Moving Up, Part Five

In fictional Milwaukee, yesterday was a big day for Avery - he had to make his first personnel decisions, letting go of half his staff (with some ugliness to go along with it), and thus leaving himself with several positions to fill. Kate, meanwhile, found out that her grant proposal for her dissertation had been accepted, and so she and Avery decided to go out for a night on the town to celebrate.

*****

The next afternoon, Avery found himself walking down Wells St. from the Main Library to City Hall. He ran the idea of the Students-to-Work program by McGee, who liked the plan - "Sounds like your wife's the one with brains, hey?" were his exact words - and told him to talk to the Library Commissioner. At first, Avery figured he'd just call, but Tony convinced him that a face-to-face visit would probably be more effective. Though he hated to leave the department short-staffed, he figured that if he headed over right after lunch, he could be back before the late afternoon rush.

Arriving at City Hall, he negotiated his way around the construction work and scaffolding surrounding the exterior of the building and headed inside and up four flights of stairs to the Office of the Library Commissioner, Lionel Tate.

Inside of the Commissioner's office, Avery noticed several people seated in a small waiting area, including some he recognized as local newscasters. Others, judging from their notebooks and cell phones, he guessed were reporters from various newspapers. Trying hard to be inconspicuous, Avery walked up to the reception desk.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?" the receptionist answered, a little to loud.

"I'm here to see Commissioner Tate."

"And which newspaper are you from?" she asked brusquely.

"I, um," Avery lowered his voice, "I'm not a reporter. I work at the Main Library, in the Restocking Department." His voice had reduced to a whisper by the end.

"Young man, you're going to have to speak up."

Avery turned to glance at the reporters. At least a couple of them had taken notice of him. "I'm the manager of the Restocking Department at the Main Branch," he said loud enough to be audible to everyone in the small waiting room.

"Oh, I see. You'll have to wait a moment. Mr. Tate will see you next."

Avery turned to sit down, but realized there were no seats. Instead, he found an unclaimed spot of wall to lean against. The man standing next to him eyed him suspiciously.

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"I, um ... I don't really think I have time now." Avery chided himself silently for not thinking of a better excuse. Time, of course, was something he had plenty of at the moment. And so for the next few minutes he stood next to the reporter, silently - too busy to speak.

"Young man!" the receptionist yelled. "Mr. Tate will see you now."

Avery headed into Tate's office as a reporter and cameraman from Channel 58 were heading out.

"Afternoon, Mr. ... um ..."

"Key."

"Key. Right. Of course." Tate shuffled some papers around on his desk. "McGee didn't mention that you were stopping by."

"He didn't?"

"No. We were just talking and he didn't mention it. I prefer to conduct most business over the phone, after all," Tate explained as he took a seat behind his desk.

Avery felt himself getting red in the face, embarrassed that he had disturbed Tate with a face-to-face meeting.

"Oh, of course. Um ... so I can't believe that there are still so many reporters covering the whole, uh, scandal." Avery winced a little at the sound of that last word.

"Yes, well ... CNN somehow picked up on the story and it's become national news. You'd think that with the election, this would have been forgotten."

"You'd think, wouldn't you?" Avery echoed.

Tate started looking at some papers impatiently. "Is there something I can do for you, Key?"

"Um, yes sir."

"And ... what would that be?"

"Well, my department, due to the recent incident, is severely short-staffed, and the idea occurred to me of using kids from the Students-to-Work program to help fill the gap. I think their youth and enthusiasm would be ..."

"Yeah, that sounds good. Do it."

"Um, excuse me?"

"I said it sounds like a good idea. Do it."

"Oh, I just figured that you'd want to hear more about ..."

"Boy, you really don't know much about me, do you? Where did McGee find you, anyway?"
Tate asked. Avery wasn't sure if it was a rhetorical question. "Look, kid - I agree that your idea is worth a shot. Try it out, and if it doesn't work, we'll switch to something else."

Chapter 3

"Do you ever get the sensation that you're living the same day over and over and over again?" Tony asked Avery.

"What?"

"Y'know, you wake up every morning to the same thing on the radio, the same weather, the same everything. And you just wanna get out of that loop so badly."

"Tony, what are you talking about? Are you saying things at work are boring?"

"Oh, Jeez, Ave! It's Groundhog Day!" Avery just stared at Tony. "Y'know, the movie? Groundhog Day? Bill Murray? Please tell me you get what I'm talking about."

"What? I don't ... oh! Oh, I get it!" Avery chucked. "That's, uh, that's funny."

"Jokes are a lot better if you don't have to explain them," Tony said, shaking his head.

