Bettie Page Presents: The Librarian Read online

  Regina, not wanting to sit home obsessing about the scene she had witnessed at the library, finally gave in.

  They turned onto Norfolk Street and walked to the end, where they reached their destination, a bar called Nurse Bettie.

  “Toto, I’ve a thought we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Regina joked to Carly, who rolled her eyes.

  “Just . . . chill,” Carly said.

  It was a small space, dimly lit, with tin ceilings and exposed brick walls. The bar itself was dark wood, surrounded by vintage photographs framed in gold and silver and shelves of colorful liquor bottles. The sound of French pop music filled the room.

  Across from the bar was a shelflike table and red-topped silver stools that spun around. Regina and Carly got the last two free stools, and Derek went to the bar for drinks.

  Carly surfed her iPhone. She had a way of always seeming bored, and Regina wondered if that was just particular to Carly, or if it was a common trait among people who had grown up in Manhattan. Regina couldn’t imagine ever feeling blasé about her surroundings in New York. Every street corner, ever food vendor, every noisy crowd left her filled with wonder.

  “What’s your Twitter user name?” Carly asked.

  “Um . . . Regina?” Regina said.

  Carly typed something into her phone. “At Regina?” she asked.

  “At Regina what?”

  Carly put her phone in her lap and looked at her with an obvious effort to remain patient.

  “Are you on Twitter?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” said Regina.

  Derek joined them and handed each one a drink.

  “Two Moscow Mules,” he said.

  Carly took a sip. “Mmm. Good. What’s in it?”

  “Lime juice, Ketel One, and ginger beer,” Derek said.

  Regina tried hers but didn’t like it. She put it down on the ledge behind her.

  “What time does the show start?” Carly asked. Regina couldn’t hear his answer, because he mumbled it straight into Carly’s mouth before they started making out. Regina looked away, trying to figure out where a “show” would take place in such a small room.

  “What is the show?” asked Regina. Neither one answered. She hoped it was live music, maybe a blues singer. That would seem to fit the mood of the bar.

  When the two of them finally remembered she was there, they made an attempt to bring her into a conversation.

  “So what does a librarian do all day?” asked Derek dutifully.

  Carly looked at her expectantly. Regina didn’t know if it was the pressure she felt to somehow contribute to the evening, or the weeks of feeling out of place finally wearing on her, or her genuine need to confide in someone, but she blurted out, “Well, today I walked in on two people having sex.”

  Derek perked up. “At the library?”

  “Yes,” Regina said.

  “Maybe I’ve been too hasty in my dismissal of that particular venue,” said Carly.

  Regina took another sip of her drink. Still terrible.

  “New York is full of exhibitionists,” said Derek.

  “So what did you do?” asked Carly.

  “Nothing. I ran out of the room.”

  Carly and Derek seemed to consider this.

  “I guess there’s nothing else to do. Unless you saw an opening to jump in,” said Derek.

  Carly laughed. “Now you’re talking,” she said.

  Despite their turning it into a joke, Regina felt relief in talking about it. She didn’t know what upset her more, the idea that someone would so callously desecrate her precious library, or the fact that she not only recognized the perpetrator but found him so attractive. “I didn’t even tell anyone. But now I feel like maybe I should tell my boss. I mean, what if it had been a child who had walked in on them?” Regina knew this was unlikely, considering the fact that she’d trespassed in a restricted area. But it was the best way she knew how to express her outrage.

  “Were they, like, normal people, or did the guy look like a perv?” asked Carly.

  An image of the man’s dark eyes and distressingly handsome face flashed through her mind.

  “What does a perv look like?” asked Derek.

  “You!” said Carly, punching his arm.

  •

  By eleven, the bar was filled even beyond standing room, with everyone angling to get a spot as close to the back of the room as possible. Regina soon figured out why.

  The French pop music was replaced with the instantly recognizable Fats Domino song “Blueberry Hill,” and the back corner of the room became a stage bathed in blue and gold overhead lights. The area was set with a small, old-fashioned-looking oven and a square Formica table. A beautiful woman stood next to the oven. She had shoulder-length dark hair, with short bangs. She wore an old-fashioned gingham dress, cinched tightly at the waist with a flared skirt. Her apron read, HAPPY HOMEMAKER. Regina noticed that her shoes were black patent-leather platform heels.

  “She has your haircut,” Derek said to Regina. Carly looked at her.

  “Yeah,” Carly said. “You’ve got to work on the whole hippie, blousy, peasant-skirt thing you have going on from the neck down. But your hair is totally mod.”

  “I didn’t mean to cut my bangs this short. But I went too far on one side, and then I had to even it out. . . .”

  “Whatever. Just commit to it,” Carly said. “It’s working for you.”

  The woman onstage bent down to open the oven door, and her dress rode up high enough to expose her seamed stockings and garters. The crowd clapped, and a few people hollered. Regina felt the first blush of confusion but kept a poker face.

