Moving Up, Part Three

With our trip to San Francisco right around the corner, I figured I'd post the next installment of Moving Up a bit early. Also, let me note that due to overwhelming fan response, Target will soon be carrying a line of clothes designed by Isaac Mizrahi and inspired by Avery Key.

Previously, in Part Two, Avery and his friends came face-to-face with the realization that their boss has been arrested for corruption, and that this means big changes. Avery went home to talk things over with his wife, Kate, and she encouraged him to apply for his boss' job.

*****

Chapter Two

The ride to work the next Monday was difficult for Avery. Usually, he liked to take home books from the library and read them on the bus - mostly histories and classic novels (the last book he read was All Quiet on the Western Front). But in all of the hubbub at the library recently, he had been unable to grab a book to read. His mind was reeling anyway, and he probably wouldn't have been able to concentrate on a book. Avery had a habit of running through conversations in his mind, and today was the day that he was scheduled to interview for the supervisory position in the Restocking Department.

The Mayor's press conference had called for changes at the library to bring an end to the corruption. The first order of business was naming a branch manager for the main library, and the Library Commissioner had announced that they were bringing Avery's old boss George McGee out of retirement to fill the position. Avery guessed that George was over 70 years old, but he certainly didn't show it, or, at least not mentally. George limped terribly from a wound suffered during Korean War that had only gotten worse over time, and his voice was raspy from years of heavy smoking, and then subsequent surgery when he developed throat cancer. But the man was not to be messed with when it came to discussing library science. A lot of people think of librarians as reserved and boring, but McGee approached libraries with the discipline and vigor of a Marine. Which, of course, he was.

In the last week, the staff in the department had been trimmed from 19 to 11, and there were rumors of more cuts. Because of the backlog in restocking and the reduction in staff, all of the bookmobile runs had been canceled. Avery was thankful for the change of scenery, especially since he was being kept extra busy. The work helped keep his mind off of the nerves that accompanied his decision to put his hat in the ring for the supervisor's job.

Avery arrived at the library through the main doors, as usual, and headed downstairs, running into Tony, who was already running an errand.

"Morning, Ave."

"Morning. How're you?"

"Fine, fine. Your big day, hey?"

"Heh, yeah," Avery said, laughing a little from nervousness. "I still don't know why you didn't apply, Tony."

"Eh, I got my reasons," he looked around a bit, then lowered his voice. "Look, let's just say I don't really intend to make the library my career, right? Not my thing."

"Yeah, I guess I see."

"Besides, do you really want to be going up for the same job as me? You know you wouldn't stand a chance."

Avery laughed.

"But seriously, man, good luck."

"Thanks, buddy" Avery said as he skipped down the stairs into the restocking department. His nerves were killing him and he wanted to get a cigarette in before his shift started.

As he stepped outside, he saw Harriet on the dock, just standing in the cold, staring out into the distance at the courthouse. Avery had forgotten that today was her first day back at work after the fallout from the scandal.

"Harriet, it's good to see you!" Avery exclaimed, trying hard to sound upbeat.

"Good to see you, Avery. Thank you so much for what you did for me."

"Hey, I was just trying to look out for a friend. It was my wife who did the hard part, really."

"That young man that you recommended was a really fine lawyer. He almost seemed more excited about my case than I did," she said, smiling. "I think Maxine must have dropped my name trying to get herself off the hook, but they didn't have anything else on me."

Avery pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

"Honey, do you mind?" Harriet asked, motioning towards the cigarette.

"Oh, sorry. I'll smoke over there."

"No, no. I meant, can I have one?"

"Harriet, I wouldn't have taken you for a smoker."

"Well," she said, slyly, "I like have one every once in a while. I've earned it."

Avery smiled, handing her a cigarette and a lighter. Harriet took a deep drag, and exhaled a steady stream of smoke.

"It's been quite a week." She turned towards Avery. "I hear that you've applied for Maxine's old job.

"Boy, can no one keep a secret around her?"

"Your friend Tony told me when I got in this morning. Don't you know, Avery? All the best gossip is to be had before nine in the morning." She smiled.


Avery's interview was at 11 o'clock in McGee's new office on the third floor. Albert Richardson's office had been a much larger room at the other end of the floor, but it was closed off as a crime scene. Detectives had combed through the room a half-dozen times already, checking for hidden records or any other clues. McGee had never liked that office anyway, especially the way Richardson had decorated it - it gave off the faux-learned feeling of a man who owned thousands of books but had never read a single one. McGee's office, by contrast, was already over-stuffed with books and papers in a why that made it look like he had occupied it for four decades, not four days - everything in its place, to be sure, but certainly a bit much for the uninitiated. But then, McGee wasn't really trying to impress anyone.

Avery arrived at the office a few minutes to eleven. He wanted to be prompt, but not too early, since he hated the idea of sitting outside in the hall for 15-20 minutes, listening to the muffled voices of the previous candidate. Despite this, McGee didn't call him into the office until a quarter past the hour.

"Sit down, young man," McGee ordered after shaking hands. "Now, now, now ... what's your name?" McGee was flipping through Avery's resume in that way that interviewers do that is guaranteed to make interviewees nervous.

"Avery Emmett Key," Avery answered. He had no idea why he had included his middle name - it sounded so pretentious.

"Okay, Mr. Avery Emmett Key, why do you want this job?" McGee asked, getting right to the point.

"Well, I ... I've worked now in the restocking department, specifically with the bookmobile, for three years, and I ..."

"I didn't ask for your qualifications, son. I've got those right in front of me." He waved the resume. "I asked why you want the job."

Avery froze for a moment, and his eyes met McGee's, but he didn't flinch. After a few seconds, he stated flatly, "Because I'm the right man to do it." The words hung in the air, and Avery expected a response from McGee, but the older man just sat, staring calmly at Avery, so he elaborated. "I care about what happens in this library, and especially in my department. I am not an outsider who doesn't know about this place and what makes it important. I am not going to make unnecessary changes. What I am going to do is to ensure that things run as they are supposed to, and I will demand excellence from everyone in my department at all times."

McGee leaned forward across the desk. "My, my, my. That's a pretty tall order from the kid who drives the bookmobile." Avery froze, not knowing how to respond. After a moment, McGee let out a wheezing laugh. "Did you think I didn't know who you were?"

Avery looked perplexed. "Well, I didn't want to assume ..."

"I hired you the first time, son. And there was a reason, then, too. If I just wanted some bozo to drive the bookmobile, I could have hired any punk with a driver's license. But no, I hired you because I like people with some brains. And people with some guts, which you got, too, apparently."

"Are you saying that I've got the job?"

McGee laughed his wheezy laugh. "Right to the point, hey? The kid from the bookmobile has an attitude."

"Well, Mr. McGee, I'm starting to think that this whole interview is just a pretense before you tell me that the job is mine. Frankly, I was wondering why you even decided to interview me, but I think it's clear that you wanted someone who you knew, and who you knew was honest and hardworking. And that someone is me."

"And suppose that now that you've given your cocky little speech, I don't hire you?"

"Well, then I'll just go back to being the punk with a driver's license who drives the bookmobile." Avery paused for effect. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Avery could hardly believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. But Kate had been giving him pep talks all week. She seemed so confident that Avery was sure that she had some sort of crystal ball or inside information. But he realized now that she was just trying to get him psyched for the interview - and it was paying off. McGee certainly seemed to prefer Avery's straight-talk to the sucking-up that a lot of bosses want.

McGee paused, and leaned across the desk again. Even at his age, McGee was a physically impressive and intimidating man. "Do you know what I never liked about you, Key?"

Avery wasn't sure whether to answer or not - was this a rhetorical question or not?

But before Avery could say anything, McGee started up again. "I never liked that you were content with driving around that rusting heap stuffed with books. Hey, I ain't saying that the bookmobile is worthless - hell, I'm sure we could sell it for scrap." Avery chuckled, though he wasn't quite sure that it was joke. McGee squinted a bit and continued. "You're an underachiever, Key. You don't apply yourself. You're just one of those guys who coasts by, not living up to the potential. But that potential ... well, I ain't gonna make any predictions. But you got stuff inside of you that you need to call on."

Avery wasn't sure what to say. Part of him wanted to protest, but another part of him knew that McGee was right. Hell, Kate had pretty much told him the same thing last week, except with "I love you" appended to the end. "Mr. McGee, sir, you can believe that I'm going to work hard. I want this job. I want to make this place better."

"Good, good. Cause there's no turning back - either you're a good supervisor, or you're out of here. The only way is forward."
Avery smiled nervously.

"But, hey, you're gonna do fine." McGee laughed, and Avery wasn't exactly sure what was so funny. "So I want you back here tomorrow morning. There's a lot to talk about."

Avery stood up to leave, reaching out his hand to shake McGee's. "Thank you, Mr. McGee."