"Look, sorry! That's a old movie. I didn't remember."

"Morning, gentlemen!" Harriet announced as she arrived. "Looks like another six weeks of winter!"

"Oh, bummer," Tony said. "Ave, if this keeps up, we're going to need to get more snow shovels to keep the dock clear."

"Well, I like the snow, personally," Harriet said. "It's so beautiful and peaceful."

"Yeah, well, then next time you can help us shovel all the beauty and peace," Tony joked.

Avery had now been the manager of the department for two and a half months, and things were beginning to get back into a good working order. The new barcode scanners were working very well, and Avery had invested some of the budget into much needed repairs and upgrades to the vans. There were still some funds remaining, and so he had Annabel looking into other potential technology upgrades. And Tony was taking automotive repair courses at the Milwaukee Area Technical College (a/k/a MATC) so that the department would have someone on hand to handle minor repairs on the van, rather than having to have the work done by outside companies.

As for personnel, Avery had so far hired four students from the Mayor's program - since they could each only work part-time, he was able to get them for the price of two regular full-time employees. So far, he didn't have any complaints. All four of the students were hard working and excited about the experience. The only downside was that two of them had already been excepted to colleges out-of-state, so Avery was already having to think about how to replace them. In addition, Avery had hired two full-time employees, Sebastian and Helen. Sebastian was an acquaintance of Avery's, who had coincidentally applied for the job. He was a refugee from Haiti, where he had worked as a clerk in a government ministry until the overthrow of President Aristide. He eventually ended up in Milwaukee in the mid-1990s, settling in Riverwest. Avery knew him from seeing each other at various events in the neighborhood. He fit right in at the library - he was very organized, and he was trilingual in French, English, and Spanish, which meant that he was able to participate in a lot of community outreach work in the Latino community.

Sebastian had suggested that Avery talk to a man named Henry Ferdinand, who was the editor of the Riverwest Beat, a free weekly community newspaper covering Riverwest and the Eastside. Sebastian had worked at the paper for a time, and thought that a partnership between the paper and the library would be beneficial for both. McGee liked the idea and told Avery to look into it, so this afternoon Avery and Sebastian were headed over to the Beat's office on Holton St. to talk to Ferdinand.

*****

"Great to see you Sebastian!" Ferdinand intoned enthusiastically, taking Sebastian's hand.

"Bonjour, mon ami!"

"And you must be Mr. Key."

"Indeed I am, but you can call me Avery. Good you meet you, Mr. Ferdinand." Avery reached out and shook Ferdinand's hand.

"Henry, please. This is an informal place of business, after all." Henry waved his hand around, gesturing at the hundreds of newspaper clippings posted in his office, which nearly composed newsprint wallpaper. Stacks of papers, some appearing to be rather old, sat around the room, and Henry's desk was a mess of post-its, pens, and discarded chewing gum wrappers. On the corner of the desk sat a dictaphone.

"No computer?" Avery asked.

"Naw, I'm a card-carrying Luddite. I type everything on Emilia here," Henry answered, pointing to a typewriter on a rickety stand in the corner. "Or I just dictate it and hand it off to one of the kids in the office."

"That was me when I first came to Milwaukee," Sebastian explained. Avery looked a little surprised. "Ninety words a minute," Sebastian said, smiling.

"So, to what do I owe the honor of your visit?" Henry asked.

"Well," Avery started, "as you're probably aware of, the Main Library's periodicals department keeps a number of small local papers in the collection. While we've been carrying the Beat regularly for about four years now, our back-issue collection is pretty spotty."

"You two boys came out here just to ask me about some back issues?"

"Well, my wife is a graduate student at UWM, so I've developed an appreciation for primary source materials, and I think it's important that we have as many issues of your paper as possible."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't really have much of a back issue collection here - mostly just random issues now and again where we had extra copies at the end of the week."

"Oh, that's too bad. Hmm."

"But you're welcome to take whatever I do have lying around. As you've probably noticed, my archiving skills are a bit lacking."

"Some things never change, non?" Sebastian added.

Avery surveyed the piles of papers. "Well, if you don't mind, we certainly have room in the van for these papers - we could take them today."

"Sure, sure. Help yourself."

Avery walked over to one of the nearest piles. The issue on top was dated August 4th, 1990. The lead story read HOLTON STREET FEST A SUCCESS, and featured a large photo of a jubilant crowd lining Holton, watching a parade of floats. "In Milwaukee, the city of festivals, even a neighborhood block party is a massive undertaking," the article began.

