Firefly Rain (22 page)

No voice answered me. Two more steps, slower now, from the fear of not finding anything. Two after that, even slower. I felt nothing behind me, nothing to the side. There was just the darkness and the rough nap of the carpet under my bare hands, and that was all.

Suddenly, I was aware of light.

Not bright light. It was the twilight you get an hour before dawn, when the first rays of the sun are just starting to think about coming over the horizon, the light you’re not sure you’re actually seeing.

I blinked. The light was still there, and it was coming from all around me. Overhead, the lights remained invisible in the
shadows. This light came from somewhere else, from the walls and from the air.

Ever so slightly, it got a bit brighter, almost bright enough to see my hand in front of my face. I froze, sat back, looked around. Yes, I was sure of it now. The light was growing. Not steadily, though. It surged and pulsed, one side of the room momentarily brighter than the other, then going almost completely dark while a ripple of dim lightning darted across the opposite wall.

Green-gold lightning.

“Oh, no,” I breathed. “Not here. Not now. Not possible.”

All around me, the light grew, and now I could see it for what it was. A living blanket of fireflies covered the walls, swarming up to the ceiling and down to the floor. Patterns of light danced around faster than the eye could see, just leaving the impression that I’d missed something vitally important. No light reflected from the ceiling, though, and no light shone on it. It was as if it was simply gone, torn away by the light.

I didn’t dare look at the floor. I could feel it beneath me, and that was as much as I wanted to know.

The furniture was gone now, too. Fireflies swarmed under it, and beneath their glow it just melted away. The banister still stood, I saw, leading up into infinity, but the stairs next to it were definitely gone. I didn’t want to speculate as to where they’d disappeared to, but I didn’t want to go there myself.

And now the fireflies were settling on me.

“Please,” I said. “No.” Not yelling, not screaming, just a quiet little request. Calm rained down on me, keeping me from crying out or defending myself. The universe was telling me this was inevitable.

More of them landed on me. I raised my hands, palms out, and a knot of golden light spun down into each one.

“Please,” I said. “Not here. Let me go home.”

I could feel them in my hair, crawling on my back, on my calves and down my arms.

“I’m going home now, I swear. Just let me go.”

They were tickling their way up my neck, burrowing in my hair, forcing themselves into my mouth. Others covered my eyes, found their way up my nose, dived into my ears. They went down my throat, filling me up, and more kept coming. I was glowing from the inside now, filled with light that sputtered and sparked and made waves of itself all through me.

No, I thought. Not like this. Panic arrived late but in a hurry, driving me to try to stand, to crash myself against the wall, to scrape as many as I could off me. It was too late, though. There were fireflies under my skin, flowing through my veins, glowing in time with my heartbeat.

Then everything was a green-gold light that swallowed me up.

“Mr. Logan? I hate to bother you, Mr. Logan, but we’re closing in five minutes, and I need to clean up down here.”

I started violently and looked around. The basement was as I’d remembered it, ceiling and staircase intact. In front of me, the microfiche reader sat, squat and ugly and most definitely there. Overhead, the fluorescent lights flickered and shone, all save a single burned-out tube on the other side of the room.

There were no fireflies anywhere in sight—living, dead, or imaginary. Miss Moore, on the other hand, was standing at the foot of the stairs, tapping her foot impatiently and looking pleasantly irritated.

“Excuse me? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stay this long.” I stood, then I felt my knees go weak and reached out for the chair to support me.

Her expression changed in a heartbeat. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. “Just recovering from a few bad days. I’m sorry I took so much of your time. I really didn’t mean to.”

“It’s perfectly fine. That’s why I’m here.” She crossed the room to where I more or less stood, then took the microfiche folder in her hand. “Let me just put this away, and then I’ll help you up the stairs. You look a bit peaked.”

I waved her off. “No, no, I’ll be fine. Really. As long as the banister’s there.” I took a quick peek at my watch and winced. “Oh, hell, the guy giving me a ride back must be pissed off.”

