Michael Guillebeau - MAD Librarian - You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Library

Serenity took a step backwards and gestured at Doom to keep up.

“I know,” said Doom. “You’re upset because you’re afraid I won’t cover up for you. You don’t know me, Ms. Hammer. I am far stronger than you. I can take your secret to my grave, and never let the world know that you killed a man rather than let me save you.”

Serenity stopped and they folded Joe up a little between them.

“Save me?” Serenity bit her tongue. Not now. They had work to do. She nodded Doom in the direction of the road and they started crab-walking Joe out of the firelight.

She couldn’t keep her tongue still for long, though. “I am the one who saved you. Twice now. And I’m the one who’s kept your secret. I distracted Joe so he wouldn’t find out that you killed Kendall. I killed a man in self-defense. Yours was a despicable and pointless murder.”

Doom dropped Joe’s legs and straightened up. Serenity could see the shock on her face in the dim firelight.

“Ms. Hammer, how could you?”

“How could I what?”

“How could you think I killed that man? I am a force for truth, justice, and the American Way. Not a killer. You’re like a mother to me. How could you?”

“You didn’t kill him? Really?”

“Of course not. How could you think that?”

“Your spike. Your temper. Your… lack of reality.” Serenity sighed. “Pick Joe’s feet up. Let’s get out of here. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Although it is good to see that you’re just full of words and no action.”

Doom picked up Joe’s feet and they trudged on. In the darkness, Doom said again, “Ms. Hammer, how could you?”

Serenity focused on not tripping on the dark path.

“Doom, I love your fire and your passion and your unlimited capacity for hard work. But there is something I’ve wanted to say to you at least a thousand times.”

“What’s that?”

“Just shut the hell up.”

“NO,” SAID SERENITY. She was sitting on Joe as he lay on the bed, with her knees holding his face and pinning his shoulders down.

“I wasn’t asking,” said Joe. “I’m going back to work now.”

She smiled at him. “It appears that asking is all that you can do right now.”

He tried not to smile. “You’re hurting my sore shoulder. You’re sure this is what the doctor recommended?”

“How would we know? I wanted to take you to a hospital or a doctor last night. But once you woke up and Doom told you what happened in the woods, you insisted we bring you home.”

“Righteous killing. Don’t want MPD getting involved and making a mess of it. I’ll settle this all myself,” he said.

“I don’t know. For a while back there, I was ready to call the police and take my chances on everything else, just to get you back.”

“We’re Hammers. We take care of our own.”

“Yeah.” She leaned back and put one hand on him. “Besides, doctors don’t know everything about healing.”

He smiled. “You know, I really do need to go to work. Sometime.”

“Yes. Yes, you do. You and I have some real work to do between us. Healing work. Remember when Joseph Junior was first getting into his teens, and we were fighting with him and each other so much that we went to a counselor?”

He smiled. Smiled and groaned as Serenity rocked back and forth on his chest.

“If I recall…” He paused and let out a long breath.

Serenity took her hand away and stayed still. “We’re not going to do this if you can’t stay on-topic.”

“I’ll concentrate.” She leaned forward until she was an inch above his face.

“Keep talking,” she said.

“If I recall,” Joe said, “she was a nice little old church lady who was horrified at the way we fought in the sessions. We wouldn’t let her get a word in edgewise.”

Serenity rocked back and put her hand back behind her again. “But she had one good idea.”

“It also involved your hands.”

She gave him encouragement and said, “Keep talking.”

“She finally said, ‘You two are just going to do things your own way no matter what I say. You two have no trouble talking, just trouble keeping it from turning into fighting. Why don’t you come up with a rule that says any time you want to have a serious talk about anything, you have to sit on the couch and hold hands?’”

“It really was a good idea.” Serenity used her hand a different way and Joe groaned again. “The only problem was that fighting with you made me horny, so I said, ‘Better than that. We can only have a serious talk if you’re in me.’”

“When we told her about our rule, she threw us out, but we didn’t care.”

Serenity released him, leaned forward and cradled his face in her hands. Then she kissed him and said, “So, do you want to go back to work, or do you want to have that serious talk we’ve been putting off all week?”

“Who am I,” he said, “to argue with a determined woman?”

She stripped her t-shirt over her head and swung one leg off of him. Next, she eased his shorts off and stepped out of her panties.

“Now then,” she climbed back aboard, “let’s get… talking.”

“You have my un-di-vi-ded attention,” gasped Joe.

“Good. God, I didn’t know how badly I needed—” she shifted and found a rhythm, “to talk.”

Joe was out of rhythm with her. She couldn’t tell if that was all, or if he was holding back for the talk.

“First,” she said. “About Doom.”

“Cute girl.”

“Get your mind off that and back here. You know how sometimes I point to my eyes and tell you to focus up here?” She made the two-finger sign that said, look here, and pointed at her breasts. “Focus.”

“Focused. Now, what about Doom?”

“She didn’t kill Kendall.”

The good tension went out of his face, and was replaced by bad tension. “Never thought she did.”

“You also never knew the murder weapon was the library spike Doom kept on her desk.”

She twisted a little to distract him, or to distract herself. It worked with Joe for only a few seconds.

“Her desk?” He paused, caught his breath and groaned. “The one next to the desk where Kendall was killed? We didn’t find any kind of spike there.”

“I took it. But I can give it back to you now that I know Doom is innocent.”

“And how do you know that?”

“She told me.”

He was silent and she seized the needed moment to bear down hard and concentrate. She shook, moaned, and said, “That’s one.”

She opened her eyes and saw that he was back to focusing on her eyes. “You mean one O, or one major felony, Serenity?”

He put his hands on her hips to join her and said, “How many other major felonies do I have to cover up for this? And I’ll reach my own conclusion about Miss Doom.”

She leaned forward and dragged her nipples one by one across his lips. She said, “I’ll make it worth it.”

His eyes were half-closed and he was smiling in agreement. Then they fluttered open and he said, “Wait. What about the library money?”

“I think you’re right about it coming from Don Juan, but not directly. I found a little municipal fund that nobody much uses, but that gets millions of dollars every week. It has to come from him, so it’s just like I’m robbing the robber.”

Joe’s face had the twist of a man trying to do two things at once, which he was.

“That’s not…” He paused and moved with her. “That’s not Don Juan. Even he doesn’t generate that kind of money. Nobody generates that kind of money.”

He started to say something else, couldn’t, and breathed for a moment. Finally, he said, “As long as it’s all in the past and you’re done with stealing, I’m not going to play cop for something that’s over with.”