"Boy, I don't even remember there being a Holton Street Festival."

"That's probably because there hasn't been one in, oh, 7 or 8 years now," Henry explained.

"Really? That's a shame."

"Well, with Summerfest and State Fair and all the Ethnic festivals, there really wasn't much call after a while for another neighborhood festival. Plus, several of the shops on Holton that had played a big part in the celebration closed."

"Like which?"

"Oh, Houlihan's used to run the beer tent. And the sporting goods store provided equipment for the Father-and-Son softball game."

"And don't forget Ma Cherie!" Sebastian added. "They had the best French pastries. To die for."

"Yeah, but Ma Cherie eventually went out of business, and Ken Houlihan retired to Florida. People just sorta lost interest," Henry continued.

"What do you think it would take to get something like that up and running again?" Avery asked.

"Sponsors, for one. And vendors, for another," Henry answered. "Why, do you have an idea?"

"Well, not really." Avery was thinking. "Well ... well maybe." Avery turned his attention back to the pile of newspapers. "We really should be getting these back to the library, so that we can start sorting through them."

"Excellent. Just get in touch with me if you have any ideas about the festival."

"Sure thing."

Avery and Sebastian each grabbed a large stack of papers and headed out to the van.

*****

"Kate?"

"I'm in the bathroom!" she answered, her voice muffled. Avery walked into the kitchen and dropped his keys on the counter as Kate emerged dressed in a bathrobe. Her hair was still wet from her shower.

"How was your day?"

"Ugh, not so good," Kate grunted.

"Sounds like it."

"I was working all morning and afternoon trying to reconcile deployment figured from different sources, and they just weren't adding up. Finally, I realized that it was a quarter past five and I hadn't even gotten dressed or showered yet."

"You feel better now?"

"Yeah, a nice hot shower can be so refreshing."

Avery leaned forward and kissed her. "Hey, you know that free local paper?"

"Yeah, the Riverwest Beat, right?"

"Right. I met the editor today - Henry Ferdinand. He's a real friendly guy."

"How'd you meet him?"

"Oh, we had to go by their offices to get some back issues for the library's collection."

"Oh, excellent. Those are great research materials."

Avery smiled. "Oh, I know you so well."

"What?" Kate asked, half-defensively.

"Nothing." Avery was still smiling. "Anyway, we got to talking about the now-defunct Holton Street Festival."

"I didn't even know that existed."

"Yeah, it was apparently big for a while. Anyway, I'm thinking that we could restart it."

"Excuse me?"

"I think we could get it restarted. With a couple sponsors and some vendors, the whole thing could be a success, I think. I mean, it doesn't have to be a huge deal - just something for folks in the neighborhood."

"Okay, but who do you expect to pony up cash for something like that?"

"Well, I was thinking - that attorney you got to help Harriet, he works at one of the big firms, hey?"

"Yeah - Carver, Briggs & Henderson."

"Well, I'm sure the firm gives money to local groups, right?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Well, maybe you can see if he could help out."

"Okay, but don't you need permits and stuff for a street fair?"

"Well, sure. But I've got plenty of contacts in City Hall - I'm sure I could get something like this approved."

"I suppose." Kate paused.

"What?"

"Well ... I don't know. You really think this could work?"

"Sure it could! I mean, if we start canvassing the neighborhood, talking to some of the business people and such, I'm sure we could get this thing off the ground. And Henry would certainly promote it, I'd think."

"Hmm ... look at you. From bookmobile driver to festival promoter in just three short months."

Avery laughed.

Synergy!

I'm guest-blogging over at alog (the joint blog of Annie and her best friend Amy), answering the Question of the Month "What are you optimistic about?" My answer involves Salma Hayek's hotness, er ... that is, the cultural assimilation of Latin American immigrants.

The Music Project is DEAD!

Or something. Annie inspired me to start this project, and she basically gave up after about three posts. We both then inspired Adam, and he's currently at twenty posts and counting. Now, you could say that Adam has more stick-to-it-iveness than Annie and I, but I prefer to think of it as him having way too much free time. I mean, if he ever finishes his collection, I'd be mondo-impressed, but sorta mondo-impressed the way you'd be if someone ate fifty eggs in front of you. It's a I-couldn't-have-done-that-but-I'm-not-sure-why-anyone-would-bother kind of impressed.

Anyway, perhaps one day I'll restart the project (unlikely), but for now, I'll devote this blog to the serialized version of Moving Up.

Statis Pro Baseball

There was no Wikipedia entry for Statis Pro Baseball. I have now remedied this grave injustice. You may gaze upon my mighty work here.