“Oh.” She looked embarrassed. “Sam Fuller actually came by looking for you. That was who you were referring to, right? He poked his head in and asked where you were. I told him that you seemed intent on what you were doing, and that I’d take you home.” She blushed, or seemed to in the pale white light. “He seemed kind of relieved, to tell the truth. I guess he was in a hurry.”

“His dog and I don’t get along,” I said, which was true enough as it went. “And thank you. You really don’t need to do this, you know. I can walk back.”

She looked down her nose at me. “Mr. Logan, you don’t look as if you can walk across this room. I’m certainly not going to let you walk however many miles it is back to your farm.”

“House,” I corrected her, even as I took slow, careful steps across the basement. “It hasn’t been farmed in years.”

“Well then, your house.” She dropped the fiche cards into the appropriate drawer and turned the key on it. “And the farm it’s sitting on. Now you go on upstairs and sit in the reading area. I’m sure you can find something to read while you’re waiting. It won’t take me but a minute to take care of all this. After all, you’re the first person we’ve had down here in three weeks.”

I thought about arguing, but only for a moment. “You’re the
boss,” I said, and I hauled myself up the stairs. Behind me, I could hear her tidying up in mysterious ways that, near as I could tell, involved rearranging the chairs and pulling plugs out of walls. It was her business, though, so I didn’t speculate on it too much.

The chairs around that low, round table that made up the reading area were a little too comfortable. I sank into one like a frog on a too-small lily pad, reaching like a drowning man for one of the magazines on the nearby table. My fingers closed on one and I pulled it in, realizing I was looking at the back-page ad.

I called myself a dumbass, then flipped it around. The cover of
Carolina Woman
stared back at me, telling me that the ten most romantic spots in the whole state were inside waiting to be discovered, along with some helpful diet tips and a list of five up-and-coming companies in Charlotte owned by women.

“Terrific,” I muttered. Rather than flail around again, I flipped it open and hoped Miss Moore would be done soon.

I was on the fifth most romantic place in the state—the beach near the Hatteras lighthouse, if you must know—when her footsteps sounded on the stairs. Moving fast, I tossed the magazine back on the table, then leaned back and closed my eyes like I was taking a nap.

“Number four is the Grove Park Inn, up in Asheville,” she said from right behind me. “I don’t agree with their top three, though.”

“Hmm?” I asked. “You don’t say.”

“I do say,” she corrected me, “and you’re not the only man I’ve spotted pretending not to read that. More men read it than women. I think they’re trying to do some scouting, or maybe get some ideas.”

“Not me,” I told her, and I flung myself out of the chair. “It was a simple matter of physics.”

“Physics?”

I walked around the chair and gave her my best sheepish grin. “Yeah. I couldn’t reach any of the others.”

She gave me a quick little smile, then pointed to the door. “Go on outside,” she said. “I need to lock up and turn off the lights.”

“I won’t stop you,” I promised, and I headed out the door. Behind me, she straightened magazines, flicked off light switches, and shut down the computer. Through it all, she worked with a tidy efficiency that wasn’t so much graceful as it was precise. For Miss Moore, it seemed, if it was worth doing, it was worth doing as quickly and as neatly as possible.

Meanwhile, I leaned up against the outside wall and watched.

It took maybe another five minutes for her to finish up. She came bustling out the front door, apologizing for having taken so long. I laughed and told her that she was doing me the favor, and that she could take all the time—I nearly said “damn time” but caught myself—she wanted.

“Don’t say that,” she told me. “I just might.” Then she locked the door and tugged on it once to make sure it held. It did, so she pivoted and started walking to her car.

It was easy to spot, as it was the only one still parked on the street. The sun was still well above the horizon, but the town had the feel of having gone to bed right after supper. Off in the distance you could hear cars, no doubt headed for one of the two bars or maybe the movie theater (all of three screens now, Sam had told me on our first trip in). Here, though, things were quiet.

“Hop in,” she said. She pressed a button on her keychain to unlock the doors. It was some kind of Chevrolet, sensible and small and what the advertising boys called “sporty,” which meant that it didn’t have much in the way of trunk space. There were
compact discs all over the front seat, for which she apologized, and a half-full bottle of Cheerwine in the cup holder.