"Now send in the next guy."

"But ... but you just gave me the job."

McGee shrugged. "Hey, you never know. Maybe I'll change my mind." He laughed again. Avery hated that laugh.


"So how'd the interview go?" Kate asked.

"Uh, I don't really know."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I think McGee gave me the job."

"That's great!" She leapt up from the couch and hugged him. "I knew you could do it."

"Well ... well, let's not get carried away," Avery said, pushing his wife away a bit.

"Why not, Ave?"

"Cause, I don't know. I'm not really sure what's going on. McGee, he's ... I don't know. He's crazy."

"Why, cause he hired you?"

"No, not cause of ... well, yeah, maybe. I don't know," Avery said, starting to pace. "Why the hell would he hire me like that, out of the blue? He didn't even really ask any questions!"

"Well, he must have asked something?"

"Yeah, but none of those stupid interview questions, like 'What's you biggest weakness?' or 'Where do you see yourself in five years?' Y'know? The ones that are intended to trip you up and make you say something stupid, like 'In five years, I'll be running this place and you'll be out on the street!' or something stupid like that." Avery had slipped into a series of funny voices to narrate his point. Kate was laughing. "What?"

"You're terrible at doing impressions. It's adorable."

"What? I thought that was pretty good."

"No, no it wasn't." She was giggling harder. "Come here."

Avery walked up closer to her, and took her around the waist. She looked up and kissed him.

Moving Up, Part Two

Due to the overwhelming reader response (please stop with the emails - my inbox is complete stuffed), here is part two of "Moving Up."

Previously, in Part One, we were introduced to Avery Key, a bookmobile driver in Milwaukee. Avery's having a rough day - he's broke, he just got mugged, and he is, after all, a bookmobile driver. But it's not just any day - returning to the library, he finds that his boss has just been arrested ...

*****

"May I have a word with you, Mister ... um ....?"

"Key," Avery answered, now facing a plain-clothes detective. They were sitting inside one of the media rooms in the basement level of the library. Someone who had been watching The Maltese Falcon had been forced to vacate the room. The video was still running, but the sound was off. Jeez, Avery thought, if the police could figure out how to mute the video, why couldn't they find the damn off switch? Of course, maybe it was part of their plan to throw off his concentration and prep him for questioning. That was ridiculous, of course, but those were the sort of thoughts that were going though Avery's head. He had never been questioned by the police - even as a witness - much less been placed in a dark room with a detective who answered only to the name Horvath - his first name may as well have been Lieutenant.

"How long have you known Maxine Richardson?" Horvath asked, barely skipping a beat.

"Um, I don't know, maybe three years. Basically since I've been here."

"Have you ever seen her engage in suspicious or unusual activity?"

"Other than the fact that she's a library department heard without the ability to sort books?" Avery quipped. But Horvath was dead serious, glaring back at him. "No, no I haven't seen any suspicious activity."

"Have you seen any books go missing?"

"No, I really couldn't have, could I? I mean, they're missing, after all," Avery chuckled nervously. He didn't mean to be such a smart alec, but his nerves were getting to him.

"Have there been any more missing books than usual?"

"Um, I'm not really sure."

"How many books used to go missing before Ms. Richardson took over your department?"

"Um, I don't know ... maybe 30 a month?" Avery though about it. "One or two a day."

"How many books go missing now, with Ms. Richardson in charge?"

"A lot more, I guess."

"How many?"

"Probably upwards of one or two hundred a month, sometimes more."

"Are many of these ever found?"

"Very few."

"Mr. Key, did you ever lose books yourself?"

"Um, yeah, a couple times. I lost track of some books in my van - the bookmobile - a few times."

"And were you disciplined for that?"

"Yeah, they docked my paycheck."

"Who approved that?"

"Uh, Maxine, I guess."

"Not the payroll office?"

"Um, no, I don't think so."

"Okay, thank you Mr. Key. That's all I need." Lt. Horvath stood up and walked out of the room. Avery sat in a daze for a minute and then followed. In the hall, he ran into Tony.

"Tone, do you have any idea what's going down here?"

"Word is that Maxine and Leonard were selling books and skimming money from people's checks and shit - friggin' embezzlement."

"At the library?"

"At the effin' library, man."

Avery just stared around in shock, not sure exactly what was going on.

*****

The rest of the afternoon was surreal. Police officers and detectives were swarming through the entire restocking department, hauling off boxes of files as evidence, rifling through every workstation and office. One by one, all of the employees in the department were questioned in various offices. Most were only in there for a few minutes, but a couple people disappeared for hours, emerging ashen-faced and shaken. Most of those people were part of Maxine's crew - the employees that she had hired herself, rather than those like Avery who had been leftover from when George McGee ran the department.

One exception was Harriet Mills, a sweet middle-aged lady who Avery had always liked. She wasn't that fast at sorting books, but she always insisted on doing things correctly - she was a real stickler for details. In fact, the only time that Avery had ever seen her angry was once when Maxine once tried to transfer books to a different branch without filling out the proper paperwork. Harriet got real mad, even threatening to report Maxine to the library commissioner at City Hall. Had Harriet not been so popular with everyone, she probably would have been fired. But Maxine cared too much for preserving her reputation to make an enemy like Harriet - she knew that everyone would have taken Harriet's side rather than hers. In retrospect, Avery realized that Maxine wasn't actually being sloppy in skimping on paperwork - that must have been part of how she stole books, by arranging fictitious transfers to other branches.
Avery saw Harriet in the hall about ten minutes after the police had finished questioning her. She looked very worried and had obviously been crying.

"Oh, Ave! They think I did something wrong. I think Maxine told them I was part of something. But you know me. I wouldn't ..." her voice trailed off as tears began to well. "Avery, I can't lose my job. I pay for little Etta's school," she said, referring to her granddaughter.
"My daughter can't afford those payments."

"Harriet, I know you wouldn't do anything wrong ..."

"I wouldn't, Ave! Never!"

"Look, the police didn't arrest you or anything. But you should probably talk to a lawyer."

"I can't afford that. I can't afford no fancy lawyer."

"Look, my wife knows some people at Marquette, in the law school. I know she's helped get some people out of some speeding tickets and stuff."

"Avery, that's real nice of you, but I think this is a little more serious than getting some tickets fixed." Harriet almost sounded angry, though Avery wasn't sure at whom.

"Look, let me just look into this for you, okay? Just let me help out, okay?"

Harriet smiled weakly. "Okay, Ave. Okay. I trust you."

Avery smiled back at her, trying to be comforting, but in the back of his mind he was worried that he may have promised more than he could deliver. Fact was that Kate didn't know any real lawyers, just some law students who she had known as undergrads at UWM - the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Still, he knew that Harriet would never have gotten mixed up in something like embezzlement, especially since the police clearly didn't have enough evidence to even arrest her. But without a lawyer, he was afraid that she might accidentally say things that would get them curious.

Heading back into the main restocking room, Avery grabbed the telephone off of a table and ducked into a little alcove, facing the wall. He started dialing home, but got a recorded message - "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again." Avery realized that he'd forgotten to dial 9 before the number. He was more shaken up by all the goings-on than he realized. He redialed and Kate picked up after two rings.

"Hey, are you still at work?"

"Yeah, I'm going to be leaving shortly. Do you have to work tonight?"

"No, it's Monday, remember? The restaurant is closed on Mondays," she said, reminding him of that fact for the hundredth time.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot."

"You okay? You sound nervous."

"Um ... yeah. Look, there's a lot going on her at work. I'll tell you more later. But, um, the police are here and stuff."

"Oh shit. What happened?"

Avery lowered his voice to a whisper. "Maxine and Leonard have been arrested for embezzlement, I think. A lot of other people are being questioned."

"Man, I told you that chick was up to something!"

"Yeah, um ... anyway, look, I think the police suspect Harriet of doing something, but there's no way."

"Which one is Harriet?"

"You remember her - she had that little granddaughter who you babysat for a couple years ago."

"Oh, her. Yeah, she was nice. Why do they suspect her?"

"I don't know. But she needs a lawyer. Do you know anyone?"

"I only know law students."

"Yeah, but maybe one of them has a friend or professor who could help? Pro bono, of course."

"Yeah. Okay," she paused, thinking. "Yeah, okay. I'll make some calls, see if I can find someone."

"Thanks, sweetie. Look, I gotta go. I'll see you at home in an hour or so."

"Love you."

"Love you, too." Avery hung up the phone. It was 4:30.

*****

Avery milled around work for another thirty minutes, basically just killing time. When your boss has just been arrested, there's really little incentive to work hard, after all. Mostly, he just didn't know what to do. Clearly, things were in for a major shake-up in the department, and he was worried about the future, but also excited. After all, Maxine had been terrible for the library in many ways, and her replacement couldn't help but be an improvement. On the other hand, there's the old maxim about the devil you know. Avery tried not to be too cynical, but he knew that sometimes change wasn't for the better.