Also, today is my son's first birthday. He is the greatest thing to come into my life since Statis Pro Baseball.

Moving Up, Part Four

Ack! It's been two weeks since the last installment of Moving Up! And didn't I promised weekly installments? No, actually, I did not. Besides, this is a free online novel, and you get what you pay for. No, I mean, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Or, no ... beggars can't be choosers. Or ... well, dammit, there are lots of clichés appropriate to this situation. Pick one.

Anyway, when we last saw Avery, he went in to interview for the position of manager of the restocking department at the Main Library. The interviewer was his old boss McGee - now the head of the Library - who, after giving Avery a bit of a hard time, hired him on the spot.

*****

"I never liked that Maxine. I knew from the start that she was no good," McGee intoned, pacing his office and holding a thick manila file. He was even more imposing standing up than he was behind the desk. Avery was sitting in a too-small chair in front of the desk - a different chair than he had sat in the previous morning. Had McGee switched the chair out to make him less comfortable?

"Well, no one on the staff liked her, either."

"No one on my staff, maybe, kid. But after three years she'd filled her cronies in almost every position. And that's the biggest problem we've got. Those people downstairs aren't going to be loyal to you, and they sure as hell ain't gonna be able to work well enough to get this place running the way I want it to."

"What are you getting at?"

"New blood, kid." McGee coughed and wheezed a bit. "The police took care of the first step in clearing this place out, but I'm going to do the second part. We've got far too many people here who floated in on a corrupt cloud, and we gotta do some housecleaning." Avery winced at the mixed metaphor.

"As it is, sir, we're short staffed in restocking. I really can't afford to have my staff reduced any further."

"You can't afford not to, you mean!" McGee bellowed. "Dammit, kid! You'd be better off with one good, honest person than a stadium full of incompetents and thieves!" McGee was pounding on the desk. Avery worried that people in the hall were probably wondering what was going on in the office.

McGee threw the manila folder down on the desk. It was marked Personnel. "Kid, you've got eleven people in your department right now. Wanda, Stacy, and Carl are goners. That leaves you with eight. I want that down to six. From there, we'll rebuild."

"Wait, wait ... six people? I'm telling you, the department can't be run on that."

McGee shook his head. "It doesn't have to be, kid. Dammit, are you even listening?"

Avery stared back at McGee, trying to follow what the old man was saying. This being his first management meeting, things seemed to be going very fast. "Okay, six." He paused. "Who's left?"

"Anthony, Julio, Desmond, Harriet, Chandler, Annabel, and Sean."

"That's only seven."

"You're the eighth, kid. Did you forget your coffee this morning or something?"

Avery chuckled. "No sir."

"Good," McGee said, and then lowered his voice, "cause we've got some work to do."

Avery picked up the department roster sheet from the file and stared at the names. Eight of the names, including Maxine and Leonard, had been crossed out in black already. Wanda, Stacy, and Carl were struck through in red ink. Avery picked up a pencil, and starting chewing on the end while reading through the list. He couldn't very well fire Tony or Harriet - they were his friends. But, of course, that wasn't fair to the others that his friends should get special treatment. Avery mulled it over in his head - no, he couldn't fire Tony or Harriet because they were good workers. He knew them, he knew well how they worked. They deserved to stay. He took the pencil and made a little check mark next to their names.

"Keeping your friends, hey?" McGee asked.

"Yes."

"You sure about that? Sure you're not playing favorites?"

"I'm sure. They're good workers."

"You trust yourself on this?"

"I do. Do you?"

McGee paused, squinting and staring back at Avery. "Yeah, I do."

"Good."

Avery tried to play things cool, but on the inside his stomach was twisted in knots. He had just made his first managerial decision, and old man McGee agreed with him. Of course, that still left five people, of which we could only keep three. His eyes scanned the names over and over, as if hoping that the answer would just jump off the page at him. Instead, the letters all just started to blend together. He was trying to think through this logically, but how do you compare people? This wasn't mathematics, there was no obviously correct answer. He stared harder and harder at the sheet, finally closing his eyes in frustration.

"Chandler," Avery finally said.

"Chandler?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He's good with the stacks. He's fast and accurate. But his attendance stinks. He's late all the time. I can't be stuck wondering where my employees are when they're supposed to be at work."

"Fair enough."

Avery returned to the sheet. Four names left. "Sean," he said, much faster than last time.

"Really?" McGee said, sounding honestly surprised. "Why?"

"He just isn't dedicated to this job. He's always talking about how he'd rather work someplace else."

"Then I guess this is his chance," McGee snorted.

