Free Come Destroy Me by Vin Packer

sis-ter was comely.”
    “Yes,” Charlie answered.
    Jim Prince said, “She’s a swell girl.” He said, “Swell!”
    “Indeed.” Jill Latham forced a smile.
    Charlie tried again. “I haven’t noticed you at the library lately,” he said to her.
    “Oh, my, no. I have been
terribly
busy. Terribly busy. I am going to do inventory soon.”
    “Tell Evie I asked about her,” Jim said. He got off the counter and stretched his long arms over his head. “I ought to go.”
    “Study, study,” she said.
    Prince answered, “That’s the idea…. Don’t forget, Charlie.”
    “What?”
    “Give my love to Evie.”
    “All right.”
    Miss Jill Latham said, “She is indeed a lovely girl. Lovely.”
    “I’ll be seeing you, Miss Latham.”
    “Will you?” Jill Latham laughed and looked away from Jim Prince, over Charlie’s head and out toward the street. She said, “Yes. Yes,” in a slow, dreamy way.
    “I’ll be running along,” Prince said.
    Charlie told him good-by and Prince asked Charlie not to forget again. As he reached the door and was ready to close it behind him, Jill Latham called, “So long, Jim Prince.”
    She said both his names together that way, and Charlie burned.
    There was a stillness in the shop then, and Charlie fumbled with the change in his pockets, walked slowly along the rows of the bookshelves, and hummed to himself. He wished he had left too. Dropped the letter and left.
    “How are
your
studies proceeding?” Miss Jill asked him.
    “Fine.”
    “You look tired. I hope you don’t
overwork.”
    “Naw. No.”
    “All work and no play …” She laughed again in that high, gasping giggle. Her black hair was pushed back from her ears and she was hugging her arms, still leaning against the wall behind the counter, watching Charlie out of her amber eyes. She wore a soft ice-blue dress, cut low at the neck, as all her dresses were, and under the sheerness of the dress her white lace slip and satin brassiere were clearly distinguishable. Charlie did not want to look at her. He couldn’t keep watching her eyes, and when his glance fell to her dress he goddamn, goddamn, goddamn.
    “I once knew a boy who studied a lot. My, yes, an awful lot. Uh, he — he, uh, was a very
bright
boy. Bright! Most brilliant. This boy. But — he — wasn’t all work and no play. No, he wasn’t. He was not.”
    “I’m not either,” Charlie said. “Sometimes I like to just sit and make interesting conversation. Listen to people. You know.”
    Charlie picked a volume down from the shelf and looked at it without any interest. She never answered immediately. She pondered over her words, even after she answered, while she was saying them. He thought to himself that he ought to drop the damn letter, buy the damn book, and get out of the damn woman’s life.
    You’re not even
in
her life, fella.
    O.K., his conscience could shut up. He knew what he meant. He meant he just ought not to be bothered.
    “Talk to people,” Jill Latham said finally. “Talk to people.” That was all she said, but for Charlie it was sufficient. He heard the note of despair in her tone and sensed what she was saying without saying it. That it was very hard. People were very hard to talk to.
    Charlie said impulsively, “Sometimes I think there is no one,” and he blushed a little at his own sentimentality, expressed aloud in that room, compulsively, by himself.
    “Do you feel that way too? Oh, do you feel that way too?” She stood up straight, moving from behind the counter and around to the front of it, pacing back and forth as she continued, her arms folded, her chin high in that dramatic pose, as though she were a famous movie actress. Gene Tierney … She said, “No one. It is very hard to have no one. Some people have their husbands and their children. You know, their
family.
Women usually marry and have their family. It is very strange. Some have — no one. I don’t know the ration-al explanation.”
    “Some people are too