15 Tales of Love (12 page)

TO A DIFFERENT DEGREE

Ainslie Connors was the proud possessor of a brand new bachelor’s degree in American history with a concentration on the nineteenth century, but what on earth was she going to do with it? There did not appear to be even a small niche for her knowledge in the real world, unless she planned to teach, which she didn’t—she didn’t have the credentials anyway—and she had to earn a living.

Outside of school and in the working world, people interested in history were few and far between. She had no one with whom to discuss all of those interesting tidbits she came across in her reading. Her current coworkers totally ignored anything older than yesterday’s ballgame and last month’s hit movie.

A real estate agency was one of the last places she had pictured herself working. She knew nothing about real estate, unless, of course, the house had been built before the Civil War, and those properties did not change hands very often.

She was discouraged. She had spent so much time in a field she found fascinating only to discover few shared her interest. To teach would require inspiring her students and she didn’t think she could, as much as she loved her subject. To do the research for a book required, at the very least, a master’s degree or a grant, which also required the advanced degree. She had neither the time nor the money for more schooling.

It had not been easy to find a job, any kind of job. Her present clerical position was not fulfilling and required none of her expertise. Ainslie had not pictured herself doing data entry
—just a glorified file clerk, for Pete’s sake
—but that is what she was doing—besides filing papers and notes for her employer and the agents she worked with.

Ainsley had some admittedly vague ideas about doing the required research and writing a deep, probing, but at the same time entertaining, biography of some obscure but interesting historical personage. She wasn’t thinking about a Pulitzer Prize or anything that grand, but she did envision a book prominently displayed at the local Barnes & Noble. The popular nineteenth century author and editor Charles Dudley Warner had always appealed to her, partly because he was some kind of distant family connection, and she had written several papers about him. Since he had lived for some years in Hartford, field work wouldn’t take her too far away from her New Hampshire home.

Which left her, she ruefully told herself, rather in limbo and dissatisfied. The reality was that degrees in history did not have a big market value and serious research was expensive and time consuming. Research grants were hard to get if you were unknown, had graduated from a small school, or your subject was out of the main stream.

But she had to eat and pay the bills, and after sending out dozens of resumes before graduation and then searching in person afterward, she had taken a probationary position as a management assistant in a mid-sized real estate office, The agency owner, William Forrest, said the position could probably grow into something better if the real estate market improved and her work was satisfactory.

She wasn’t happy. It was not what she wanted and offered no social prospects. But the job itself was not particularly stressful or complicated, since she was just an assistant to the agency owner, not a sales agent. The office where she spent most of her time was bright and cheerful. Her fellow workers were, for the most part, pleasant and helpful, but none of them shared her interests. Plus they were older, married, and had families.

Socially, she had few connections. Girlfriends were little help in finding dates with educated—she thought of them as cultured—men, and she had decided against the online scene. She wanted the face-to-face interaction.

Ainslie spent her work day answering the phone, finding old records the reps wanted, and keeping the file drawers neat and in order. She watered the large collection of office plants, made the coffee, and picked up the coffee break pastries several times a week. It was a dead bore.
This isn’t what I want to do.

She began bringing in history books to read during her breaks. Just general information kinds of books, full of info she might need for some future project. She couldn’t find the enthusiasm to pursue even a random idea.

“History is just a bunch of dates,” sales rep Hugh Darnell told her over coffee and a Danish during morning break time one day. “And who cares about what President . . .” he paused, obviously hunting for an obscure name “. . . Fillmore or Van Buren, or somebody did?”

Ainslie laughed. “At least you remembered those names. Most people don’t know them.” She tried not to sound sarcastic. “And you didn’t name the only one from here.”

Agent Talli Brennan asked, “You mean Franklin Pierce? What did he ever do? Besides get a lake and a college named after him?”

Ainslie knew he had done a lot more than that but decided it was not worth arguing about. “I find it interesting. You never know what you might discover.”

After that, she tended to ignore her coworkers’ comments, but it was one of Hugh’s frequent rants about life in general and work in particular that made her stop and listen.

“I have to go to the Registry of Deeds,” he said. “Again.”

Talli laughed. “And researching deeds and doing abstracts is such fun.”

Intrigued, Ainslie said, “I like doing it.”

They turned to look at her.

“I did some for a course I took, and I’ve looked up some family stuff for my uncle and my grandfather.”

Hugh grinned. “That would save me a lot of time and aggravation if you’d do it. Besides, this one is pretty routine.”

And it would get me out of this office!
“Why not?”

“If Will says it’s okay, go for it.”

As Ainslie had expected, the agency owner had no objections. “It’s time-consuming, and better your time than Hugh’s. And if it works okay, you could do more of it.”

And maybe find a few minutes for my own research while I’m there?

The County Registry was located in a rambling, three story, Victorian-styled brick building, dating to the late 1800s, with a wide, white-columned portico at the front door. It had once been the county courthouse and was currently being renovated one section at a time as money was available. Most of the county offices had moved to larger, newer offices, but someone had decided that the old courthouse should be restored. In the meantime, the Registry of Deeds and Registry of Probate were squeezed into one side of the building while the other was being redone.

