You sure are a smart cookie, Tammy Marie, I said to myself, and I tucked the almost-full pack into my brassiere and then beckoned Charlie Mann to meet me in the stacks. My heart was beating so fast watching him sidle up. “You found me some?” I nodded and reached into my blouse to pull them out. “That’s a real special hiding place,” he said, and then he pressed the pack against his nose and took a deep breath. I don’t know if he was smelling the tobacco or my own sweat, but he looked so happy it didn’t even matter. “Tammy,” he said, “I’d like to give you something for these.” Before I could say anything like it wasn’t necessary, his fingers were on my thigh and moving up under my skirt, slow, slow, and he stepped in close and licked me on my throat. It gave me the shivers all up and down and he just laughed real low and kept moving his hand up my leg until he got to my panties, and he said, “You like this?” and I couldn’t even answer yes because he was tickling me right there. Then he took his hand away and I thought I was going to die of disappointment even though it was real dangerous — more dangerous than anything I ever did before in my life — and he put those same fingers that had been touching my privates in his mouth and sucked on them not like he was going to be turning pages in a book but like he was eating an ice cream cone. When they were all wet, he stuck his hand back up my skirt and put them all the way inside me. I never felt anything like that in my life, but all I could think about was my supervisor coming around the corner of the Arts & Recreation section and catching us where we were and then daddy finding out about it. “You like it, I can tell,” he whispered. “Now I’m going to make you come” and he did and he had to hold on tight to keep me from falling down. I felt like my bones all melted and there was nothing alive on my body except for that one little spot. Afterward, he smoothed down my skirt for me. “You keep doing nice things for me, and I’ll do nice things for you,” he said. Then he pulled the front of his pants tight and showed me the shape inside. “Next time, Tammy, I’m gonna give you something real special.”

One day, on the hottest day that September, the air conditioning unit coughed out one last little bit of cool air and quit. There wasn’t anybody in the whole library except for my supervisor and me. My supervisor sighed and said to me, “It’s too bad we’re up here on the second floor. Heat rises, you know. It’ll be stifling hot up here before too long.” Then she turned the little “Temporarily Closed” sign around on the door and locked it, and told me to come on. I followed her into a little storage office off the back that I didn’t even know was there. It had some filing cabinets and boxes marked “Deaccessioned” and a poster of somebody named Che Guevara taped to the wall above a chair that matched the one I first saw Charlie Mann sitting in. “Tammy,” my supervisor said to me, “I’m only showing you this because I don’t want to die of heat stroke in here.” I told her, “Yes, ma’am,” even though I had no idea what she was showing me. My heart started beating real fast thinking maybe she heard me and Charlie Mann messing around and she was going to lock me up for punishment. But all she did was open up a small window that faced away from the highway — I didn’t even know we had a real window in the library — and dragged two chairs over. “Go on,” she said, pointing for me to sit down and I did. The burglar bars that crosshatched in front of the glass were barely hanging on, and she pushed them out of the way so a breeze could come in if it had a mind to. She lit up a cigarette (she never did mention the pack that went missing) and blew the smoke outside toward the water tower, and the tops of some pine trees, and some fluffy clouds going by like they were tired from the heat, too. “A gal’s gotta have some fresh air now and again. But don’t you go telling anybody.”

I figured since I knew something about my supervisor, then maybe I could afford a little boldness when it came to Charlie Mann. Next time he came in, while he was returning a book, he said to Miss Darlene that he’d been thinking recently about traveling. She said, “Is that so,” like it was nothing and went back to her business, but I knew it was a message meant just for me. See, travel stories belonged in the Class 900 stacks, History & Geography, which also happened to be the farthest away from Miss Darlene’s desk. I ran over so I could be waiting for him. “You’re a smart girl, Tammy,” he said to me. “You’re right where I wanted you to be.” That made me feel proud and extra special, knowing he wanted me to be there, and also that he called me smart. He ran his hand over the pomade in his hair, but he couldn’t make it any more perfect if he tried. I swear Charlie Mann was the most handsome man I ever saw. Then he said, “Are you wearing any panties under that skirt?” I shook my head no, smiling that I had the idea to leave them off and my girdle, too, and he said, “That means you were thinkin’ about seeing me, doesn’t it? You were thinkin’ about that special treat I promised you.” I nodded yes, and then I stepped closer to him, looking this way and that to make sure my supervisor and the couple other patrons — that’s what we were supposed to call them, patrons — couldn’t see us. “I keep thinking about you and me,” I told him. “Do you think about that?” He reached down into his fly and pulled himself out. “I sure do, Tammy. I sure do. Now, why don’t you come here and show me what you’ve been thinking.”

