What Happens to Goodbye(73)

“How could it be anything else?”
He shrugged, brushing his hair out of his face. “I don’t know. I think my game is unique, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“That’s one word for it.”
We lay there for another moment. His arm was still next to mine, elbow to elbow, fingertips to fingertips. After a moment, he rolled over, and I did the same, so we were facing each other. “Want to make it best of two?” he asked.
“You didn’t score,” I pointed out.
“Details,” he said. His mouth was just inches from mine. “We big thinkers choose not to dwell on them.”
Suddenly, I was just sure he was going to kiss me. He was there, I could feel his breath, the ground solid beneath us. But then something crossed his face, a thought, a hesitation, and he shifted slightly. Not now. Not yet. It was something I’d done so often—weighing what I could afford to risk, right at that moment—that I recognized it instantly. It was like looking in a mirror.
“I think a rematch is in order,” he said after a moment.
“The ball is under the house.”
“I can get it. It’s not the first time.”
“No? ”
He sat up, choosing to ignore this. “You know, you talk this tough game and everything. But I know the truth about you.”
“And what’s that again?” I said, getting to my feet.
“Secretly,” he said, “you want to play with me. In fact, you need to play with me. Because deep down, you love basketball as much as I do.”
“Loved,” I said. “Past tense.”
“Not true.” He walked around my deck, grabbing a broom there and using the handle to fish around beneath. “I saw how you squared up. There was love there.”
“You saw love in my shot,” I said, clarifying.
“Yeah.” He banged the broomstick again, and the ball came rolling out slowly, toward me. “I mean, it’s not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It’s, like, part of you for good.”
I wondered what he meant by this, and in the next beat, found myself surprised by the image that suddenly popped into my head: me and my mom, on a windy beach in winter, searching for shells as the waves crashed in front of us. I picked up the ball and threw it to him.
“You ready to play?” Dave asked, bouncing it.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Are you going to cheat?”
“It’s street ball!” he said, checking it to me. “Show me that love.”
So cheesy, I thought. But as I felt it, solid against my hands, I did feel something. I wasn’t sure it was love. Maybe what remained of it, though, whatever that might be. “All right,” I said. “Let’s play.”
Eleven
“Hi,” the librarian said, smiling up at me. She was young, with straight blonde hair, wearing a bright pink turtleneck, black skirt, and cool red-framed eyeglasses. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” I replied. “I’m interested in looking up some town history. But I’m not sure where to start.”
“Well, no worries. You have come to the right place.” She slid back in her rolling chair, then got to her feet, coming around the desk. “We just happen to have the most extensive collection of newspapers and town-related documents in town. Although don’t tell the historical society I said that. They tend to be a little competitive.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked, motioning for me to follow her through the main reading room. It was full of couches and chairs, most of them occupied by people absorbed in books, laptops, or magazines.
“I’m trying to find a maphat might detail downtown, like, twenty years ago,” I said.
“We’ve definitely got that,” she replied, leading me into a smaller room with shelves on all four walls, a row of tables in between them. It was empty except for someone in a parka, the hood up, sitting facing the wall. “This is from the seventyfive-year anniversary of the town’s incorporation,” she said, easing a large book out. “They put together a commemorative record of the town, with maps and all the history. Another option is looking at the tax and land records for, say, ten years back to see who owned them, and when they were bought or sold. Usually they’re searchable by address.”
I looked at the stack of books as she put them on the table beside me. “This should be a good start,” I said.
“Great,” she replied. “Good luck. Oh, and just FYI, you might want to keep your coat on. The heat barely works in this room. It’s like a meat locker.”
I nodded. “Will do.”

She left, and for a moment I just sat there, watching her as she wound her way through the reading room, picking up discarded books from a few tables along the way. There was a fireplace—a real one—crackling in the next room, and it was only as I looked at it that I realized, suddenly, how chilly it was where I was sitting. I pulled my coat closer around me, zipping it up again, and bent over the town history, beginning to turn pages.
In the two weeks since Deb’s first day of involvement on the model, it was more on track to actually being finished than I’d ever imagined possible. And that was despite the fact that, even though she’d made several phone calls, Opal couldn’t rally any more delinquents to help us. Luckily, Deb had a plan. Or several plans.
First, she had incorporated multiple systems to increase our overall working efficiency. Besides CAA, there was STOW (Same Time Owed Weekly, a written schedule that insured one of us was at the model every afternoon), PROM (Progress Recap Overview Meeting, held every Friday), and my personal favorite, SORTA (Schedule of Remaining Time and Actual). This last one was a large piece of poster board detailing all the work we still had to do alongside the days that were left before May 1, the councilwoman’s deadline.