“There, now all you need to do is create a password.”
“What’s the password?” The old man asked irritably.
“It’s whatever you want it to be, as long as it’s eight characters long, with at least one uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, and a number.”
“That’s only three characters,” he complained.
“Yes. You have to have at least one of each, but not just one of each. I mean, it has to be eight characters long, and three of those characters have to meet those other requirements.”
“This is too confusing. 12345678. There. That’s my password.”
I watched her face, amused. She was surprisingly patient—probably came from all those years she spent dealing with her asshole dad.
“Okay, good start. Now it needs an uppercase letter.”
He pushed a button. “There.”
“That was lower case, but that’s fine, you needed that too. Now choose an uppercase letter.”
“Uppercase, lower case! Just say capital and regular!”
“Sure! You have a regular letter, now you need a capital letter.”
“A capital at the end of the password? That’s a grammatical error! You’re a librarian, you should know this. Don’t you read?”
She smiled at him, somehow managing to keep her frustration at bay. “Which letter would you like?”
“M.”
“Okay, go ahead and type it. Good, now type the whole thing again right here.”
“Again?! Why do I have to do that?”
Creases formed at the corners of her eyes as she pressed her lips together, still trying to reel in her impatience, but not doing such a fine job at it now. “It’s so the computer knows that you typed the password you intended to type.”
“Of course I did, I wouldn’t type something I didn’t mean to! I’m not an idiot!”
“Of course you aren’t, Mr. Johnson. But since idiots do have computer access, they have to make allowances.”
I snorted. She said that with a straight face. I was impressed. Apparently her lying skills had grown significantly over the last few years.
The cranky Mr. Johnson smiled up at her, proving that he didn’t catch the innuendo and hadn’t a hint it was him she was calling an idiot.
Nodding, he looked a tad more satisfied. “There. Now what?”
“Now click submit.” He did as told, jamming his finger hard on the mouse. “Okay, good!” Daisy exclaimed. “You’re ready to log in.”
“But I just did that!” And there she was, being thrown right back into the pit of ‘when the hell will this ever end?’
“You created your login information,” she said slowly like she was talking to someone who was hard of hearing, making sure her lips could be read loud and clear. “Now you have to type it in on this screen.”
“Three times! You didn’t tell me I’d have to type that in three times! You think I remembered what I put down? Nobody told me I’d have to remember that password!”
She ran her fingers over her brow. “That’s what passwords are for, Mr. Johnson. You’re supposed to remember them or write them down somewhere only you will find them so you can always access your accounts. It’s okay, I remembered for you. Type in your email address there. The whole thing, please.”
“It should know the rest! It’s standard!”
“It’s stupid, remember? You have to tell it every single thing.”
“Oh, fine. There. Now what’s my password?”
“12345678, regular b, capital M.”
“BM?! What are you suggesting?!”
She ground her teeth and reached over him to click the mouse. “There! You’re logged in. Now, I have to go do some re-shelving, so if you need any more help, Christine is at the desk.”
I caught her gaze as she looked up and she rolled her eyes at me. I grinned, then nodded toward the mystery section—the most secluded portion of the main library. Daisy frowned, then glanced at a cart full of books and raised her eyebrows. Understood. Not missing a beat, I meandered over to the cart with a casual swagger and glanced over the titles. Self-help junk. That section wasn’t quite as secluded, but it was good enough. I walked toward the area Daisy indicated and pretended to be interested in Manifesting Real Property.
“Planning to buy a house?” she murmured in my ear as she approached, pushing the cart.
Yeah, right. If Breaker had his way, I wouldn’t be buying a damn thing for the next ten years. But I smiled at her and shrugged. “Maybe. Do you want one?”
She beamed at me as she slid a book onto the shelf. “Only if you live there with me,” she said lightly. “Where should we go? Kansas is cheap. Missouri? I’ve only driven through it once, but all I remember of it is green, like an overflowing garden everywhere. Nevada’s wild and empty. Oh, and I heard Montana started paying people to live there!”
It was almost painful to smile. I didn’t want her to stop talking. I loved the way her eyes lit up with hope, and I didn’t want to be the one to crush it. “What about California or New York? I seem to remember you being fascinated by the idea of living in a big city.”
She made a face. “That was before my dad took us to Austin for a work thing. It was awful, all freeways and boulevards with insanely high speed limits—45 in a residential area! And there was no end to it. There was Austin proper, but then it just spread and spread for hours in all directions and there were people everywhere all the time, and traffic never stopped—ever—it was like the city itself was in a hurry all the time. I was exhausted after three days.”
I nodded. “Understood, small towns it is.”
This could be good. If she’d already decided on a small town it wouldn’t take much to convince her that staying here wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
“Small or small-ish. It has to have a school for me—I want to be a full-fledged librarian, and that takes a degree. Oh, and big enough for a YMCA. I mean, I do want to have kids at some point in my life, and I’d very much like