When the clock hit five, Avery started gathering his belongings - his coat, his messenger bag (or "man purse" as Kate so affectionately called it) - and dashed up the stairs towards the main level. Most of the other guys usually left out the back way, because their cars were parked near the loading dock. But Avery took the bus to work - somewhat ironic for someone who drove a vehicle for a living - and so he always left through the main exit on Wisconsin Avenue. Today, that turned out to be the quicker exit - so many squad cars were still parked out back that those who drove ended up having to very patiently negotiate their way out of the lot. Avery's main concern was checking his bag to make sure that he still had his bus pass. He usually kept it in his wallet, but he'd started keeping it in his messenger bag instead a few weeks before. Despite that, he still had that nagging suspicion that today of all days he had put it back in the wallet.
He was still digging through the bag when he got to the main exit, and so barely noticed the uniformed officer standing guard at the door.

"Sir, I'll need to check your bag before you leave."

"Huh?"

"This is a crime scene. I'll have to check your bag to make sure you didn't take anything."

"Sure, okay," Avery answered, opening his bag for the officer to check. All he had in there was an umbrella, a couple granola bars, and the various and sundry objects that accumulate in any bag over time - little slips of paper with phone numbers, a half-used jar of aspirin, an eyeglasses repair kit, a bus map. The cop did little more than a cursory check, but as he rifled through the papers, Avery caught sight of his bus pass. He let out a little sigh of relief, glad that he wasn't going to have to walk the two miles home.

The search completed, Avery stepped out onto the front steps of the library and suddenly realized that his little problem at work was shortly going to be all of Milwaukee's problem. All four of the local television stations had news vans parked outside, with their 30-foot tall antennas out, ready to broadcast. The lady from Channel 6 was interviewing someone who Avery didn't recognize, while the guy from Channel 12 was applying make-up in the van and the Channel 58 reporter appeared to be testing his mike. No sooner than he reached the foot of the steps, though, when Avery was suddenly assaulted by the Channel 4 reporter.

"Excuse me, sir. Lauren Leamanczyk, TMJ-4!" she blurted out. "Do you have a minute?"

"I've gotta go."

"Do you work in the library?"

"Me? I ... oh, no. I mean ..." Avery stuttered.

His denial wasn't quick enough, or forceful enough, and before he knew what had happened, Leamanczyk and her cameraman had surrounded him.

"Can I ask you a few questions?" she asked forcefully, but with a practiced tone.

"Oh, sure," Avery responded, resignedly.

"Do you know Maxine Richardson, the woman allegedly involved in the embezzlement ring?"

"Know? I don't, um ... yeah. She, she ... um, she was, is ... is, was, my boss."

"So you know her personally?"

"No. No. Um ..."

"Did you have personal knowledge of the alleged misdeeds?"

"What?"

"Did you have personal knowledge of the alleged misdeeds?"

"I ... no. No, definitely not. I didn't know Maxine."

"But did you ..."

"I mean, yes, I knew Maxine. But ... but, not what said was doing."

"So you ..."

"Or not doing! I mean, I don't know."

"Sir, how long have you worked in the library?"

"Oh, three years now. I, um ... oh shit! That's my bus!" Avery suddenly pushed past Leamanczyk, and broke into a sprint across the street.

"That was a really brilliant interview, genius," he muttered to himself as he ran. He kept going over his interview in his head, realizing that he had come across as a complete idiot. The only consolation was that he had been so incoherent that there was at least no way that they'd air his interview. He hadn't even given his name.

Once across the street, he actually had to wait briefly for his #10 bus, which had gotten stuck at the previous light. He didn't turn around to look, but he could feel Leamanczyk's eyes boring a hole in the back of his head. When the bus pulled up, he jumped onboard, somewhat rudely cutting in front of a young mother. He muttered an apology and very quickly was overcome by the sensation that he just wanted to be home. Luckily, it wasn't a very long bus ride - 20 minutes most days - down Wisconsin and then onto Cass and finally Humboldt.

Avery and Kate's house was in the Riverwest neighborhood, separated by the Milwaukee River from the fashionable East Side and Downtown. Riverwest was a semi-bohemian neighborhood, with lots of artsy types, aging hippies, and grad students, but also plenty of young families and immigrants from the Middle East and East Asia. In short, it was your typical urban neighborhood - a mixture of people from different walks of life and economic strata. And the neighborhood's housing make-up reflected this mixture. Along Humboldt were some massive old homes that had survived from Milwaukee's earliest days. On the side streets were a mix of housing from the early decades of the 20th Century, including a large number of duplexes, some of which had been converted into single family homes and some which had not. The shops in the neighborhood ran the gamut from trendy clubs with live music and hip coffee shops to small corner grocers and immigrant-run dry cleaners.

As the bus lumbered along through East Town and then north into Riverwest, Avery found himself lost in thought, so much so that he barely noticed when the bus blew right past his normal stop. The suddenly unfamiliar houses snapped him out of his reverie, though in the dark he squinted for a bit at the street signs before determining that he really had missed his stop. Again muttering curses at himself, he pulled the cord and hopped off at the next stop. His usual four-block walk home had now been doubled, but he didn't really care. He pulled a knit cap over his short hair and started trudging back south down Humboldt. The wind was bracing against his face, but this was still his favorite season of the year - not yet truly cold, and with the air filled with the smells of drying leaves and fireplaces.

Avery and Kate lived in a converted duplex that dated from the 1920s. The house was filled with lots of little quirks, which Kate especially loved. Some of these were due to the original design of the home, but most were due to the haphazard way in which the duplex had been converted. There were, for instance, no less than four doors into the home - two in the front (one onto the main level, and one with stairs leading to the top level), one on the side (leading to the kitchen), and a backdoor from the small yard into the basement. The house had two functioning kitchens, though the upstairs kitchen had an ancient stove that seemingly predated the house itself. The house originally had three bedrooms - two downstairs and one upstairs - but a fourth had been added rather clumsily above the back porch. Kate hated that extra room, because the floor always seemed horribly unsteady. The house had two bathrooms, one with an original claw-foot tub and lovely black and white tiling, and a second that the previous owners had started to update but stopped when they ran out of money (consequently, the shower and bath didn't work).

When they bought the house, Avery and Kate inherited the appliances as well as a tenant, Rob, who had previously lived there with three other students from UWM. Kate knew him peripherally from some of her Poli-Sci classes, and so they let him stay on. They told themselves that it was just as a favor until he found a new place to live, but the fact was that they needed the extra $300 a month they charged him for the upstairs bedroom. As it was, Rob was rarely home - he spend most of his time either holed up in the UWM library or hanging out at his girlfriend's apartment on the East Side. Avery still always felt a little uncomfortable living as newlyweds but having a roommate, especially given that there was no longer a door separating the upstairs from the main level, and since all three of them had to share a bathroom. On more than one occasion, Avery had been late to work when he had been tardy about jumping into the shower and Rob beat him to it.

After ten minutes of walking, Avery arrived home, walking in to find Rob slouched on the couch, eating cereal. "Hey, Rob."

"Hey."

Rob had his own couch upstairs, but whatever. Kate was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, bent over a book. A small black-and-white TV was on next to her, the volume turned real low. A pot of spaghetti was boiling on the stove, with marinara sauce simmering on the next burner.

"Hey sweetheart," Avery said, leaning in to kiss his wife. "Spaghetti again?"

"Yeah. No meatballs, though. We ran through the last of the meat yesterday and I didn't have time to get to the store."

"That's fine. When will dinner be ready?"

"Pretty soon."

"Okay, cool. Lemme change." Avery slipped into the master bedroom, which was right off the kitchen, closed the door, and tossed his bag on the bed alongside several of Kate's schoolbooks, some dirty clothes, and various unidentified items. Why there was a pile of stuff on the bed and a different but indistinguishable pile of stuff on the floor, Avery had no idea, but it hardly mattered. He pulled off his Milwaukee Public Library sweatshirt, sniffed it, and then threw it in the pile of clean-enough clothes. Emptying his pockets onto the end table, he suddenly remembered that his wallet had been stolen.

Avery threw on a different sweatshirt and emerged from the bedroom. "Hon?"

"Yes, Ave?"

"I forgot to tell you early, but I got robbed this morning. Some punk kid took my wallet."

Kate looked up from her book, momentarily worried. She scanned Avery's face for signs that he'd been roughed up. This wasn't the first time he'd been mugged while at work. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. But they took everything I had on me."

Kate frowned. "How much?"

"I don't know - seventeen dollars, I think."

She smiled weakly and gently rubbed his arm. Seventeen dollars was enough to buy several nights' worth of dinners. "S'okay. I'm just glad they didn't hurt you."