Avery crossed out Sean and Chandler on the list and checked next to Julio, Desmond, and Annabel. So, this was his department. It seemed tiny (and it was - less than a third of the previous group).

"Alright, kid. I'm going to call Sean, Chandler, and the others up here at the end of the day to let them know what we've decided."

"No."

"No?"

"No, I should be the one to tell them." Avery paused. "It was my decision. I should be the one to tell them."

"That's good, kid. That's good. See, this is what I knew you had," McGee said, pointing a thick finger at Avery's chest. "Now, you've gotta rebuild this department. Here's the bad news - I'm only letting you have twelve people down there. Maxine let that department get bloated with extra people. You need to fix that."

"What's the good news?"

"The good news is that now that the supervisor isn't embezzling funds, you'll actually have enough money to pay these people decently and still have enough for some technology upgrades."

"Barcode scanners. We need new barcode scanners desperately. The old models are clunky and heavy, and the interface sucks."

"Okay."

"Beyond that, I'll need time to see where we can best improve. Can I get back to you in say, a month?"

"Sure, kid. Take your time. The money ain't going anywhere this time." McGee laughed.

"Now, I need to get back downstairs. I need to let me people know what's going on."

"You do that, kid."

Avery stood up to leave, but he paused as he got to the door. "I have to ask. Would you have done the same thing?"

McGee smiled. "Here's the thing, kid - you own this decision. It don't matter what I would have done." Avery started to look a bit ill. "But I'm behind you one hundred percent."
Avery nodded his head and left.

*****

Avery headed down three flights of stairs to the restocking department. He was walking far faster than usual, and nearly slipped on the old marble steps, worn by decades of use. He was nervous about having to fire five people. This was something he had never done before - naturally, since he'd never been in a managerial position before - but more importantly, it was something he didn't realize that he would be expected to do, especially not this soon. With the department already short-staffed, he figured that he'd shortly be adding people, not subtracting. Most importantly, he had no idea how to go about firing people who until the previous day had been his co-workers, not his subordinates. He had a feeling this wasn't going to go well.

When he arrived downstairs, he was immediately met by Sean. "Hey, Key! I need to talk to you. There's a lot of rumors flying around here, and I need to know where I stand."

Well, there it was - Avery had wanted to wait till the end of the day, but now the issue was presenting itself front and center.

"Fine, Sean. Meet me in my office in five minutes," Avery said, trying to buy a little time.

"No, I want to talk about this now," Sean said, positioning himself in Avery's path. "Why can't we discuss this now?"

"Okay, fine. Let's discuss this now." Avery looked Sean straight in the eyes and took a deep breath. He had never realized before just how tall Sean was. "You're fired."

Avery wished that he could have recorded the look on Sean's face for posterity. Not because he thought that someone looking crushed by bad news was funny, but because it was so much better than the reaction that immediately followed.

"What!" Sean barked, much louder than anyone usually spoke in the department (this was a library, after all). "Who the hell do you think you are, Key! Yesterday morning you were just the little pissant who drove the bookmobile, and now you think you're some bigshot, hey?"

"I don't think anything, Sean. I'm the manager now, and I've made this decision."

"Oh, look! The little puppet can talk!" Sean yelled. "Who's pulling your strings, Pinocchio?"

Avery chuckled, which wasn't really the best idea.

"What the hell are you laughing at, huh? You think this is funny? This is my life!"

"Okay, Sean. Just calm down."

"Don't you tell me what to do, asshole!"

A crowd had started to gather. Avery suddenly felt trapped. Sean was yelling, and several of the other employees were shouting questions, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Okay, that's enough," Avery said, his very low but firm. The shouting continued. "I said enough!" His shout caught everyone by surprise. He turned and glared at the crowd and Sean.

"Sean and I are having a private conversation, and we are going to continue it in my office. The rest of you should get back to work."

Avery stalked off towards his office, and no one followed. He strode inside and closed the door. Once inside, he loosened his tie and rolled his sleeves. There was a knock on the door.

"Come in."

It was Sean. He still looked angry.

"Have a seat, Sean," Avery said, motioning towards the chair. Avery sat down. "I don't have good news for you, Sean, but I'd like to discuss this in a more professional manner."

Sean looked a bit chastened. He took the seat Avery had offered.

"Sean, I have made the decision to let you go."

"Why? What the hell ...!" Sean started, but caught himself. There was a silence for several seconds. "Why am I being fired."

"I need people who come to work everyday and want to work here - who see what we do here as important."

"Oh, Jeez, Avery! We restock shelves at the friggin' library!"

