Which is fine – but it does sort of ‘take you out of the action,’ if you know what I mean. I was engrossed in the story, and then suddenly I have to get out of the story to step back and consider who this guy really is… 4. There are some unusual sentences/paragraphs that don’t seem to make sense.
I do think you have the gift of invention, and I’m sure as you keep practicing, you’ll get better. I’d especially encourage you to proof-read your work many many times before submitting. I proof-read my story about ten times before I submitted it, and still found a few problems after that that I wish I’d found and fixed…
Marcus
p.s. here’s a possible re-work of the story. Fan fiction if you like :-D
Simmons Library was a melting pot of haves and have-nots during weekdays. Before the busy mums and harassed dads brought their kids in at the end of the school day, the library was a mixture of homeless people and retired folks from nearby neighbourhoods. It wasn’t particularly special, but it was warm, comfortable and clean. And well patronised.
Gwen waited while old Marv negotiated the entry turnstile with a little difficulty, due to his cane. She was patient. Retired now, she realised it may not be too many more years before she’d have to deal with that problem herself.
Eventually she was in. The computers and printers were quite popular as usual. This was somewhere many folks without internet access at home could use it. And, dotted around, Gwen noticed the others, many of them with heads down, engrossed in various books.
Gwen wasn’t particularly well off, but although she sometimes struggled, she did at least dwell in a house. She still thought of it as ‘Gwen & Ted’s, although it was close to six years since Ted had passed. She missed the old boy, but he’d lived a good life, and she’d made her peace with that. So, no, her living situation was fine. Her biggest problem was a car loan Ted had taken out. The beast was too big for her, and too uncomfortable in traffic. Sitting there, her blood pressure would go up, giving her shaking fingers. (And not the sort of shakes she’d get while reading one of those bodice ripper tales she occasionally stumbled across among Simmons stock. She told herself she only read them to broaden her reading. You know, to balance out all that, ‘proper literature.’)
The car also became a source of frustration on those few times she couldn’t find where she’d parked. It was embarrassing! Gwen figured she was far too young for dementia, but occasionally she’d have to ring through, and a smirking shopping centre security person would come out and help her find where she’d parked. It was all those parking bays. They looked similar, and it was pretty easy to forget, “level purple 2,” or “blue 3.”
But, entering the library, Gwen left all that to one side. There was no need to get in a knot with worry. Her Ted had always said, ‘Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.’ She loved reading, she was here at the Simons, and was looking forward to her search for new books.
You could tell when Fredrick arrived. Once through the turnstile he would announce to the library at large, ‘My name is Fredrick. I’m in house of books.’ Upon departure it would be, ‘Fredrick is leaving. He’ll see you all tomorrow…with bells on.’
He was an odd fellow, but Gwen was used to this by now, and barely looked up from the blurb of, ‘Not without my daughter,’ as he entered today. She finished reading the blurb and decided that she really ought to read it sometime, but perhaps another day. She looked up and around, and caught sight of Fredrick. There were a few clues to the fact he was homeless. The toothbrush and toothpaste peeking out of an upper pocket of a knapsack that would’ve looked old back in the second world war. The fact he almost always wore the same tattered jeans and clean-but-stained business shirt that his skinny frame failed to fill out. His manner of speech as well perhaps… and the fact that when he wasn’t in the library, he could usually be found begging in town with an old felt hat.
Gwen had noticed it before, and was thankful – though curious – that at least he didn’t smell homeless. No aroma of campfire grit, road dirt or that generally unwashed smell at all about Fredrick. Gwen wondered how the young man kept so clean. She’d seen him rough-sleeping that weekend her church had gone out on a blanket and tinned-food drive, but he was shaved, today, as usual. And no trace of a hobo’s usual disheveled/matted hair.
Gwen peeked at him, the aisle over. He was looking at the back cover of a book and saying to himself – so loudly he could clearly be heard by all the folks around – ‘No, that’s not a suitable topic for Fredrick,’ before he moved on. His general noise did annoy the students cruising between textbook shelves. The younger ones responded to his loud announcements with barely stifled giggles. The elderly demographic didn’t pay him too much attention, caught up in their own animated exchanges, quickly hushed as that stern-looking librarian cruised on by.
