Jessi Bond
Sex by the Book
It had been a long, slow day in the library. Ellie had spent the last two hours with her feet propped up on the desk, paging through a book she’d read a thousand times and sipping a rapidly-melting iced coffee. The dusty, puttering little fan was doing little more than circulating hot air and everyone who wasn’t obligated to be in the library was wisely opting for swimming, or at least some place with an air conditioner.
Ellie had been lobbying the town for better climate control for years now — for the sake of the books! — but they never seemed to find the money. So she suffered and sweated through the whole summer, sucking down popsicles and licking on ice cream cones just to survive. And this one was even worse than the year before. Every week seemed to set a new record high. Ellie had long ago sacrificed any semblance of professionalism, coming to work dressed in cutoff shorts and a spaghetti-strap top, not even caring how much of her milky pale skin was showing.
When she heard the bell on the door jingle, she almost jumped out of said skin. She threw down the book and put her feet back on the floor, pushing some stray locks of hair behind her ears and putting on a presentable smile.
Of course the visitor would be the sexiest man she had ever seen in her life.
Of course.
He sauntered in, dressed in khaki slacks and a light blue collared tee-shirt, looking criminally comfortable in the oppressive heat. He was tall and lightly tanned, smiling as he pulled off his sunglasses, revealing a set of piercing gray eyes.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “Hot day, isn’t it?”
If he were anyone else, she would have been fighting the urge to say something snarky about stating the obvious. But instead she found herself swallowing hard and struggling to find words.
“Sure is,” she said, finally, at a loss for anything cleverer. “Can I help you find something?”
“I’m actually hoping to have a look at your local newspaper archives,” he said. “Everything from the Daily Post between January and October of ’89. If you would?”
“Of course,” she said, getting to her feet and leading him over to the neglected microfilm machine in the corner. “Sorry it’s a little dusty, nobody really uses it much anymore.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be my first choice,” said the visitor. “But until they get their archives digitized, this will have to do.”
“Actually,” said Ellie before she could stop herself, “I sort of like the ritual of the microfilm. It makes it seem more interesting. Almost like you’re uncovering forgotten secrets. These days, you don’t really get the chance to do that very often.”