"See, that's what I'm talking about!" Avery said with greater force than he intended. "You may see this as just restocking shelves, but I see this as providing an important public service."

Avery could see that Sean wasn't buying it, but he continued anyway, for his sake as much as Sean's. "Without us, the library doesn't work - we're just as crucial to it's functioning as the librarians, the docents, and the archivists. Without us, this place ceases to function. Now, maybe that's not something you care about, but it's something that I care about a great deal. And if you're not going to help me, there's no reason for you to stick around."

Sean was silent for a moment. Avery began to think that maybe he had gotten his point around.

"That's a lot of horseshit." Or perhaps he had not.

Sean stood up and marched out of the room, slamming Avery's door and heading right out the backdoor onto the dock. After a moment, Avery opened the door and looked out at the assembled workers, who were now all standing around the sorting table, waiting for him to say something.

"Chandler, I'd like to see you in my office."

The rest of the firings went far smoother than Sean's. Avery didn't relish the task, but he tried to explain to each person the reasons for their being let go, and to help them understand that it wasn't personal. He explained to each their severance compensation (Sean would have to wait to hear about that through the mail), and even offered Chandler and Stacy that he would be willing to be a character reference. Even so, it was a grueling process. Carl reminded Avery that he had three kids, one of them in college. Wanda cried, and Avery felt like he was being a phony in trying to comfort her.

By the time he was done meeting with each person, it was nearly four o'clock. Avery emerged from his office. The remaining employees were sitting around the sorting table, chatting and not really working. Avery realized that, of course, they were all expecting him to drop the ax them next. When they saw him, they turned tense and went quiet.

"It's over," Avery said, flatly. The collective sigh was audible.

"What's going on, Ave?" Tony asked, somewhat forcefully.

"McGee and I both believe that this department is vitally important to this library," Avery started, "and therefore, we need the best people available. The only way to accomplish that was to whittle the staff down to the core." Avery looked at each of the five remaining employees - Tony, Julio, Desmond, Harriet, and Annabel. "You're the core. You all have the experience and the dedication to make this place run efficiently, like it should. This department had become a mess over the last two and a half years, and it's now our job to fix it - because when this place runs efficiently, the whole library system runs efficiently.

"And remember, we're not just some invisible cog on the machine anymore. After the way Maxine ran this place, people are going to be watching us - the Mayor, the media, the public - so every mistake will be magnified. No one here wants to end up on the evening news again."

"Yeah, cause that went so well for you last time, hey?" Tony quipped. Avery started to laugh, breaking the tension.

"Look, everyone. I really care about this place. I know you all care about it, too. That's why you're here." Avery paused.

"So, how are we supposed to run this department with five people?" Julio asked.

"Six."

"Uh, no. There's only five of us now."

"Six - I'm counting myself. I may be the manager now, but I'm still capable of sorting books, driving the bookmobile, stocking shelves. I'm going to be working alongside all of you."

"Maxine never did that," Desmond noted.

"Well, I'm not Maxine. Not unless you find a couple hundred grand in the lining of my coat." Avery smiled.

"Seriously, though - we're going to need more than just six people," Annabel said. "How soon can we expect help?"

"Soon. Very soon," Avery replied. "I'm going to start looking for new candidates immediately. But don't expect me to find new people instantly. It's a lot more important that we hire the right people than that we hire them quickly. In the meantime ... well, there's going to be a backlog, I'm sure. But nothing that can't be fixed later."

"You sound suspiciously confident," Harriet noted.

"I am. I expect great things from this group."


*****

The ride home on the bus that night was a roller-coaster for Avery. On the one hand was the gut-wrenching memories of the people he had to fire. In his head, he kept going over the words he used - Avery could hear his voice over and over again as he said "we have to let you go." He chided himself for using such a wimpy euphemism - you let too-small fish go after you catch them, but people just get fired. Maybe it would have been better to do things short and quick - you're fired, here's you severance, see you never. But Avery had felt the need to explain his decision, almost as if he was trying to convince the people being fired that they deserved it. Really, he realized, he was trying to convince himself that it was the right decision. Is this what being a manager is like - constantly second-guessing yourself?

On the other hand, Avery was pleased with the group of people he was left with. As wrenching as those firings were, it was the only way to pare the staff down to the core group. And everyone who was left was someone that Avery trusted - as a friend, as an employee, as a person. And he felt confident that his little pep-rally at the end of the day had convinced them of that trust. Good morale was the only way he could see out of the situation that he found himself in - understaffed and over-scrutinized.

