Echoes

Part 16

March 2008

         It wasn't long until I hit the town bookstore, prowling the child development section in hopes of finding something that would shed light on Giselle's strange behavior.

As I entered the last row of the section, I spotted a familiar face, someone I could have sworn I knew from somewhere, but couldn't put my finger on it. I shrugged inwardly and refocused on the books, until the sound of my name drew my attention elsewhere.

"Shira?"

I looked up and realized just why the guy was so familiar. It was Sam, from the DMV.

"Sam?" I asked, starting to smile. "Fancy meeting you here."

We walked towards each other and shook hands.

"I come here all the time," he said. "But my sister brings me to this particular section. Rebecca's throwing tantrums and she asked if I'd pick up a few books on the terrible twos for her."

"You sound like a nice brother," I said.

"I try," he said with a slight smile. "Do you come here a lot?"

"Almost obsessively," I admitted. "I love reading,"

"Cool, me too. What's the last book you read?"

"The Mad Queen," I replied.

"Wow, I love that book," he gushed. "I just finished The Children of Greywater."

"No way, I read that last month," I said.

"Geez, you read fast," he marveled.

"That's the one upside of being unemployed," I joked. "Lots of time for reading."

"That's rough," he admitted. "Any pending job interviews or anything?"

"Not yet, but hopefully soon," I replied. "I've done a few online applications to test the waters but nothing's come of it."

"Maybe you should send a physical copy of your resume to the places you applied to, and do a follow-up call after a few days," he suggested.

"I can't believe I didn't think of that," I said.

"Hey, you live and you learn," he shrugged. "That's how I got my job."

"Where do you work?" I asked.

"At the history museum," he replied.

"Wow, I'm a little jealous. I'm kind of a history buff, hence all the reading I do."

"Well, I could always talk to my boss if you want," he offered, "He's going to start hiring pretty soon. He's a pretty cool guy, he might even be willing to do an early interview."

"Thank you," I said. "That would be great. How about we exchange numbers so I can let you know if I need you to do that?"

"Sure," he said. He whipped out his phone, but hesitated suddenly. "Wait, I'm not going to piss off your boyfriend, am I? I'm not trying to hit on you or anything, I swear."

"How did you know I had a boyfriend?" I asked. It was then that I realized that I considered Asher to be my boyfriend again and just hadn't realized it yet.

"Sorry," he said. "With the baby and all, I kind of assumed...I shouldn't have. Good thing I was right, or my foot would be pretty far in my mouth right now, huh?"

I laughed. "Don't worry about it. And no, he won't mind. His jealousy chip mellowed sometime around junior year of high-school."

"Okay great," Sam said, before rattling off his phone number.