Rob came into the kitchen and dumped his dirty bowl into the sink, not bothering to rinse it. "I'm headed over to Heather's place," he said. On his way out the side door, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Bummer about getting mugged, Ave. See ya!"

Avery was glad that Rob had gone. He turned to Kate, trying to figure out where to start with the whole Maxine-and-Leonard-were-arrested-today story. Kate beat him to the punch. "So, what exactly happened at work today?"

"I, uh ... I don't know. I came back from my morning run with the bookmobile and all of a sudden there's Maxine screaming and yelling about something while being dragged out by the police."

"Huh. Can't say I didn't see that coming."

"Really, you thought Maxine was going to get arrested one day?"

"Well, no, not exactly. But, I don't know, you told me enough about what went on there. It always sounded to me like she was up to something."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"I mean, come on - she was appointed to her job by her cousin," Kate said, closing her book and sitting up straight on the stool. "And all those people she promoted over you."

"Yeah, yeah. True. Plus, pretty much nothing ever seemed to get done around there."

"Exactly. That's what I'm saying."

"I'm just all worried about where this is going, y'know? I don't want to see good people swept up in this - Harriet, Tony. Me."

Kate smiled weakly. "You'll be fine."

"I just never saw this coming, y'know? Who'd ever suspect a damned embezzlement scheme in the library?" Avery paused for a minute. "Funny thing is, the detective asked me about those payroll deductions for those books I lost. He seemed to be hinting that Maxine pocketed that money or something."

"She probably did, Ave. I told you at the time that didn't seem right, y'know?"

"I know, I know. I just didn't want to fight it, y'know? I couldn't afford to lose my job then."

"Like you can afford to lose it now?" Kate said with a smile, trying to lighten Avery's mood.

"Well, yeah!" he shot back, in feigned excitement. "Baby, we got more money than we know what to do with! Man, I had to give away a couple Benjamins to a homeless guy today, cause my wallet was getting too heavy!"

"Stop."

"What? Not funny?"

"No, it's just painful when you try to use slang. Benjamins? I mean, come on. That's like 10 years out of date."

"Really? Aren't all of the kids saying that now?" Avery said, sounding mock-hurt.

"No, no, no," Kate giggled.

Avery sighed and plopped himself down on the stool next to Kate. "I love you sweetheart. You know that, right?"

"Of course," she said, leaning over to kiss him.

"We'll get through all this - the money, this thing at work. Everything!"

"I know."

"I mean, things have been worse, right?" he asked, not terrible confident of the answer.

"Yeah, sure."

Avery racked his brain, trying to time of a worse time. The TV very shortly provided the answer. "Oh shit. Honey, turn that up."

"What? Oh, that's you!" Kate leaned in towards the television and turned up the volume. On the screen was Avery's face, with the caption UNNAMED LIBRARY EMPLOYEE.

"Do you know Maxine Richardson, the woman allegedly involved in the embezzlement ring?"
"Know? I don't, um ... yeah. She, she ... um, she was, is ... is, was, my boss."
"So you know her personally?"
"No. No. Um ..."
"Did you have personal knowledge of the alleged misdeeds?"
"What?"
"Did you have personal knowledge of the alleged misdeeds?"
"I ... no. No, definitely not. I didn't know Maxine."
"But did you ..."
"I mean, yes, I knew Maxine. But ... but, not what said was doing."
"So you ..."
"Or not doing! I mean, I don't know."

"That was a really sharp interview there, Ace," Kate said with a smirk. Avery shot her a sideways glance but didn't protest.

"That was our own Lauren Leamanczyk just over at hour ago at Milwaukee's Main Library on Wisconsin Avenue," intoned Mike Jacobs, the Channel 4 anchor. "To recap, at this hour, police have announced the arrests of seven city and library employees, including Albert Richardson, branch manager of the Main Library - shown here in a file photo - and his cousin, Maxine Richardson, a manager at the Library. According to police sources, the embezzlement scheme involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in municipal funds ..."

Avery's jaw dropped. "Holy shit."

"... including money intended for children's literacy programs in the Milwaukee Public School District. The Mayor has called a press conference tomorrow at noon in Milwaukee City Hall. Charles Benson interviewed the Mayor in his office at City Hall earlier today, and he had this to say:"

"I have only spoken briefly with Police Chief Haggerty, but she has assured me that these arrests were made only after a lengthy investigation. I can't offer any specifics beyond that, since this is an ongoing investigation, but rest assured that we will not tolerate corruption in city government."

"A spokesman for the City Library Commissioner released a statement this evening, explaining, 'the Library Commission will be reviewing its hiring practices to ensure that this sort of corruption does not effect city services again.' With more on this developing story, let's go to Russ ..."

Avery flipped the TV off. "Wow. This is big."

"Yeah, Jeez. Who knew there was even that much money to steal?" Kate asked, half-jokingly.

"I know that this is a good thing. I mean, obviously, right?" he asked, rhetorically. "But I can't shake the feeling that when all is said and done, this isn't going to end up well."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know ..." his voice trailed off as he started pacing across the kitchen. Kate meanwhile got up to turn off the heat on the spaghetti. She grabbed a colander from the cabinet and started emptying the contents of the pot. Steam poured out of the pot, fogging up the window. Avery stopped pacing and stared at the steam. "It's just, I'm betting they bring in some hard-ass to clean house, and ..."

"Well, isn't that what they need?"

"Well, maybe. Well ..." he paused. "No, I think what they need is someone honest, but someone who knows the place already. They don't need someone to fire half the people there and grind down the other half. That'll just make things worse."

Kate was now stirring in the tomato sauce and some fresh basil from the produce market at the corner. Avery just stared, deep in thought but not saying anything. Kate served up to the spaghetti, in big heaping portions, and handed Avery his bowl and a fork. He immediately started eating, shoveling a massive amount of food into his mouth - he hadn't realized how hungry he was, but this was the first meal he'd eaten since the pastry from Esmerelda's. Kate watched him, and then finally broke the silence.

"You should apply for that job."

Avery stared at her silently, his mouth still half-full of spaghetti. "What?" he finally managed.

"You said they need someone who knows the place, someone honest. That's you."

"But ... but, I can't be a manager. I'm just the guy who drives the bookmobile."

"Listen to yourself. Ave, I love you, but if you've got a fault, it's that you don't apply yourself - you've got no drive," she said, very matter-of-factly. "Hon, you know it. You never push yourself to ..."

Avery cut her off, defensively. "What are you getting at? Are you saying that it's my fault that we're having money problems?"

"No. No, that's not it at all. Jeez, Ave!" she stopped for a second, trying not to get mad. "Dammit, it's just that you're a smart guy. You're organized. You've got seniority. You know those people. There's nothing about that job that you can't do!"

"But ... but ..." Avery was searching for a comeback. He didn't want to admit that he was wrong. "But they don't hire people like me."

"How do you know? Their previous hire didn't exactly work out well. I'm telling you, you should at least apply. I think this could be good for you. For us."

Avery hated arguing with Kate. She was much better at it.

"Avery, you know I'm right. Just apply."

Avery didn't say anything.

"Please, Ave?"

"Fine. Fine," he smiled. "Why do you always have to be right?"

"Just eat your dinner. It's getting cold."

Moving Up, Part One

So, as promised, here is the first installment of my Nanowrimo novel, entitled Moving Up: The Unlikely Story of Avery Key. The novel is actually not finished yet - having met the 50k word goal in time, I lost the motivation to keep working. In fact, I guess that just proves why Nanowrimo is so brilliant - the idea is to motivate you to write (even if it's lousy writing) because otherwise, perfectionism and procrastination will rule the day. And I think the former of those sins is getting me right now. Somehow I wrote 50k words in 26 days, and managed to keep the quality level up, but having met the goal, I'm crippled by the fear that if I keep going, I'll somehow ruin the novel. Ugh. Anyway, perhaps posting the novel in installments will motivate me to keep going. After all, I can't very well run out of installments to publish without finishing, can I? (I bet I can, actually, but the goal is to do otherwise.)

As you read this, please keep in mind that I wrote this at a very rapid pace, so there are going to be some hackneyed scenes, awkward dialogue, and grammatical and spelling errors (if you notice any, by the way, let me know). So, without further ado ...

Chapter One

"Avery Key was an ordinary man, but he did not lead an ordinary life. In fact, he led the sort of life that few people have ever lived, and that is perhaps why he is considered one of the greatest Americans of all time."

That sentence began Avery Key: A Life, the bestselling biography by historian Benjamin Jackson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. It became one of the most widely read biographies of an American political figure when it was released in 2060, 4 years after Key's death. Generations of American college freshmen would alternately bemoan and relish having to read this classic, and would take from it important lessons about the political foundations of the American republic.

But, this is a digression. To learn about Avery Key, we must begin, if not quite at the beginning, but certainly on the day when his life took a decisive turn.