More than anything, Avery was itching to get home and talk to Kate. She always had a way of reassuring him - making him confident in his decisions, or convincing him of a path that he hadn't yet chosen.

As he came in the door, he saw that Kate was on the telephone. He smiled, and she gave him a half-wave and then turned her back, walking into the back room off the kitchen. Avery figured she was talking to her mother about her father's health - he had been diagnosed with cancer five years earlier, and despite constant treatments, the cancer kept returning. Kate's mom sometimes thought that her husband should cease treatment and let the cancer run its course - allowing him to die with dignity. But Kate's dad was not the kind of guy who would ever cease treatment - he was a fighter through and through, and he didn't seem to think there was any dignity in death as long as any chance of survival remained. Avery frankly didn't know how Kate dealt with talking her mom through such hard times. His own instinct was to fight as long as possible, but to quit once the outcome was clear. But Kate respected her father too much to be that pragmatic about it, and so she spent a lot of time talking her mother through some of the harder decisions that her dad had made.

All of this thinking about his father-in-law's illness started to get Avery down, and he found himself staring at a piece of artwork on the wall that he had never thought much about before. Kate's friend Susanna had made the piece - a half-collage, half-painting - and Avery just now realized it was a man being literally pulled in two directions. The aptness of this artwork to his father-in-law's condition was readily apparent, and Avery suddenly felt himself overcome by a bittersweet feeling of loss.

At that moment, he turned to see Kate walking back into the kitchen. She was no longer on the phone. Avery was mentally preparing himself to console her when he realized the she didn't look sad. In fact, she was grinning from ear to ear.

"I got it!"

"What? Got what?"

"I got a research fellowship and a $10,000 grant!"

Avery was dumb-struck. He just stood staring at Kate, his jaw hanging open. Kate ran forward, arms outstretched and jumped into his arms.

"I got it! I got it!"

"But, I ... I ... when? When? What?" Avery was desperately searching for words as Kate kissed him all around his face.

"I apply for this a few months back. The deadline passed and I never heard anything, so I figured my application was rejected."

"What application?"

"I submitted a research proposal on the effects of overseas deployment on the academic performance of children of military personnel."

"When did you do this?" Avery asked as he put her down.

"I told you - a few months ago."

"No ... I mean, when did you start working up this proposal? How did I not know about it?"

"It's something that I've been working on for a while. Y'know, something that I work on between eating bon-bons during the day." She smiled. "But I never thought it had a chance, so I never really told you about it."

"Of course it had a chance! Kate, this is fantastic. You're fantastic!" He kissed her deeply. "We need to celebrate!"

*****

When Avery said they had to celebrate, he meant only one thing - they had to go to ZERO, a punk-rock coffee shop on Center St., a few blocks from their house. Avery had been going there for years, ever since his time at UWM. Years later, he took Kate there on their second date to see a local band perform. After that, it became their go-to place for fun occasions, especially once they bought a house in the neighborhood. For the last couple years, they had gone less and less frequently - money was tight and there just weren't too many things to celebrate. But with Avery's promotion and Kate's fellowship, it seemed like the perfect time to go.

As they walked to ZERO, a light rain fell, making the leaves piled in the street damp. Avery had worn his ratty old boots, and they were soon covered in bits of wet leaves and dirt, though Kate somehow managed to keep her Converse clean. Walking in to the shop, Avery couldn't help but notice how young the other patrons were.

"Jeez. I bet we're the only married couple here," he whispered to Kate. "When did we get so old?"

"Oh, it's just you imagination," she answered, not sounding too sure of herself. "These kids aren't any younger than usual."

"Maybe, but we must be older - you called them kids."

"I did not," Kate corrected, even though she knew he was right.

Still bickering in hushed tones, they approached the counter. "I'll have a double caramel macchiato," Kate said.

"And for you, sir?"

"Sir? Are you talking to me?" Avery asked. The young man at the counter, with a twice-pierced lip, nail polish, and a bicycle-chain necklace just stared back, confused. "How old do you ..." Avery stopped himself. If he had finished the sentence, he was fairly certain that he would age fifteen years on the spot. "I'll have a latte, thanks," he said after a pause.

As they walked over to a booth, Kate looked at Avery with wide eyes. "That guy is totally going to spit in your coffee," she said with a laugh.

"He is not!" Avery insisted, trying to keep his voice low. "Is he? He wouldn't really do that, would he?"

Kate just kept laughing and sat down. After a few minutes, when the same young man brought their drinks to the table, Avery thanked him effusively for the coffee.

"Now he just thinks you're hitting on him."

Avery's face turned red. "Let's change the subject."

