I Just Found Fritz

by Jeff Baker

Kyle walked up the stairs to the second floor of the new Public Library. He was a little out of breath and realized he wasn’t a kid on the High School track team like he’d been ten years before.

He wandered around the bookcases, picking out the little things that he remembered from the older library building that was now being used for storage. A couple of framed posters for the Grade School Summer Reading Club; a little wooden box full of pencils that used to be for call slips for things from the downstairs storage area; ceramic busts of two ancient writers that had been stuck high on shelves staring across each other in the old Reading Room, now in a glass case and the big, plastic globe in the doorway to the Reference and Genealogy Area with it’s white spot where generations of kids had rubbed where Kansas was.

Kyle sighed. He hadn’t been anything but anxious since he had visited the Fortune Teller and she’d warned him about the End Of the World. He walked up to the third floor, went past the bookcases and the tables where patrons plugged-in their laptops to do homework or play video games and sat down in his favorite spot; the big couch by the big window with its view of the city skyline and the river.

Kyle let his gaze roam over the rows of bookcases that were just close to being a maze. Over the top of one of them he saw what looked like the tip of a red plume bobbing back and forth. Kyle realized that was part of what the Fortune Teller had warned him about; a literal sign that the time was drawing near.

Then the thirty-something man in the red stocking cap (which almost matched his red hair) and wearing sweats stepped from behind the stacks, saw Kyle and stared.

He walked over to where Kyle was sitting.

“That shirt and those green shoes,” the stranger said. “I know who you are. The…”

Kyle interrupted him.

“The Fortune Teller told you. And you’re Fritz.”

“Yeah,” Fritz said. “And you’re Kyle.”

Kyle nodded. Then said; “Hey, you want to sit down here? You get a great view.”

“Sure,” Fritz said with a half-smile. “I guess we don’t have a lot of time left.”

They sat down there on the couch and stared out the window. Fritz edged his hand over to Kyle’s and Kyle grabbed it and smiled. The Fortune Teller had told them they would be “playing for the same team.”

The two of them sat and watched the sky become dusk then night. They realized there was no better way to spend Earth’s last day.

And, of course it wasn’t the end of the world.

But it was a beginning.

Because fortune tellers are sneaky.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Title is from Fritz Leiber’s story “I’m Looking For Jeff.” How could I resist? —-jeff