*****

Avery sat in his van - well, not really his van, but the city's van - asleep at 11 in the morning. It was Monday, November 6, 2006 and he was back to work after a week off. He still hadn't fully recovered from the weekend. Avery and his wife didn't make much money, but then again, a case of Old Milwaukee didn't cost much. It also didn't taste like much, but then, that was hardly the point. Kate had gone to sleep early on Sunday, so Avery was left to finish off the case by himself. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was that he stayed up far too late for someone who had to get to work by 8 o'clock in the morning. Mistake number three was that he picked up the checkbook and started flipping through. Kate always balanced the book, and so Avery was surprised to see that not only were they broke - he knew that already - but they were actually dipping into their savings a bit each month.

Drunk and worried about money, he found it impossible to sleep. Every time he tried to reassure himself - "We'll make it through, we always do" - he found something else to worry about - "The washing machine has been leaking recently and there's no way we can afford a new one." Laying there at ten past three in the morning, he wished he could just pass out and be done with it. But it wasn't to be that sort of night. Instead, he gradually flitted in and out of sleep until he was finally out at a quarter of four. Not that this was any consolation - that night, he dreamt that he was back in high school, and that, not only had he turned up at school in his underwear, but he had forgotten to write his term paper. Kate liked to call that his "Oh crap!" dream. And Avery tended to only have the "Oh Crap!" dream when there was something heavy weighing on his mind.

Returning to Monday morning, the consequence of all of the cheap beer, money troubles, and insomnia was that Avery found himself slumped in his van with his head against the driver's side window. Avery was so tired, in fact, that he didn't even notice that the windowpane was ice cold - this was a November morning in Milwaukee, after all. Or perhaps he did, but the cold felt good with his hungover headache. An inattentive observer could easily have mistaken him for a dead man.

However, it was an attentive observer who noticed Avery first. A young man, unemployed and wandering around Lincoln St. looking for a place to get a cheap meal, noted that Avery was passed out and decided that this was as good a place as any to score some quick cash.

"Hey mister," the man said in a stern voice while rapping on the window. "Hey mister, open up!"

With all the windows rolled up, the man's voice was muffled, and it took Avery a minute or so to notice that someone was talking to him. The young man then started rapping something metallic on the window. Avery finally stirred and opened his eyes.

"Hey mister, I think someone graffiti'd your car."

"Huh? Oh."

Avery sat up, swung open the door and stepped out of the van, turning to look at the driver's side, where the young man was pointing. "Where? I don't see ..." Suddenly, the man shoved Avery to the ground. "What the hell?"

Turning around, Avery realized what was going on. The young man was brandishing a knife.

"Give me everything!"

"Hey man, you don't understand. That's my grocery money."

"I don't give a shit. I said give it, punk."

"Oh crap," Avery muttered, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and handing it over. "This is all have."

"Your watch, too."

Avery barely had time to pull to watch off before the man snatched it away and ran around the corner. Avery was still sitting on the pavement when he realized that a little boy across the street had seen the whole thing.

"Are you okay?" the boy asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you the book man?" the boy asked, gesturing at the Avery's van, which read BOOKMOBILE across the side in foot tall letters (it also said CARRO DE LA BIBLIOTECA in smaller letters, because Avery mostly found himself assigned to the near-South Side, which was to center of Milwaukee's Latino community).

"Um, yeah. I'm the book man, yeah," Avery answered, dusting himself off and standing up. He looked both ways - partly looking for cars, partly making sure that the guy who robbed him wasn't still lurking around - and crossed the street. The boy stood still, staring thoughtfully, but not saying anything.

"What's your name?"

"Hector."

"Where's your mom?"

Hector pointed back over his shoulder towards a small apartment building. A young woman, maybe 25 or 26, was standing by the front window, watching Hector and holding a baby girl. The baby was wearing a little yellow dress and had a bow in her hair. The mother smiled.

"My mom said that I should get a book to read. We don't have any books at home."
"Do you want something in English or en Español?"

"English," Hector answered, looking past Avery at the van. "Do you have Green Eyes and Ham?"

"Sure, sure." Avery took the boy's hand, and turning towards the apartment, waved at the mother. Looking both ways again, he crossed the street to the van. He opened the driver's side door of the van, revealing the interior full of books - mostly children's books and adult classics. (To Kill a Mockingbird and Romeo and Juliet were two of the favorites - Avery had multiple dog-eared copies of each in the van.) The books were hardly organized in a manner appropriate for a librarian - the Dewey decimal system was mostly a suggestion, and most books weren't even categorized by genre or author. Luckily, Avery knew exactly where the copy of Green Eggs and Ham was, since it was a favorite of his, too. Yeah, he was a little old for a children's book - thirty-two, to be exact - but reading through the Seuss classic reminded him of happier times.

With the book in hand, Avery grabbed the barcode scanner that sat in the front passenger's seat. Frankly, he was glad that the guy who mugged him hadn't taken that, too. That had happened once, and his supervisor had forced him to do an inventory of the entire bookmobile to account for the books checked out. And when a couple books couldn't be accounted for, he had to pay for them himself - $47.83 docked from his paycheck.

"Hector, do you have your library card?" Avery asked as he scanned the book out.

Hector looked blankly at Avery, squinting as the sun came from behind a cloud.

"Hector, do you have a library card?"

Hector shook his head no.

"Okay, let's go back and ask tu mámá."

Avery grabbed a clipboard from the back of the van and again took Hector's hand, this time with Green Eggs and Hand and the clipboard tucked under his other arm. They started to cross.

"You have to look both ways, mister."

Avery stopped and smiled at Hector. "Of course." He corrected himself, looking both ways before crossing. Hector had to skip a little to keep up with Avery's long strides. They walked up to the apartment building, opening the outer door and stepping into the small lobby. It was heated, uncomfortably so - after being outside in the 30 degree weather, the lobby was like a desert. Avery looked down at Hector, who was smiling and didn't seem bothered by the heat - he still had his coat zipped all the way to his chin, and his knit cap was pulled down nearly over his eyes.

"Okay, let's call your mom. Which button is your apartment, Hector?"
Before the boy could answer, though, the inner door started to open. The young woman from the window was standing there with the baby in one arm and a library card in the other.

"I saw you coming. He always forgets his card," she said, gesturing towards Hector.

"Oh, it's no problem, ma'am," Avery answered, pulling a pen from his pocket. "I just need to copy down the name and number from the card."

"Hector is always so excited about going to the library, but with the new bébé, we don't go very often anymore."

"Well, that's why we have the Bookmobile!" Avery exclaimed more excitedly than he had intended.

"El carro de la biblioteca!" Hector mimicked in Spanish, smiling.

"Sí, Hector," his mother said. "You see? Excited," she said to Avery.
Hector continued to smile at his mom and Avery.

"Hector, unzip your coat. It's too hot in here." She turned to Avery. "He loves that coat. We got it from Channel 12," she said, referring to the local ABC station that gave away donated coats to the poor every winter.
As he stood writing, Avery suddenly felt very self-conscious and felt the need to break the silence. "You didn't happen to see the guy who robbed me, did you?"

"Perdon?"

"Oh, nevermind." Avery finished writing the information down from the card. "Okay, that's it. You just need to have the book back when I come around again in three weeks. Or you can drop it off at one of the branch libraries - you can go to Forest Home or Zablocki on Oklahoma. Do you know where those are?"

"Sí," she answered. "Thank you."

Avery smiled and handed Hector the book and the library card. He waited until the boy had gone inside and his mom closed the inner door before he opened the door unto the street. The cold air seemed even colder by contrast with the overheated lobby.

Avery dashed across the street, forgetting again to check for cars. As he looked back over his shoulder, he could see Hector in the window, shaking his head as if to gently scold him. Avery smiled.

*****

The remainder of the morning went by uneventfully. Which is to say literally so. A cold November day is hardly the best time to run a bookmobile. Most people would rather do their browsing of books inside, thank you very much. Avery would normally have listened to the radio, but someone had broken off the antenna last week, and so the only signal that came in clear was the heavy metal station. But the silence just reminded Avery of his hangover, and he started hankering for some coffee.

Though he was technically supposed to stay out in the neighborhood until at least 2 o'clock, Avery always preferred to cut off a few minutes early. That way, he had enough time to grab some food, or get gas, or just get back to the main library a bit early. Today, his goal was to make it to Esmerelda's bakery on Mitchell before they closed. It helped that he knew Esmerelda herself, but still, he didn't want to keep her - bakers work long enough hours without having to stay open later in the afternoon for slackers.