  The woman pulled a pie out of the oven and carried it over to the table. She made a big show of removing her apron and fanning herself with it before tossing it into the audience. Again, the roar of the crowd and applause. Then she took her finger and stuck it in the center of the pie, removed it, and licked it clean.

  “What is this?” Regina asked Carly.

  “Shh. Just watch.”

  The woman fanned herself now with a napkin, and turned her back to the audience. With one hand, she slowly unzipped her dress and it fell to the floor. Regina could barely hear the music over the clapping and whistling. The woman faced the audience, now clad only in a red satin bullet bra, red panties and garters, the stockings, and her platform heels. “Is this a strip club?” Regina asked.

  “No! It’s burlesque,” said Carly. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been to a burlesque show before.”

  She must be joking, Regina thought.

  The woman unhooked her bra and shimmied it off her shoulders. Regina looked away, but when she peeked back at the stage, the bra was on the floor, and all that covered the woman’s full, round breasts was a red sparkly patch over each nipple. She pulled out a cake knife and began slicing the pie.

  The contrast between the woman’s lush, nearly naked body and the mundane task she performed was confusing. There was just enough distraction for Regina to feel as if she wasn’t really watching something sexual. But then the woman picked up one of the slices with her hands and took a bite, and a glop of blueberry filling fell between her breasts. She made an exaggerated “oops” face, and trailed one finger from her belly up to her cleavage, scooping the blueberry off of herself and licking it from her finger, her eyes half closed in pleasure, her tongue lapping at her own hand. Regina shuddered, feeling that the woman couldn’t look more wanton if she were fingering herself onstage.

  And then she felt her own breath had quickened, her nipples hardening and tingling inside of her bra.

  “I’m going to head home,” Regina said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous—the show is just getting started,” Carly said.

  “I’m tired.” Regina hopped off of her stool and pushed her way through the crowd to the
front door, where she saw a long line waiting to get in.

  She wondered why she always felt safest on the outside.

  CHAPTER 6

  In the morning there was a note on her desk from Sloan. See me immediately.

  If Sloan wanted to talk to her, Regina thought, maybe it was the universe helping her solve the dilemma of whether or not to report “the incident,” as she now thought of it.

  During her entire subway ride to work, she had debated whether or not she should tell Sloan about what she had seen on the fourth floor yesterday. As the train pulled into Forty-second Street Station, she finally decided that it was her responsibility to think of the library first, and so she should report the guy. Then her only question became when and how to broach the subject. But being summoned to Sloan’s office first thing certainly moved things along.

  “You wanted to see me?” Regina asked from the doorway.

  Sloan was sitting at her desk, flipping through an issue of Modern Bride. On her computer screen, she was watching a Vera Wang bridal runway show.

  “Yes,” Sloan said. “I need you to come with me to a Young Lions meeting. You know about the Young Lions, right?”

  Regina shook her head.

  Sloan sighed. “It’s part of the fund-raising arm of the library. It’s a membership group for supporters in their twenties and thirties. I’ll give you some literature to read on it. But the pressing thing to know right now is that they sponsor an annual fiction award gala. We’re completely behind this year. The committee consists partly of members of the library board and partly of the reading committee that decides on the nominees and winner.”

  “I think I’ve heard about this,” Regina said, wondering how she was going to segue into her little eyewitness report.

  “I should hope so. At any rate, I need for you to take notes at the meeting. I had an intern doing it, but she quit, so for now you’ll have to fill in. We meet in the Trustees Room on the second floor at ten.”

  Regina knew all about the Trustees Room—one of the most opulent in the library. But she had never seen it firsthand, and she was excited for the opportunity to do so. Still, a pall hung over her.

  “Okay, but before the meeting there’s something I want to talk to you about—”

  “Not now, Regina. Let’s go.” Sloan logged off of the bridal Web site and pulled her Chanel bag over her shoulder.

  Regina dutifully followed Sloan down the hall. Her boss did not seem interested in conversation, and so Regina followed her lead and remained silent.

  The Trustees Room did not disappoint; with its teak floor and elaborate sculpted white marble fireplace, it was the picture of elegance. An inscription on the fireplace read, in part, THE CITY OF NEW YORK HAS ERECTED THIS BUILDING FOR THE FREE USE OF ALL THE PEOPLE. MCMX.

  Above her, the low-relief ceiling had an oval design of banded, cream-colored moldings. A massive brass chandelier hung in the center, and, even looking up from where she stood, Regina could make out the details of the carved satyr masks and lions.

  Regina took a seat at the dark oak table in the center of the room. All of the seats were filled but the one. A legal pad, freshly sharpened pencil, and bottle of water were positioned in front of each person.

  “We’ll start as soon as Sebastian arrives,” said a small brunette, addressing the group with a chirping, high-pitched voice.

  While the group was waiting, everyone chatting among themselves, Sloan leaned over and said, “I’ll introduce you when everyone’s here. I think we’re just waiting for the director of the board,” Sloan said. “Oh—there he is. Sebastian Barnes.”

  Regina followed Sloan’s glance to the doorway and nearly fainted.

