Be Golden In Your Memory
It’s your club, so let me in (let me in)
Knowing how heartwarming
It is inside your skin
Carolina was ashamed of how often she found herself staying up late poring over all of the entries in Taylor’s journal that she had missed. Between those entries and the videos he had posted on YouTube, she felt like she was beginning to really learn who he was. He had been little more than a pretty face in the past, his journal entries short and meaningless. Now he was almost like a real person, not some distant celebrity.
Still, it wasn’t as though she really knew him, and she couldn’t imagine that she would ever meet him. Los Angeles was hours away, but it might as well be on another planet. She had only been there once, not long after first moving to California, just to say she had been. Taylor was a real person, but he was a real person living in a completely different world. Carolina wondered if there was a word, perhaps some mile-long German one, for the feeling of nostalgia and longing it gave her to think of Taylor and know that he would never think of her.
Her compulsive reading was starting to affect her sleep, making Carolina glad that her job didn’t require too much interaction with the public. At some of the smaller branches, she was required to step in when the staff became overwhelmed. One particular day, weeks into her newfound Taylor Hanson obsession, Carolina found herself manning the front desk for half the morning while the head librarian was stuck in traffic due to a major accident.
By the time she made it to her desk, it was time for her lunch break and she was exhausted. She retrieved her Diet Coke from the small refrigerator in the room that served as both break room and cataloging room, and collapsed into her desk chair. Thankfully, whoever had arranged the offices at the Felton branch had seen fit to make the cataloging desk as private as possible, and Carolina seized the opportunity to log onto LiveJournal and check her friends page, which was beginning to buzz with activity again as she carefully added select Taylor fans to her friends list.
It was strange how so many of the names and usernames seemed familiar to her, but she had always stayed on the fringes of the fandom in the early days. There had seemed to be a strange divide between the fans lucky enough to get to see Hanson’s one and only tour and those, like Carolina, who only saw the band through their television screen. Carolina had never quite found her niche, but now she was slowly adding fans who, like Laura, seemed normal to her friends list and making at least a small attempt to be friendly.
She had begun to write in her own journal again, too. While the rest of her writing was stalled, it was proving to be an interesting creative outlet. Mostly, she wrote about the strange and humorous things that happened at the library. A shift on the circulation desk had given her plenty to write about that day, and she typed quickly in between bites of her turkey sandwich.
lucky little lady (cityofnight) wrote,
2007-07-27 12:18:23
Subject: …the hell?
Y’all. I don’t know what it is about Fridays, but they seem to bring all the craziest people to the library.
This morning, I got stuck on the desk, because the head librarian was supposedly stuck in traffic. I think she was probably trying to avoid dealing with the nutcases that, as I said, come to the library on Friday. But I can’t prove that theory. It’s just a thought.
I had seen this particular nutcase before, but today I got to experience him one on one. He came in panting and just generally seeming like he was about to pass out right there on the desk. He plopped his backpack onto the desk and began digging out the dvds he had checked out, all while huffing and puffing his way through this weird monologue about how he feared he wasn’t going to leave behind any sort of legacy for his children. I just nodded and murmured, because what was I supposed to say to that?
Finally he gets everything out of his backpack. Or so I think. By this point, he’s talking about how he recently did some yard work for this old lady whose husband always claimed their property was full of caves. There are lots of caves in Northern and Central California, so he was probably right. And this guy, wheezing and sweating all over the circulation desk, finally found one of those mythical caves.
And that’s when he pulls a fucking stalactite out of his bag.
It’s this goddawful orange color, like that expanding foam stuff they use to seal or insulate stuff or whatever? I dunno, I’m a librarian, not a construction worker. But that color. It’s unmistakable. And he wanted me to hold the damn thing.
The urge to vomit was strong, y’all.
The whole story had a nice little conclusion, though, which was that the cave is now named after him, and so he does, indeed, have a legacy.
I don’t even know what I said to make him finally leave, but he did. Then a few minutes later, he comes running back and practically dives head first into the candy dish they keep on the end of the desk. He’s not a small man, which made it all even funnier. But I also realized that he was probably in the midst of some sort of strange blood sugar crash while he was rambling at me.
It all made a little more sense… and yet still no sense at all.