Pulling a U-turn, Avery headed back east on Lincoln and then left onto Forest Home, one of the main streets on the South Side, heading northeast until it connected with Mitchell Street. This section of the neighborhood was called, officially, the Historic Mitchell Street Shopping District, but that was just a glamorous way of referring to the six-block stretch of Mitchell that had, on one point in time, been a relatively upscale shopping area, but was now mostly home to small business catering to recently arrived immigrants from Latin America - employment agencies, check-cashing shops, and at least a half-dozen shops selling dresses for weddings, communions, and quincineras.

At 12th and Mitchell, Avery stopped the van - half pulled-over, half blocking the street - and hopped out, dashing into Esmerelda's. "Hey, Esmé! Can I get a coffee and, um, whatever's fresh?"

"You come in here at five to two and expect hot coffee and fresh pastries?" Esmé teased, even as she was filled his cup while her daugher, Cecilia, grabbed a pain au chocolat.

"Oh, you wound me!" Avery exclaimed in mock horror. Esmé smiled. "What do I owe you?"

"Half off on the pastry, so ..." she paused, adding it in her head.

"Oh, dammit," Avery cursed as he reached for his wallet and remembered that it had been stolen. "Esmé, I don't have my wallet. I got robbed ..."

"That's okay, Ave. I know you're good for it." She smiled. "Besides, I already put cream in your coffee."

"Thanks a bunch. I owe you." Avery took the coffee and the pastry.

"But you'd better get out there before they tow you."

"Oh yeah, hey," Avery stuttered. He was still embarrassed by not having the cash to pay Esmé. He knew that she only barely did enough business to pay the rent on the store and the mortgage on her house since her husband had died two years earlier. And, though Esmé seemed confident that he'd have the cash for her, he wasn't so sure himself.

He waved goodbye as he backed out the door and hopped back into the van. He'd only been in the bakery a minute, but the cars on Mitchell were already backed up for a block and they were honking. He quickly dropped his coffee into the cup holder and headed downtown.

*****

Avery took surface streets downtown. Partly it was that he really preferred not to drive on the freeway - no character, just mile after mile of pavement - and partly it was because the Marquette interchange construction project had made a horrid mess out of getting to and from downtown. It was scheduled to be completed in two years, but Avery wasn't holding his breath. All it took in Milwaukee for a construction project to fall behind was for winter storms to show up early and often. Of course, Avery's preferences when it came to driving on the freeway didn't really much matter, since the bookmobile could barely hit 55 on a good day. In the cold weather, and with a low tank of gas, a full-size van stuffed with a few hundred pounds of books wasn't the most nimble of automobiles.

Avery crossed the 6th Street Bridge and passed the Amtrak station, turning onto Wisconsin Avenue just east of the Main Library. The building was, if anything, the classic American library - a large neo-classical building with Doric columns and a large staircase leading to the main entrance. Outside, on the median strip on Wisconsin Avenue were statues of honoring George Washington and Civil War Union soldiers. The reading rooms inside were cavernous and voices echoed off the high ceilings and marble floors. Avery often wondered if the architects who designed libraries did that on purpose so that people would be even more self-conscious of their talking.

But, of course, when driving the bookmobile, Avery didn't enter from the front. He pulled around the rear of the building, backing carefully into the loading dock. The dock, naturally, was not built in neo-classical style, but rather in neo-practical. It was smelly and dirty, the asphalt covered in a thin layer of motor oil and the scent of garbage in the air from the nearby bins. In the winter, snow would pile high and mix with soot from exhaust fumes to make a disgusting brown sludge. Because of that foul mixture, Avery always hoped for fresh snow even when he was working outside - at least it was a fresh layer of snow to cover over the old.

"Hey, hey! Watch it!"

Avery slammed on the breaks, and checked his mirrors. He couldn't see what the commotion was.

"Ave! Pull back out! We've got some books spilled in the dock."

Avery rolled down his window and leaned out. Now he could see what had happened - a large library cart full of books had dumped in the dock. Several of guys were hustling to pick up the mess, but fully half the books were still scattered about.

"Tony, you need a hand?" Avery asked as he hopped out.

"Yeah sure, Ave," Tony answered, walking up and shaking Avery's hand. "Been a while, huh, man?"

"Yeah, well, you're the out who went and took a vacation."

"Visiting my mother-in-law in the U.P. hardly qualifies."

"Well, it sure beats this place," Avery retorted as he bent over to clean up the spilled books. In reality, he was pretty happy with his job, but it's not like this is what he had intended when he went off to college. No one ever says that they want to be a bookmobile driver when they grow up. But, like many English majors, stacking classics on library shelves was as close as Avery was going to get to writing the great American novel. Thing is, at least most English majors had actually gotten their degrees. Avery had never quite had the ambition to stick out college, and had dropped out halfway into his sophomore year. The mounting student loans hadn't helped.

"But yeah, man, in the U.P., the snow's already two feet deep on the ground. Crazy, man," Tony continued talking. The U.P. he was referring to was the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which was actually a large peninsula jutting off of northern Wisconsin, forming the barrier between Lake Superior to the north and Lakes Michigan and Huron to the south. If the U.P. was known for one thing to Milwaukeeans it was that it got very cold there, and snowed a ton. While most Americans probably think of Milwaukee as far north, the U.P. is what Milwaukeeans think of as far north. (Canadians, of course, see things differently.)

Within a few minutes, the spilled books were cleaned up, though now there was a nearly full library cart full of books that were completely out of order. Tony started to push the cart inside when Leonard stopped him. "Maxine wanted me to take care of these."

"Okay, man, I just thought I'd help, cause ..."

"No, I'll do it," Leonard responded tersely, pulling the cart inside.

Tony turned around to face Avery. "Shit, I hate that guy. He acts like he owns the effin' place." Tony struck a match and lit a cigarette.

"Can I bum one?"

"Yeah, sure, man," Tony answered, handing Avery a cigarette. He started to offer a match, too, but Avery waved him off and pulled out a lighter from his pocket.

"I got robbed today down on Lincoln," Avery said as he took his first drag.

"Shit, man. Again?"

Avery nodded. "I fell asleep in the damn van and some punk pulled a knife on me." He sighed. "Eh, the kid probably needed the cash more than me, hey?"
Tony laughed. He knew that Avery wasn't exactly pulling down the big bucks, because, of course, they were both making the same amount. Thing was, Tony's wife had a decent office job in over in East Town. Kate, on the other hand, was working her way through grad school waiting tables and selling homemade jewelry. Sometimes Tony would buy a necklace from Kate just to help out a little, ever though he thought her jewelry was ugly.

They finished their cigarettes and headed inside from the cold. Avery had left the van pulled halfway into the dock. Frankly, he didn't figure anyone would much notice, or care. When Avery had started at the library three years earlier, the staff in the restocking department (of which the bookmobile crews were a part) was top-notch. But after a few months, old man McGee had stepped down and retired to Florida, leaving Maxine in charge. Within a year, she managed to take the department from one of the best in the library to one of the worst. But her cousin was the overall branch manager, so Maxine enjoyed unearned job security.

The biggest problem was staffing, epitomized by Leonard. He had worked in the library for years, but always in low-level positions. He was one of those guys who thought that he knew everything about everything and bristled at being ordered around. Problem was that he was barely capable of reordering a shelf without help. Somehow, though, he ended up as the assistant manager of restocking. Mostly, though, that meant that he acted as Maxine's enforcer, bossing people around on her orders, since she couldn't be bothered most times to interact with her own employees.

As Avery and Tony entered the main restocking room, they couldn't help but notice that the place looked even more disheveled than normal. The sorting table where books that needed re-shelving would be placed was piled with all matter of books, some in stacks but most just scattered about in no order. Some books had even been thrown down open, their pages creased and torn. The whole table looked much like the dock had looked after the cart dumped.

"Shit, look at this mess," Tony said, stopping and shaking his head. "Whatever, man."

"Come on, we'd better get to it."

"I guess."

Avery and Tony started to sort the book, first simply arranging them into neat stacks, and then separating them by fiction or nonfiction.

"Hey, Tone, why don't you grab that cart from earlier. We'd may as well sort those, too."

"Sure, man," Tony answered, walking over to grab the cart. "Hey, Ave?"

"Yeah?"

"Didn't there used to be four full shelves of books on this?"

"Yeah, sure, I think."

"Well, there's barely three on here now."

"Whatever, less work for us."

Tony wheeled the library cart over to the restocking table and began to unload the book into a stack by Avery, who then sorted them into two piles for fiction and non-fiction.

Suddenly, there was a large banging noise from a different part of the floor.

"What was that?" Tony asked.

"Probably someone spilled some books or something. Just more for us to clean up, I guess."

Tony laughed.

But then, they began to hear loud voices shouting. Avery recognized Maxine and Leonard as two of the voices, but there were several others.
"Some sort of ruckus, sounds like," Tony opined. He had stopped working for the moment. Avery was still sorting books, but slower and less attentively. Just as he put a biography of Franklin Roosevelt in the fiction pile, he heard Maxine's distinctive voice shrieking.