  It was the man from the fourth floor.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Let’s get started,” the man said, as he took his seat at the head of the table. His dark good looks seemed even more dramatic in the context of the meeting room. With his high cheekbones and impossibly glorious head of hair, he was a walking ad for Polo by Ralph Lauren.

  Regina was halfway down the table from him, but somehow his dark eyes seemed to hone right in on her.

  Sebastian Barnes.

  The Barnes Collection.

  Regina looked down at her legal pad, her face burning.

  “Sebastian, before we get started . . .” Sloan said, glancing at Regina.

  No, no, no, thought Regina.

  “I want to introduce our new librarian, Regina Finch. She’ll be sitting in and taking notes.”

  “Welcome aboard, Regina,” Sebastian said. The sound of her name on his lips was surreal. She felt the rest of the table looking at her, but she couldn’t formulate a reply—not even a simple thank-you. What really amazed her was that there was no hint of shame as he looked at her—not even the shadow of an acknowledgment that she had caught him in a compromising situation.

  He was every bit as gorgeous as the image of him in her mind—maybe more so. His Adonis-like good looks could have been generic handsomeness on someone else, but his black eyes and glossy dark hair gave him a beauty that bordered on exotic. And there was an energy about him, something vibrantly alive—something unmistakably sexual.

  He opened the meeting with a discussion of the fiction award gala. Apparently, the awards had been given in the spring for the past eleven years, but this year the trustees of the library wanted it to take place in the fall, to kick off the fall season and drum up support leading into the holiday fund-raising. Unfortunately, the last-minute change had thrown off their entire schedule.

  “This gives us no time to read, to plan . . . it’s an untenable calendar,” said one woman.

  “The trustees feel the event is getting lost in the spring. The holidays are a gift-giving, charitable-giving time of year, and a celebration of fiction will bring attention to the library when it’s most valuable for us.”

  “Can’t you reason with them?” someone else asked. “We have hundreds of submissions from publishers. More than last year, even, when we had twice the time. There is simply no way to give every novel on this list the proper consideration.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “We’ll have to manage. I’m outvoted.”

  The table erupted with spirited outrage.

  “We need more readers,” said the woman. “Sloan, you’re going to have to take on some of these titles.”

  “I would love to,” said Sloan, though Regina suspected, from the white-knuckle grip on her pencil, she meant just the opposite.

  “Sloan, we all know you’re busy with wedding planning, and this is a time-intensive job,” said Sebastian. And then, looking at Regina: “I think we’ll have to draft the rookie for this one.”

  “What?” asked Regina and Sloan simultaneously.

  “Good idea,” said the small, high-voiced brunette. “All hands on deck.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Sloan. “Regina is my employee, and it’s my responsibility to ensure that her time is used wisely—”

  “I’m not asking her to do the reading on the clock, Sloan. And you heard Betsy—we all have to pitch in.” Then, as if that settled it, he focused his gaze back at Regina. “Regina, you are officially one of our readers on the fiction board. I’ll explain it to you after the meeting. The jist is that this award was created to support the work of young fiction writers—thirty-five years old or under. The prize is ten thousand dollars. Publishers send in their nominees, and we pare it down to the finalists. Like I said, we can discuss it after the meeting. Right now, we have to move on to the fall reading series. Jonathan Safran Foer dropped out, so we need a replacement for November. . . .”

  Regina watched him, barely hearing him yet riveted by his confidence, his command of the room. She still didn’t get the roles and hierarchy of the library and all the various networks of fund-raising and events sponsorship, but she had the distinct feeling that no matte
r what the room or event, Sebastian was in charge.

  She took refuge in her legal pad. Taking notes was the only thing she could do to keep herself from staring at him, at the way he gestured with his large hands. The way his pin-striped shirt pulled slightly against his broad shoulders. The way he smiled, suggesting that whatever was going on in the room was miles away from what was going on in his mind.

  Time seemed to both stand still and speed up. She didn’t want the meeting to end—as if, when the hourglass ran out, he would disappear. She knew this was irrational, and yet the feeling she got just from being in the same room with him was not something she wanted to lose just yet.

  “I have to get going,” Sloan announced. “Lunch with the East Side Women Readers Coalition.”

  Regina glanced at her watch, and sure enough it was almost noon.

  “We’re about done here, anyway,” Sebastian said, standing up. “Regina—stay a minute. Let me run you through the selection process for the fiction nominees.”

  Sloan turned around and gave them a funny look. “Sebastian, she needs to get back to work.” She gave a small, phony laugh, as if to indicate that even though it really wasn’t that important, she was duty-bound at least to say it.

  “I won’t keep her from you for too long, Sloan. Just humor me.” And he winked at her. Sloan smiled and, placated now that she was a coconspirator, walked out of the room.

  The rest of the board members filed out the door. When the Trustees Room was empty except for the two of them, Sebastian gestured for her to take a seat at the table again. He resumed his place at the head.

  “You may as well sit closer. No one else is here to fill these seats,” he said, smiling at the four chairs Regina left between the two of them. Swallowing hard, she moved to the seat next to him, carrying her legal pad with her.