I’m going to hide in the back office for the rest of the day and no one can stop me.
After posting her entry, Carolina switched to their card catalog program and looked at the pile of work she had left to do that day. Thanks to her shift on the desk, she wouldn’t get it all done that afternoon, but she thought she could still make a dent in it. Most of the work laid out for her was deletions; old encyclopedias and anthologies from the fifties at the newest that no one had checked out for years and years. They all had to be removed from the digital card catalog before they could be recycled or sold by the Friends of the Library. It was tedious work, but anything that meant she didn’t have to sit at the desk and deal with people all day was fine by Carolina.
While she worked, Carolina let her mind wander. She barely even noticed that she had begun to hum one of Taylor’s songs, one of the only ones she knew since he had only released one EP and a handful of rough demos in video form. This one was just a demo, and she had managed to make out few of the lyrics other than the title, One More Time. When her phone began to buzz, it knocked her out of her trance and she nearly fell out of her chair.
The screen displayed the name Laura Jane, and Carolina decided it was safe to answer it. No one had come in the office the entire time she had been working, so there was little chance of being reprimanded. Anyway, it wasn’t like any patrons could see her chatting on the job from where she sat.
“Hello?” Carolina answered.
“Hey, girl,” Laura said. After over a month of texting and calling, Carolina had learned that Laura wasn’t a penname, and had admitted that Montana was. The two had quickly realized just how much they had in common, and brainstorming their writing together was keeping Carolina from completely giving in to her writer’s block. “Just wanted to check in with you.”
Carolina could hear something strange in her new friend’s voice, and she was surprised that she was able to pick that up so early in their friendship. “Why, what’s up?”
“Well… a certain someone just announced some tour dates… and there’s one basically right between me and you. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but we should totally go.”
“But Taylor hasn’t even put out new music for over a year. How can he go on tour?”
“Oh, he’s opening for Rooney,” Laura explained. “So it’s basically perfect for the two of us.”
“It’s like they tailor made this tour for me. Where’s the concert?” Carolina’s fingers were already hovering over the keyboard, wondering where and how she could buy tickets.
“The Fillmore. Can you imagine?”
“I already am,” Carolina admitted, typing in a jumble of keywords that she hoped would lead her to tickets. “I could almost drive there and back in a day.”
“Yeah, but we should get a hotel. Make a whole thing of it. Bring our laptops and write together, in person. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“It would,” Carolina admitted. She couldn’t remember the last time she had befriended someone so quickly and easily, but the number of parallels between her and Laura were borderline freaky. “Okay, I’ll get the tickets and you get the hotel. Then I just have to schedule time off with my boss.”
Laura chuckled softly. “It’s not until October, so you’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.”
“That should be almost enough time to do it.” Carolina laughed.
“Okay, but seriously,” Laura replied, still laughing a little. “I’m really looking forward to it. I haven’t taken a vacation since Jacob and I moved out here. And spending that time with someone who loves the same music and shares my pervy imagination? Not to mention getting to see some of those musicians live and on stage.”
“Do you think we’ll get to meet him?” Carolina asked, immediately hating herself for sounding so stupidly starstruck. Taylor was just a guy. That was all. Wasn’t he?
“Who knows?” Laura replied. There was a brief pause and some shuffling. “But I do know that you should check LiveJournal again.”
“What do you mean?” Carolina replied.
“Well, you should read his post about the tour. But you also need to look at the newest comment you got on your post…”
There was something strange about Laura’s tone. Carolina said goodbye and ended the call quickly, promising to text Laura after she had read whatever it was Laura was referring to.
Just as she switched over to the Firefox window, one of the other librarians walked into the room. Carolina flipped back to the catalog quickly, hoping the librarian couldn’t hear her heart pounding at the thought that she had nearly been discovered goofing off at work. It wasn’t a great start to her new position; she had only been promoted a few months ago and was still learning the personalities and quirks of everyone she worked with. Some of them were more relaxed than others, while some, she was sure, did not approve at all of her even having her phone out at the desk.
Finally, the librarian left the room, a fresh cup of coffee in hand, and Carolina switched windows again. A few clicks brought her to her inbox, where she saw a brand new comment from a familiar username.
sacredfool83
July 27, 2007, 3:31:09
…so did you touch it or not?