“Laptop.”
She awarded herself two points. “If you’ll bring it by, I’ll show you how to upgrade. If you have enough memory, of course.” Let him decide if she was talking about his brain or his computer.
From the way his eyes narrowed, he must have suspected the former, but he let it pass. “It’s in the car.” He strode back to the city-owned Crown Victoria and got the laptop out of the front passenger seat, carrying it easily in one hand.
She unlocked the employees’ entrance and turned to take the laptop. “You can pick it up at lunch,” she said.
He retained possession of the machine. “Can’t you do it now?”
“I intend to, but it’ll take a few minutes.”
“How many is a few?”
Her heart sinking, she realized he intended to wait. “Don’t you have to go to work?”
He indicated the pager on his belt. “I’m always at work. How many is a few?” he repeated.
Damn modern electronics, she thought resentfully. The last thing she wanted was to have him hovering. “It depends.” She tried to think how long might be too long. “Forty-five minutes or an hour.”
“I’ll wait.”
Double damn. Her only consolation was that updating the browser wouldn’t take nearly that long; then he’d be on his way.
“Fine. Meet me at the front door.” She stepped inside and almost hit him in the nose with the door as he stepped forward. He slapped his free hand up just in time to stop it.
“I’ll come in this way,” he said, glaring at her.
Daisy squared her shoulders. “You can’t.”
“Why not?”
She thought that should have been obvious. She pointed to the sign on the door, just inches from his nose. “This is the employees’ entrance. You aren’t an employee.”
“I’m a city employee.”
“You aren’t a library employee, and that’s what counts.”
“Hell, lady, what’s it going to hurt?” he asked impatiently.
More points on the bad side. His demerits were rivaling the score of an NBA game. “No. Go to the front door.”
Her stubborn expression must have finally registered. He eyed her, as if considering simply bullying his way past her, but with a muttered curse he turned on his heel and stormed around to the front of the building.
She was left standing there with her eyes as big as saucers. He’d said the F word. She was fairly certain that was what she’d heard. She’d heard it before, of course; one couldn’t watch many movies these days without hearing it. She’d also gone to college, where young people tried to impress each other with how cool and sophisticated they were by using all the foul words they knew; she’d even said it herself. But Hillsboro was a small southern town, and it was still considered ill-mannered for men to use such language in front of women. Women who wouldn’t turn a hair at hearing anything from their husbands or boyfriends in private would poker up like Queen Victoria if it were said in public. And to say such a thing to a woman you didn’t know well was a total no-no, indicative of a total lack of manners and respect—
A thunderous banging on the front door interrupted her indignant reverie; the beast was already at the door. Muttering to herself, she hurried through the darkened library to unlock the front door.
“What took you so long?” he snapped as he stepped inside.
“I was frozen in shock by your language,” she coolly replied, taking the laptop from him and carrying it to the library’s on-line computer, turning on lights as she went.
He muttered something again, but this time, thankfully, she couldn’t tell what it was. She wasn’t as lucky with his next sentence. “You’re a little young to have a stick up your ass like the blue-hairs in this town.”
To her credit, she didn’t falter. “Manners have nothing to do with age, and everything to do with upbringing.” She set the laptop down and swiftly began hooking it up to the power source and telephone outlet.
It took him a minute. “Are you insulting my mother?” he finally growled.
“I don’t know, am I? Or are you simply ignoring what she taught you?”
“Shit!” he said explosively, then blew out a deep breath. “Okay, I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget I’m living in Mayberry.”
If they were so boring and restrictive, maybe he should think about going back to wherever he came from, she thought resentfully, but kept her thoughts to herself before the situation developed into a full-fledged argument. “Apology accepted,” she forced herself to say, though she could have used a more gracious tone if she had really, really tried. She sat down and went on-line, then typed in the browser’s web address and waited until the site was found and the page displayed. Then she clicked on the update bar, and let technology handle the rest.
“That’s it?” he asked, watching the little timer.
“That’s it. You should do this regularly, at least every six months.”
“You’re good at this.”
“I’ve had to do it a lot since we got the virtual library,” she said wryly.
He sat down beside her; too close, of course. She inched her chair away. “You know your way around computers.”
“Not really. I know how to do this, but I had to learn. I can find my way around on the Web, I can hook up a system and load programs, but I’m not a computer geek or anything.”
“City hall isn’t even on-line. Water bills and payroll are computerized, but that’s it.”