The Pepper in the Gumbo (Men of Cane River #1)(8)

Alice disliked this new store more and more with each passing minute. “I don’t know who that is, but I hope it wasn’t permanent. Anyway, I’m sure it would fit in really well across the river to the South. Maybe down near the hospital. The building isn’t right. The whole,” she waved her hands, “clonkiness of the structure just doesn’t fit.” She wasn’t sure if clonkiness was a word but she could hardly express herself through her irritation.

“But why?” Charlie seemed honestly confused. “This is just what we need on this side of the river.”

Alice blew out a breath. “No, it’s not. What we need is more readers. We need more people willing to shut off the junk on TV and put away the phone and read a book. We need less technology and more paper. Nothing in that place is going to help keep my store running.” She couldn’t help the bitterness in her voice.

“You just haven’t tried it. You’d love it. I can play for hours and hours.” Charlie smiled, as if she hadn’t heard half of what Alice had just said. “I made it to the fortieth level one night after I played Blue Penguin for six hours straight.”

Alice shot her a look. “Fortieth level. And what did you get for that?”

“Well, nothing,” Charlie admitted. “But it was a big achievement.”

Achievement. Alice trudged beside Charlie, half listening to her detail all the games she was going to buy and all the blissful hours she was going to spend sitting in front of a screen, decapitating zombies or whatever people did when they played video games. Alice wanted to shake some sense into her, but Alice wasn’t Charlie’s mother. She couldn’t believe this bright young girl was wasting her life on false achievements that meant nothing in real life.

“I hope they start hiring soon. I bet I could get a job there since I’ve been playing those games since I was little. I got my first Xbox for my twelfth birthday and I almost wore it out.” Charlie had never looked so excited. “Would you write me a good recommendation, Miss Alice?”

Alice missed a step and stumbled to a stop. Her stomach curled up on itself. Alice hadn’t really thought it through clearly, but now she realized she’d always thought of Charlie as someone she could rely on. Even though they were nothing alike, Alice felt Charlie was someone who believed in books as much as she did, someone who might be interested in helping manage the store someday. It was a blow to realize Charlie wasn’t anything like Alice. In fact, she was almost the opposite. But she had always been a good employee. “Sure. Of course I would.”

Alice felt her heart pounding as they neared the classically designed, hundred-year-old building that housed By the Book. Every building for miles around was in the same style, with ornate stonework around the arched windows. That store was an ugly surprise, destined to ruin the atmosphere of the district. One more thing to worry about, one more thing on her plate. She’d worked so hard, putting in the hours and the effort, but things just weren’t going her way. Things hadn’t gone her way in a long time.

Gripping the long brass handle of the front door, she let Charlie pass through first, still chattering. Alice turned back for one last look at the construction happening on the corner lot, and she made a decision. She was going to find out who approved it. The parish council sent out notices for everything else, even changing the street lamps. Nothing happened without a vote. Something was very wrong. This had been slipped by the people of Natchitoches and she wasn’t going to let it pass without a fight.

She narrowed her eyes at the rumbling machinery. Mr. Perrault would have been appalled. This business threatened the health and welfare of the people she loved most but for more reasons than being an eyesore. It was contrary to everything about this place, the only town she’d ever loved and called home. Their Creole culture was being shoved to the side and buried as easily as the dirt on that lot.

Alice touched the rings hanging on the chain under her shirt. She wasn’t about to roll over and let the owners of that abomination seduce the city’s children with hours of meaningless, flashing images. This was personal. This was war.

****

“Mr. Olivier, your meeting starts in fifteen minutes.” The personal assistant cut into Paul’s thoughts. He hated the intercom system more than almost anything, but without it he never arrived anywhere on time.

He pressed a button and responded, “Thank you, Mrs. Connor.”

There was a second of silence as if she were thinking of adding an extra warning, but then the connection was cut. Paul smiled. Mrs. Connor thought ScreenStop would go down in a fiery ball of disorganization if she didn’t show up to work, and Paul was tempted to agree with her. The woman was inhumanly exact, annoyingly direct, and never failed to point out the flaws in any plan. In short, she was the best personal assistant Paul had ever had.

He turned back to the screen and groaned. His “super-secret superhero project,” as Andy liked to call it, was growing out of control. Tens of thousands of visitors per day came to the place Browning Wordsworth Keats called his cyber home. The site was built to handle ten times that amount of traffic. They talked on the boards, argued over poets, and left long lists of books they needed in digital form but couldn’t find anywhere. He had appointed a few regular visitors as administrators and they kept the ranting to a minimum, making sure the site stayed friendly and upbeat, while not losing the point of why they all came― to discuss good books. Paul dedicated several servers just for handling the blog, so none of that was an issue. No, it was the email. The site listed a contact address, and at first he kept up correspondence with many delighted (and sometimes disgruntled) readers. But now, it was out of control. Sometimes he’d receive a hundred emails in a day. Opening an email and reading it through, even without a response, took time. If he sent even a few lines back, it took longer. He hated to go to an automated reply system, but he couldn’t see any other way around it. If he hired someone to sort his email, he would have to let them in on his secret. And there was no one he trusted enough besides Andy and Mrs. Connor.