“I wouldn’t drink that if I were you,” I warned as she settled into the driver’s seat and pulled the seat belt across herself. “Cheerwine that’s been sitting in the sun makes people hallucinate, shiver, and perform interpretive dances in public.”

“Actually, I was going to offer you some,” she said, shutting the door. She turned the key and the engine grumbled itself to life, masked in part by the hiss of the air-conditioning and the last twenty seconds of a Nickel Creek song.

“Oops, I’m sorry. I forgot about the volume on that.” She reached over and turned the music down. “I like to keep the windows rolled up and sing along.”

“Why keep the windows rolled up, then?”

She shot me a quick smile. “Because I can’t sing, that’s why. Now, where am I taking you?”

“Home,” I said, and thought about the word for a moment, “but I suppose you want actual directions.”

“Those would help,” she agreed, and she threw the car into drive. It swung smoothly out into the street as the next song started.

“It’s real simple. You just want to find your way to Harrison Farm Road and head out of town. I’m a ways down on the left.”

Ahead of us, one of the town’s four stoplights turned red. We coasted to a stop and waited, the engine humming. “So just drive around and you’ll tell me when you see it?”

I smiled. “Something like that. Look, I do appreciate this, but it is a ways out there, and I can walk. Besides, you don’t hardly know me. Are you sure you want to do this?”

Adrienne—somehow, I’d started thinking of her that way since we’d left the library, despite the fact that she hadn’t shown
me any more familiarity in those few minutes than she had inside—shook her head with annoyance. “You do know, Mr. Logan, that it is sometimes permissible to let other people do you a favor. If you must console yourself, remember that Sam Fuller knows I’m taking you home. That should be sufficient precaution to make you feel better about my willingness to let a semi-stranger into my car. Not that I think you’d do anything untoward, mind you. You don’t have that feel to you. Frankly, you feel more like the men who sneak peeks at
Carolina Woman
—a little shy, a little nervous, all hopeful that someone’s just going to fall into their arms.” She glanced over at me. “I’m not offending, I hope?”

“Not yet,” I answered. “Though I’d wager I know a little bit more about women than you give me credit for.”

“Oh, I’m sure you
think
you know something,” she clarified. “But that doesn’t mean you do.”

Outside, the last of the buildings that marked downtown Maryfield sped by. Fields opened up on both sides of us now, knee-high corn and soy poking their heads up out of the soil.

I felt myself growing distinctly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking—it felt a little too much like a letter in the sort of magazine I used to read in college—so I cleared my throat and made a deliberate effort to change the subject.

“How long have you been in Maryfield?” I asked. “I don’t remember you from my last visit, and you sure as heck don’t look like Miss Rose or Miss Lillian.”

“They retired three years ago,” she answered. “Miss Rose first. They were talking about moving to Florida, but they never got that far. I think they bought a house just outside of town and moved in together. You still see them in the grocery store from time to time. They’re sweet ladies. They like to come in and check on me, and see if I need any help.”

“And do you?”

“No, not really.” She sounded sad. “We loan out almost as many movies as we do books these days.”

“That’s a shame. How’d you end up here, anyway?”

She laughed, then. “What is this, Mr. Logan, twenty questions? Careful, you’ll run out before you know it.”

“I never was any good at math,” I told her, rolling down my window. “And I figure I’ve got at least fifteen or so left.”

“Well, you’ve got at least one. I started here right after Miss Lillian retired. I’m from Banner Elk, up in the mountains. I got my degree in library science at Appalachian State, then applied for the job here. They hired me. There’s nothing more to it than that, I’m afraid.”

“Seems simple enough. Do you live in town?”

“I do. I don’t even know why I drove today, except that I can’t find my umbrella and with the way it rained the other day…” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged. “It’s a good thing that I did, wouldn’t you say?”

“A good thing indeed,” I agreed. “And now I’ll stop being a nosy jerk. No more questions, I promise.”

A new song started. She jabbed at the fast forward button, skipping it. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I just hate that one. It’s stupid and melodramatic and, well, never mind. This next one’s better, I promise.”