A little later Gwen was still undecided on which books she might pick up this time. There was a noisy swish as someone flicked magazine pages more roughly than they really should have been flicked. She looked up and noticed Fredrick, and it occurred to her that he might be hungry. A café served low-cost treats right inside the library, and she justified approaching him and making this offer as a way of building bridges between disparate community groups. This would be her clothing drop box offering or charity donation for the day.
Chuffed with her offer, Fredrick smiled widely. ‘Oh, thank you,’ he said, rather loudly. ‘That would be nice.’
Soon they had reached the front of the queue at the trendy little café inside the library. Gwen prompted Fredrick with a look and a nod in the direction of the cashier.
‘Cappuccino, extra hot, with one sugar.’ He didn’t pick up on the fact that his day-to-day speech was on the loud side. Especially for the inside of a library. There were random shush noises and titters in response. The stern-looking librarian was nearby, but was familiar with Frederick. And she didn’t pay much attention to the café goings-on generally anyway.
‘Your usual then,’ said the teenage barista, slightly interrogatively. Gwen was privately amused. It was almost as though Fredrick’s naturally loud style had caused the young coffee-maker to imagine they were in a play together. She broke the tension by quietly asking, ‘Would you like a cake?’
‘Oh no, too fattening,’ Frederick replied, patting his thin belly.
The two were soon seated, and sipping at their hot beverages. After the tiniest sip of his steaming coffee, Frederick uttered, again, rather too loudly, a satisfied, ‘Aaah…’ A lot of cappuccino froth adorned his lips, and he licked nosily, attracting glaring looks from other patrons. Once the foam was mostly gone, he slowly stirred the liquid. Was that sensuous stirring just Fredrick being Fredrick, or…? A little later, seemingly out of the blue, he winked at Gwen. She was rather taken aback.
Gwen found she burned her mouth rather quickly these days, and was content to take a nice long time with her coffee. Conversation with Fredrick had become somewhat sparse, but that didn’t seem to bother him, and she was a little lost for words by that lascivious wink. Lascivious? Yes, it perhaps did seem that way now she thought on it. Her reverie was broken when a woman whose grey-hair almost exactly matched Gwen’s own, waved over at Gwen’s table companion.
The woman’s demure wave was returned with Fredricks’ far less discrete, ‘Hello Daisy! Love you much. See you again soon…in a bathroom…with bells on.’
Gwen blushed and swallowed coffee rather too quickly, coughing into a lady’s lacey handkerchief. But she thought she’d detected a smirk across the woman’s lips, and wondered to herself what sort of history the two of them had.
After they’d finished their drinks, the two rose, and Gwen thanked Fredrick for his company. He said, without a trace of embarrassment, ‘Can I see where you live?’
Although still rather speculative of Fredrick’s character, Gwen felt comfortable agreeing. He was harmless. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Come and meet my cat, Hendrix.’
Fredrick’s head wobbled reminiscent of Reggae dancing. ‘Love Jimmy Hendrix.’
Gwen smiled in a slightly strained way. ‘I’d like to get some books before we go though, if you don’t mind waiting.’
He jumped up right away, ‘I’ll show you…Fredrick knows some good ones.’
Back amongst the books, Frederick stopped when he got to a certain spot. ‘This book is about two brothers, one called Clay. Funny name. Not clay as in pottery.’
‘Yes, I’ve read Zusak’s The Book Thief,’ Gwen mused. ‘Perhaps Bridges of Clay would be worth a read.’ She paused for a moment, then went on. ‘Thick book, though. I parked that wretched car several blocks away today. How will I manage to carry it there?’
There was a wink and a friendly laugh. ‘Fredrick'll help…with bell’s on!’
Back outside an icy wind was blowing. Gwen took the lead though, taking Fredrick’s hand and leading him across the busy highway as though she were escorting a child. They only had one block to go to reach the car when she noticed a local newspaper crumpled on the sidewalk near some letterboxes. Didn’t residents know about the half priced discount vouchers in there she thought? They were a valuable resource, far too precious to waste.