It was over so fast, my knees weren’t even sore from kneeling on the Linoleum. He had a familiar look on his face like a kind of sadness that might be moving toward something else, and I didn’t want him to get angry so I told him, “I like makin’ you feel good.” That’s the truth, too. I never had been around anyone I loved more. And I figured he was quick because we were being sneaky. It’d be better when we could be someplace just the two of us. “I’d like to make you feel good some more,” I said, thinking maybe he’d take a hint and hike my skirt up. But he just laughed, real low, and said, “I bet you would, smart girl. But don’t be greedy.” Then he wiped my bottom lip and asked me, “You got any more of them cigarettes?”

“Who is he, girl? Dammit, Tammy Marie, I can smell his stink on you. Now you better tell me who it is.” Daddy always said no beaus, and for the most part, I obeyed. Nothing ever serious, just a couple crushes, a few meetings in the woods. Once daddy found a stash of notes under my mattress that the checker from the Weingarten’s passed me the summer after high school whenever I did the grocery shopping, and after he gave me the what-for, he and Sheriff Delaney ran him clear out of town. “There ain’t anybody,” I told him, and silently I asked forgiveness from Jesus and Charlie Mann both for lying. But daddy slapped my face and said he knew that wasn’t true because the only time I ever got snippy was when some filthy stray came sniffing around. I couldn’t imagine what he’d do to Charlie Mann if he found us out.

A couple days after meeting Charlie Mann in the Arts & Recreation section, I said to him, “You know, I sure wish you and me could take off somewhere. Up to Oklahoma somewhere, or even to Louisiana. We could go to a Mardi Gras parade. Wouldn’t that be nice?” I said it and then I put my fingers on his golden hair, but he caught my wrist and moved it down to his fly. “That’d be real nice,” he said. “But a course I’m not in a position to go anywhere at the present time.” Then he groaned and said, “I sure am glad you’re here though, Tammy. You keeping me company like this sure makes the time go by.” I told him I was glad to hear it, and I was, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for me anyway. After we finished up, he told me about the business leading up to his predicament — that’s what he called it, his “predicament” — that meant we couldn’t get out of town together for a while. Years even. Decades.

Daddy wouldn’t let up. He slapped me again and I said again, “There ain’t nobody.” So he turned his class ring around so the crown faced in and he slapped my face harder. He was real proud of that ring. I bet he could read “Texas A&M College” backward on my skin. He was real careful not to do more than a bruise, even if it felt at the time like the bone under my eye’d gone to pieces and my vision went double for a time. “There ain’t a man on this planet wants anything serious to do with you, Tammy Marie. You ain’t pretty enough to keep anybody’s attention for too long. You need to settle yourself down and get rid of any notion of running off with some ne’er-do-well who’ll end up beating you and leaving you or worse. You need to count your lucky stars you got me to look after you. You got that, baby girl? Now look what a mess you made of your face. Go on, get yourself cleaned up, and get us some supper.”

I started wondering about what Charlie Mann had said before, about me keeping doing nice things for him. Like what sorts of nice things did he mean, besides the one? I didn’t want to ask outright, because I wanted him to know that I was clever, and could figure it out without having to. The next time I saw him, my eye was starting to yellow, and when he asked me about it I told him I accidentally jabbed myself reading a book too close. (I wanted him to think about me reading the same way he liked to.) He looked at me for a minute and then he kissed me right on my bruise — which hurt like the dickens but also felt better than anything, and also had the effect of making me miss my mama something fierce — and asked me did I know Edmond Dantès. I said, “Why of course I do,” but only because I didn’t want to disappoint him, and he said, “Tammy, I think you and I were made for one another.” I was half swooning and half crying, so I said I thought my supervisor needed me and I gave him a quick peck and hustled off before I broke right down in front of him.