"You can't do this to me! You can't do this to me!"

Avery and Tony both started walking towards the inner hallway where Maxine's office was located - and from where the yelling was emanating - when they suddenly saw a sight that they may have secretly wished for many times, but certainly never thought they'd see - Maxine and Leonard were being led away by the police in handcuffs. Maxine was still yelling, but the police were hustling her towards the door (and the dock) at an ever-quickening pace. Avery and Tony stepped to the side just as the police passed them wordlessly.

Avery and Tony shared a knowing glance, and without so much as a word, began to following the police officers back out to the dock, keeping a respectful 10-12 steps behind them. When they got to the dock, they found Maxine and Leonard being loaded in the back of a paddy wagon that was parked halfway into the dock.

"Whose van is this? Who has the keys to this thing?" a police sergeant was asking loudly, gesturing towards Avery's bookmobile. "Who can move this heap for us?"

Tony looked at Avery, who was just staring at his feet.

"Give me a break, man. You'd have left it there, too. You know you would have."

Tony just laughed.

Music Collection #10: Austin Powers, B-52's, Badly Drawn Boy

Artist: Various Artists
Album: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Soundtrack
Favorite Song: Draggin' The Line (by default)
Origin: Amoeba, purchased for $5.95

This is one of those things in the collection that we only own because of one song - R.E.M.'s cover of Tommy James' Draggin' The Line. It's okay, but not worth the six bucks we spent on this. Of course, I'm sure even more hopeless R.E.M. geeks spent full price on this.

Artist: The B-52's
Album: Time Capsule
Favorite Song: None
Origin: Unknown, from Annie's collection

So, this one is totally not my fault. Once again, the icy grip of R.E.M.-fandom is to blame. You listen to R.E.M. six hours a day, read every article and ever website, buy a biography or two, and suddenly you've convinced yourself that The B-52's are a good band because they're from the same Athens, Georgia music scene. The B Fuckin' 52's! What the hell?

Anyway, this best of album is remarkable for one reason only - it contains 18 tracks! 18! Frankly, you'd have to try pretty hard to fill an EP's worth of songs for a B-52's best of, but someone went batshit crazy and provided the world with a good 15 tracks more than it ever desired.

Artist: Badly Drawn Boy
Album: The Hour of Bewilderbeast
Favorite Song: Epitaph
Origin: Hanukkah gift, I think (maybe birthday)

This was one of the first albums I ever asked for after having only read the reviews. My birthday, Christmas, and Hanukkah all fall in the same month, which means that a good way to get new music is the read the year-end lists and asked for whatever sounds best. Anyway, this was on there, and I got it and enjoyed it. And, despite the fact that I haven't listened to the album all the way through in years, it's still a touchstone in my musical evolution (wow, I don't think I've written a sentence that pretentious in a while). This was the first album I remember having with weird instrumentation, lo-fi production, experimental songs, etc. - presaging later favorites, including Neutral Milk Hotel and Sufjan Stevens.

Music Collection #9: Arcade Fire

With Nanowrimo done, I have returned to music blogging (by less than popular demand)!

Artist: Arcade Fire
Album: Funeral
Favorite Song: Wake Up
Origin: Birthday present last year

So Arcade Fire were the hot new indie band at one point (2004), combining all of the essential elements of indie-stardom - being from Canada, having tons of multi-instrumental members, having inpenetrable lyrics (some in French, even!), and having a lead singer with a weird name (Win Butler). The best part of having a singer with a weird name, by the way, is that people can totally drop it into conversation or cd reviews or whatever, and it's awesomely pretentious - "The arpeggiated harmonies on this song have such a Win Butler-esque appeal" or "After listening several times, I still couldn't figure out the double-tracked vocal melange. What is this, a Win Butler track?" Best of all, it doesn't have to make sense. But readers or listeners will just assume that you have some sort of insight into the mind of Win Butler, who must (must!) be some sort of reclusive genius or idiot savant or something.

Anyway, I got a bit off-track there. Point is, Arcade Fire were the hot new indie band at one point. Then I saw them on, like, the Fashion-Music Awards or some such crap show. And they were performing their song Wake Up with David Bowie (sharing lead vocals with the aforementioned Win Butler). The song was super-awesome - much better than the usual mix-an-up-and-coming-band-with-an-established-star mash-ups that they often do at awards shows. So I put their CD on my wishlist and received it for my birthday. And it's good, but not as super-awesome as the hype led me to believe. Wake Up, however, is still an awesome track - my favorite, in fact.

SUCCESS!

Check out the counter!

Nanowriming

Check out the counter on the side there! I'm currently 11,198 words shy of the Nanowrimo goal, with 11 days remaining. Victory is in sight, but this is of course no time to rest on my laurels. I honestly can't believe that I got this far, though. I really figured that I'd get a good start but then my interest would wane, I'd take a "break" and then the story would be dead. But I'm really enjoying my novel, and that's keeping me going. Also, I've being trying to stay realistic in my goals - 2000 words a day (which is about 2 hours of writing, give or take) is very doable. I think probably a lot of people get into the problem of trying to get a great start, writing 5000 words a day or something, and then burn out.

Anyway, I'm considering posting the novel in serialized form on this blog. I think that would be a good use of the blog. In addition, I plan to go back to the CD project once Nanowrimo is over (although my novel won't actually be finished by then, I don't think, so blogging will still take a backseat).

Halfway!

So I'm more than halfway to my Nanowrimo goal of 50,000 words in the month of November (notice the counter on the right side of this page). I've been sticking to a goal of 2,000 words a day - some days that's very hard, others quite easy - and it seems to be working. My greatest fear was that I would just lose interest in writing. But here I am at 26,000 words and I feel like the story is just starting to get interesting. And I am, as of this writing, currently in 9th place for wordcount among the 152 Nanowrimo participants in the Milwaukee area!

Nanowrimo!

So it's been several days since my last post, and even though I have a stack of cds here to get to, they will have to wait for another day. The reason? Nanowrimo! What's Nanowrimo? That would be National Novel Writing Month, of course! It's an annual event each November, when participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in a single month. The rules are simple - start November 1st, end November 30th, and write as many words as you can in between. I first tried two years ago, but I only got a little ways, and what I did write was no more than a thinly-veiled account of my own life. Oh, it had a plot, or would have, had I gotten that far. This time, I actually have a storyline, and I'm making pretty good progress. By the 30th, I'll either have quit in disgrace, or finished but developed carpal tunnel and/or pulled out all of my hair.

If you're interested, check out my profile. Or, better yet, start your own novel! (Well, maybe wait till next year.)

Music Collection #8: Aerosmith and Tori Amos

Artist: Aerosmith
Album: Greatest Hits
Favorite Song: Sweet Emotion (I guess)
Origin: Annie's

Why is this in the collection? I don't know. It's a pretty random Aerosmith cd to own - it only covers the early part of their career, from 1973-79. I was less than a year old when the final song on this collection was released. Being a child of the MTV generation, I'm of course more familiar with Aerosmith in their Run DMC and Alicia Silverstone incarnations.

Artist: Tori Amos
Albums: Little Earthquakes, Crucify, Winter, Under the Pink, Cornflake Girl, Boys for Pele, Hey Jupiter, From the Choirgirl Hotel, To Venus and Back, Concertina, StrangeLittleGirls, Scarlet's Walk, Tales of a Librarian, The Beekeeper
Favorite Song: Winter
Origin: One of Annie's favorites

This is a lot of cds to cover in a single entry. I was originally going to make this two, but then I realized that I hardly have enough thoughts on Tori to fill a single post, let alone two.

My friend Sarah in college was a huge Tori fan. Huge. Like, camp-out-for-hours-before-the-show-to-meet-Tori huge. And she did meet her - twice actually. But by Sarah's own admission, she wasn't even close to being a truly rabid fan - some of the other girls, apparently, were carve-her-name-into-your-skin rabid. All of which is to say that Tori is not the type of artist who you can listen to casually. I actually purchased Little Earthquakes from BMG once, but sent it back before I opened it. She's a Bush Doctrine artist - you're either for her or against her. And I just didn't feel like lugging around that much emotional baggage.

I actually once spent an evening with Sarah and one of her roommates watching a VHS tape of Tori performances recorded off of TV (all my other friends had gone home for the weekend). I don't remember if it was something that Sarah put together herself, or if it was something that she traded for online from another fan. It was from that tape that I decided that Winter was my favorite song of hers, though at this point I frankly can't even remember how it goes.