Gwen tightened the knot on her headscarf and stooped to grab the abandoned newspaper while Fredrick looked on, somewhat bemused. As she reached for the last page, which Mr Wind seemed to think was worth holding onto himself, she became aware of the whoop-whoop of a police car. Interested, she stood up and watched as the vehicle stopped. A couple of doors opened and thudded closed. There was the swish-swish of polyester uniform legs. Privately Gwen regarded the men’s youth with suspicion, but she was outwardly calm as they confronted her. A flash from Ray Bradbury’s short story The Pedestrian occurred to her. She felt a little like the protagonist. (Except here she was in late morning sunshine, rather than night-time with flickering televisions creating jumbled colours from variously peopled buildings.)
‘Helping yourself to someone else’s mail, are you?’ the older of the two officers asked, slightly confrontationally.
‘Of course not officer. Just picking up a discarded newspaper. I would never help myself to other’s people’s mail.’
‘Where do you live?’ Asked the younger, more pleasant-faced constable.
‘Just down this hill, in Jackson Street.’
‘Not the John Paul Aged Care Village?’
‘No no. I am still in my own house. Down there.’ Gwen pointed.
The police then launched into string of questions meant to establish if she was an escaped Alzheimer case. What day was it? What was the Prime Minister’s name? What was the name of this road? And so forth, all rather scary, and wearing on the nerves. Fredrick, still standing nearby, looked nervous, and his trembling arm brushed hers. Gwen suspected that authority figures made him nervous, and wondered whether this confrontation was actually more a case of poor harmless Fredrick being targeted by the cops for nothing more than being homeless. But the policemen’s attention was still primarily on her, so she was unable to do anything more for poor Fredrick than give his hand a supportive squeeze.
The first policeman had noticed her book. ‘Did you go through proper steps to buy this book?’ he asked.
Gwen had always found the good-cop bad-cop crime fiction device slightly unconvincing, and yet here it was perhaps being played out in real life. On her! ‘I took the correct steps to borrow it from the library. Fredrick helped me to pick it out.’
‘Is he your son? Nephew?’
Both Gwen and Fredrick shook their heads vigorously. Gwen and Ted had never been able to have children, and a lump caught in her throat, preventing speech.
Fredrick noticed her distress, and gallantly stepped forward to answer the officer’s question. In a surprisingly soft voice he said confessionally, ‘I am her much younger lover. She is taking me back to her place to make soft, gentle love. I’m excited…’
Gwen’s chest constricted with shock, but couldn’t stop a brief, and hopefully unnoticed (!) glance into Fredrick’s groin region. ‘Oh my Lord!’ she thought, as she realised his implying that he was turned on by her was not entirely without merit. Gwen wanted to interrupt, perhaps to violently deny these claims, but she could not. Cheeks hot, she was quivering at the consideration that she could still affect a man in such a way.
‘…Afterwards, I will enjoy a long hot shower,’ Fredrick continued his story to the impressed cops. He ran his fingers across barely visible chin stubble. ‘I will then use a lady razor for a nice shave, and maybe even dry my hair with a blow dryer.’
The younger of the two cops could hardly contain himself. ‘For true?’ he gasped melodramatically.
Fredrick nodded sagely and gave the cops a sly wink. They hopped back into their vehicle and drove off. Though she could only see their backs, Gwen could swear they were laughing as they drove off.
The two of them just stood there for quite a while. Gwen’s mind was reeling. If she’d known how this walk-to-the-car would turn out, no doubt she would not have offered to take this unusually clean homeless man home with her. And yet, now she knew why Fredrick really wanted to make that journey. She gave a chagrined little laugh, and nodded in the direction of the car. The two of them walked that way.
What a roller-coaster of long-forgotten emotions she’d experienced! And how many others had there been? To how many other ladies in the possession of showers and lady razors had he asked, ‘Can I see where you live?’
___
Hope you enjoyed that. Remember, I'm not disparaging your story. You had some great creative ideas, and you followed them through really well. I know we only get a week to work on these, so honing it until it's perfect is difficult (and I'm by no means indicating my version above is perfect, because I'm sure it also needs work! [additional: I just re-read this and discovered several errors I had to correct!]) But I hope you keep submitting. I look forward to reading more of your stories, and I'm hitting the 'follow' button :-D
Oh, and remember the great thing about advice? You don't always have to follow it! All the best Karen. Keep it up.
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