"Fair enough."

"Do you notice something wrong in here?"

"Ave, I don't really think he spit in your coffee."

"No, forget about the coffee. Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Exactly!" Besides the chatter of the dozen or so people sitting around in booths and at a counter that looked out onto the street, there was no sound in the whole shop. "My dear, this is a punk-rock coffee shop, not a library," Avery said in a faux-sophisticated voice. "We need some tunes." From his pocket, he produced a handful of quarters. "Go nuts."

"Oh, hell yeah!" Kate exclaimed, snatching the quarters and dashing across the room to the jukebox. One of the things that made ZERO so much fun was that the jukebox was always stocked with an ever-changing array of quality music - punk, new wave, alternative, indie - culled from the collection of various employees and regular customers. The only song that was always available was the shop's namesake song by the Smashing Pumpkins (the shop had been renamed for the song a number of years back - originally it was called "Hasenpfeffer").

Having made her selection, Kate raced back to the booth and grabbed Avery by the hand. "Come on!"

"What did you choose?"

"Oh, you'll see," said answered, having dragged him to the middle of the room. After a few seconds, The Smiths' Panic came blaring out of the too-loud speakers:

Panic on the streets on London!
Panic on the streets of Birmingham!

"Now let's dance!" Kate shouted as she started moving. Neither she nor Avery were accomplished dancers, but they sure had fun trying.

As they danced, Avery lean in towards Kate "You do realize everyone's looking, right?"

"So what!"

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music they constantly play
...
Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ!
Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ!

They danced through the length of the song (mercifully short, for the sake of Avery's ego) before returning to their booth to talk while the remainder of Kate's selections played - The Violent Femmes, Tori Amos, Sonic Youth, The Talking Heads, Patti Smith, with some Guns 'N Roses thrown in for irony's sake. Mostly the conversation veered towards the sort of inane topics that Kate and Avery loved to discuss. They could spend literally hours discussing strategies for eating breakfast cereal or how ones sneakers determine their politics (Libertarians wear Adidas, by the way).

Finally, as the night wore on and the music quieted down, they started discussing more adult topics. "So what's the plan for researching your dissertation?"

"I'm thinking that I'm going to try to do everything I can working from home and from campus - there are a lot of primary sources online for my topic. Beyond that, I'll probably have to make a few trips to Madison for National Guard deployment records. And then probably to Washington D.C. for national records at some point."

"To contrast regular Army with National Guard?"

"Exactly."

"So when do you foresee going to Washington?"

"Well, I'm going to wait until I have a better sense of where the research is at before I plan it - obviously, I want to be as prepared as possible, because I only want to go once, if possible. So it's probably a couple years down the line."

Avery paused. "It's a good topic. I'm really proud of you."

Kate smiled.

*****

On the way home, Avery and Kate started talking about Avery's big news - the personnel changes at the library.


"You had to fire people?"

"Yeah, and it got kinda ugly."

"Like what do you mean?"

"Swearing, yelling, crying, door slamming. Y'know, mature adult behavior."

"Ave, I had no idea that you had such a bad day. And here I was going on and on about my good news. We should have been talking about your stuff."

"No, Kate, that's the thing - listening to your news really cheered me up. I mean, you're my wife and I love you, and I love hearing that things are going well for you - that you're finally getting the recognition that you deserve."

"Well, okay. Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"Honestly, yes. Today sucked, and I really don't want to rehash the gory details."

"Okay."

"Besides, I've gotta think about moving ahead with big changes in the department. No time to dwell on the past."

"What kind of changes?"

"Well, I've going to be hiring new people, and there's a lot of money in the budget for technology and stuff. I guess what I don't really know is how I'm going to find good people to hire."

"Well, what are you looking for?"

"Hard workers - honest, dedicated, smart. Y'know, perfect employees," he said with a laugh. "I guess what I really need specifically are people who aren't jaded, who are willing to invest themselves in the job."

"Have you thought about the Mayor's Students-to-Work program?"

"The what?"

"You haven't heard about this?"

"I'm not the one studying education initiatives."

Kate laughed. "It's basically a plan to help gifted high school students get entry level jobs in fields with real opportunity for advancement, instead of working at the McDonald's or whatever. All the participants are minority students with at least a B-average."

"Do you know anyone with experience in this program?"

"Yeah, there's a guy at school who works part-time at a law firm downtown. He said they had a girl there in the program - real smart, real good worker. He said the only problem was that she ended up going off to Michigan State for college."

"Hmm." Avery stopped walking. "That sounds like exactly what I need."

"Yeah, hey?"

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.