Music Collection #7: Ryan Adams, finale

Artist: Ryan Adams and The Cardinals
Album: Cold Roses; Jacksonville City Nights; 29
Favorite Song: If I Am A Stranger; The End; Strawberry Wine
Origin: Borders, downtown Milwaukee; ditto; and a birthday gift

2005 was a banner year for Ryan Adams. Or, at the very least, a marathon year - releasing three albums within the span of 8 months or so, the first of them a double album. At first I was going to write separate posts for all of these albums, but I decided that it made more sense to combine them, even though the album don't hang together as a trio. Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights are, in a way, companion pieces. Each stands alone, but they also complement each other. Really, they probably could have been released (with a few edits) as a single long double album - dump a couple of the slower tracks from Roses and some of the more generic songs from Jacksonville, shift a few others from the former to the latter, and voila! Which isn't to say that Adams should have done that, just that he could have (if I had more time and I was more awake, I'd throw together my hypothetical double-album setlist).

These two albums mark Adams' return to more country-influenced rock, but with Cold Roses having a more alt-country, bluegrass feel, and Jacksonville City Nights the more honky-tonk, straight-up country feel.
Cold Roses strength lies, then, in the more up-tempo rockers like If I Am A Stranger, Beautiful Sorta, and Let It Ride. All three are classic Adams - noise and bluster paired with melancholy, self-pitying lyrics. Jacksonville's strongest tracks - The End, A Kiss Before I Go, The Hardest Part, The Peaceful Valley - by contrast, have a more atmospherically country feel to them in place of the bluster. The lyrics tend more towards classic country themes, too - small towns, lost loves, death.

What really makes both of these albums work, though, is Adams' new backing band, The Cardinals. Though he plays guitar and piano in addition to singing, Adams has always relied on other musicians on his albums. But those musicians change from album to album, track to track. Here, he's got the same four-piece band backing him on every track (with a couple guest appearances by Rachael Yamagata and Norah Jones), which provides a consistency in both quality and overall sound. I have to admit that I was skeptical at first of the idea of Adams bringing in a regular band - partly because of the personnel-changing chaos that was Whiskeytown, partly because of the fear of a band diluting his music, and partly for fear of the pretense that comes with being ______ ______ and the _______s!


Finally, you'll note that I haven't said a word yet about 29. There's a reason for that - it's not very good. A couple of the tracks could have maybe fit on another album, but as a whole, it is simply too understated, too quiet (the volume is turned to -11), too pretentious (lots of strings), and too self-indulgent (it's a concept album about his twenties, for Christ's sake). Plus, it contains the single worst Ryan Adams track ever put to record - the spaghetti-western outtake The Sadness, which is just too awful to accurately describe.

So, that ends my foray into Ryan Adams. Having one of my favorite artists right at the beginning of this music project has really, I think, thrown off the feel of the project - most posts after this will cover multiple albums, and will be less like album reviews and more like some random thoughts on the albums strung together. But, given that I'm only doing this once, I couldn't after-all shortchange some of my favorite albums.

Music Collection #6: Ryan Adams, Love Is Hell

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Love Is Hell
Favorite Song: English Girls Approximately
Origin: Amoeba, $9.99

So this is Ryan Adams' mope-rock album. God, I hate that term. It is, I'll grant, an album of mostly downbeat love songs, but then, so is Heartbreaker. Where this album is different is in the production values - lots of reverb in the guitars and vocals - which give it more of an urban feel that Heartbreaker's decidedly country aesthetic. Lyrically, this album covers an urban landscape as well - London, Manhattan, Baltimore. Maybe that's why I like it so much - I've always been a city guy at heart. The country is nice to visit or drive through, but I'd much rather ride on a noisy streetcar through rainy streets at 2 o'clock in the morning. So I don't hear this as a depressing album, I guess, which is why I like it so much.

Another thing this album does well - and which Adams improves on with Jacksonville City Nights - is tell stories. Many songs up to this point in his career were very impressionistic. Dear Chicago, for instance, is a beautiful, heartbreaking song, but the details of the relationship that is breaking down in the song are pretty sketchy. With this album, especially This House Is Not For Sale, I See Monsters, and Thank You Louise, Adams starts to flesh out his tales with little details that make repeated listens more intesting - I'd probably heard I See Monsters a hundred times before Annie pointed out that it's above Adams' girlfriend having a nightmare.

Finally, I guess I couldn't cover this album without mentioning the most famous song - a cover of Oasis' Wonderwall. And I'll admit, that was the song that first made me intrigued about this album back when it wasn't a proper album, but rather two EPs. Wonderwall was probably my favorite track, too, the first dozen times or so I listened to the album. It's a great stripped-down cover of a song so iconic as to be almost un-coverable. But I think it's a testament to the strength of this album and it's ability to grow on me over time that Wonderwall now seems almost a gimmicky addition - not even one of the best half-dozen tracks, to be sure.

Incidentally, if you're only a casual Ryan Adams fan, this is the final essential album of his - in addition to Heartbreaker and Gold.

Gratuitous 100th Post!

This is the 100th post on this blog since it started a year-and-a-half ago (though the blog was dormant for roughly half that time). In honor of the blog's achievement (or rather, mine), you should totally buy me something!

Music Collection #5: Ryan Adams, Rock N Roll

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Rock N Roll
Favorite Song: So Alive
Origin: Best Buy, 76th Street in Greenfield

So I made the comment in regards to the Gold bonus disc that I didn't like it at first, which was surprising for a Ryan Adams album. But now that I think about it, I didn't like this album at first, either. In fact, after a couple initial listens, I basically stuck this on the shelf and forgot about it for several months. Which was a shame, given what I went through to buy it. I had gone down to Southridge mall to buy Christmas gifts. But I don't drive (and Annie had driven our car to St. Louis that weekend anyway), so I had to do all of my shopping via bus and walking. And Milwaukee is not made for that sort of thing. I could have bought this album at a store in the mall, I guess, but I had a coupon for Best Buy, so I went there instead, which is at the opposite end of the 76th street shopping area. Between the mall, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Best Buy, I probably walked a mile or two up and down 76th St. (which doesn't always have sidewalks) in 30 degree weather, and I was sweating like a pig.

Anyway, when I got this home and listened to it, I was very disappointed. It basically sounded like one loud, obnoxious, 45-minute-long song. Around that time, though, I was listening to Virgin Radio on the internet, and they had So Alive in rotation (being the UK, they actually play rock songs on the radio). I grew to like it, and it was some time before I made the connection that it was Ryan Adams (being the radio, they often don't bother to tell you what you're listening to). Eventually, I started listening to the album again, and even started to like it - it served the purpose of loud, cathartic music to wash dishes to. Still, I would often skip tracks, including everything after Anybody Wanna Take Me Home most of the time.

Famously, this album was demanded by the record company after they deemed Love Is Hell not commercial enough. Adams turned in this in its place, and Love Is Hell was released as two EPs. In retrospect, I think it's pretty clear that Love Is Hell should have been the album, and Rock N Roll the EP - except that they should have made it one disc. The following tracklisting I think preserves the glam/punk attitude of the album, while culling it from fourteen mostly mediocre tracks to six relatively strong ones:

This Is It
Wish You Were Here
So Alive
Note to Self: Don't Die
Rock N Roll
Anybody Wanna Take Me Home (the Rock N Roll version, which is superior to the slower Love Is Hell version)

Music Collection #4: Ryan Adams, Demolition

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Demolition
Favorite Song: Dear Chicago
Origin: Amoeba, San Francisco

Do you ever get the feeling that the randomizer is reading your mind? Yeah, me neither. But it totally did today. I was thinking what to say about this album, a collection of unreleased songs (demos, if you will - get it? Demolition?), and the randomizer went and played all three of my favorite tracks - Dear Chicago, Chin Up, Cheer Up, and Cry on Demand.

When I first bought this album, it was one of those "hey, neat!" moments that you rarely have, where you first hear of an album by seeing it on the rack in the store. With all of the music press nowadays, that's pretty rare. So I bought it and listened a few times. Like most collection of unreleased songs, it doesn't really hold together as an album, and there are plenty of songs that make it real clear why they didn't make it onto an album. (Nuclear, Starting to Hurt, and Gimme a Sign, for instance, all sound like rejects from Rock N Roll, an album that isn't good enough to have rejects.) But over time, I would find myself singing some song in my head, and I would dig around for a bit before I realized that it came from this record. Chin Up, Cheer Up and She Wants to Play Hearts (another good song) were like this - sorta sneaking up on me over time.

The best track on the album, though, is Dear Chicago, which is one of those rare cases for me where the track that started as my favorite has remained so. It's produced by Adams himself, I see from the liner notes, and sounds like something that would have fit both sonically and thematically on Love is Hell, which he co-produced (same holds for the other two Adams-produced tracks). The music is simple and haunting, and the lyrics are pretty direct, ending with one of my favorite break-up lines ever, sung in a pretty and resigned voice "I think I'm falling out of love ... with you." A perfect 2-minute song of heartbreak. This is the sort of song that makes an odds and ends collection worth having for real fans, and makes you say "How the hell did this not end up on an album?"