“Eventually Probate’ll have the top floor while we have the lower two,” the clerk told her. “We get the most customers. Maybe we can get everything out of the basement except the oldest stuff, the things people rarely want to look at.”

“The kind of records I like,” Ainslie said. “But apparently no one else. I know they’re hard to read in the original. All that wonderful penmanship.”

The clerk laughed. “Go for it.”

She found it much like the other registries she had been in: stuffy and smelling wonderfully of old books. What Hugh needed unfortunately wasn’t in the old section, just back into the 1930s, and it took less than an hour. She decided to treat herself to a late lunch at a nearby diner. Even so, she was back at the office well before closing time.

Hugh was happy and William was pleased.
And I had myself a nice break!

Checking deeds became part of her job, if only occasionally.
At least I get to do some research, even if it is only looking for deeds in the registry office and preparing abstracts. But it is something I might be able to use some time. And I don’t have anything else to do that is even remotely interesting.

This is historical research
, she told herself firmly, but trying to put a positive spin on it was getting harder. Occasionally it was interesting since some of the houses on the market dated to the early 1800s and had changed owners many times, frequently back and forth in the same family. There were gaps when someone didn’t bother to record the deed, willed properties that had to be checked in the probate records. There were transactions she thought might be fitted into a historical novel, if she ever decided to write one, like intrigue involving a nefarious ancestor who had gained property in some shady deal. But deed research was basically dull and routine and she couldn’t sustain an interest.
Its only virtue is that it’s out of the office.

She abandoned her research on Charles Warner
. He just isn’t interesting enough. Who wants to read about a newspaper or magazine editor, even if it was the Hartford Courant and he was a close friend of Mark Twain? Nobody reads his novels anymore. But what else can I do? Nothing!

She tried to hide her frustrations and took some extra pains with the collection of office plants, repotting some of them. She recalled her last date, one arranged by her sister that had been most unsatisfactory. The man was totally obsessed with sports and beer, in which she had no interest.
I need someone educated who’s fun to be with. But where do I find anyone while stuck in this job? Why can’t I find a use for my education?

On a trip to the Registry on a late morning, she encountered an unexpected snag: the main entry was closed by the renovations project. She was directed to a side door and into the basement where she found a maze of hallways and small rooms. She either did not notice directional signs near the door where she entered, or they were nonexistent. Unable to find a stairway to the first floor, she finally stood perplexed in a corridor that seemed to lead nowhere except to a non-functioning restroom. She took several deep breaths, and calmed her thinking to consider the problem rationally.
I can’t get lost in a basement, for Pete’s sake
. Then she heard pounding from somewhere behind her and walked toward the noise.

The sounds led her through a room full of stacks of cardboard boxes and then to a stairwell. Gratefully, she went up the stairs, emerging into a wide hallway filled with scaffolding and paint-covered drop cloths. She stopped, again perplexed.

A voice above her said cheerfully. “Hey, we’ve caught another one.”

She looked up at a young man applying plaster to the top of the wall. Like all public buildings of the day, this floor had 20-foot ceilings. She asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“People trying to find the Registry of Deeds. They end up here when they should have taken a left back there in Albuquerque.”

She recognized the quote from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon and laughed. “Why don’t they put up signs?”

“Who knows? Government efficiency?”

“So how do I get to the Registry office?”

He climbed nimbly down from his scaffold. He was a late twenty-something, well-tanned and dark blond, but he was dusted gray with plaster and his torn tee shirt was daubed with it. But his smile was infectious and his laughing blue eyes made the situation seem a little less ridiculous.

He wiped his hands ineffectively on his jeans. “Come on, I’ll show you. Much easier than trying to explain and I’m terrible at giving directions.” He grinned at her. “I’m Blake,” he said. “Plaster perfectionist and gofer extraordinaire.”

She recognized with surprise what she usually thought of as a ‘cultivated voice,’ not one she would expect to hear from a plasterer. “I’m Ainslie. General Dogsbody.”

“Dogsbody. I haven’t heard that word in a hundred years.”

She laughed, surprised that he knew the word.

“We have to go back to the cellar,” he said. “You took a wrong turn where you came in.” He glanced sideways at her. “I don’t very often get to escort pretty girls. Most of those who come here are . . .” he hesitated and finished delicately, “rather ancient.” She wondered if that meant over forty.

She might have considered him presumptuous if he wasn’t so charming and she wasn’t so frustrated. “Most young people aren’t much into deed research. It can be pretty boring.”

“Ah.” He led her around several corners and through two small rooms. “So I guess this isn’t your first choice of occupation.”

“Hardly.”

“Well, I guess a lot of us are making do these days.” He stopped at the end of a hall and pointed. “At the end, turn right. You can’t miss the stairs.”

She smiled at him. “Thanks. I was beginning to think I’d wander around in here forever.”

“If you get lost again, just call and I’ll come running to the rescue.”

She wondered if he was serious and decided that he wasn’t. “I’ll do that.”

Working her way backward through the succession of owners of a two hundred-year-old house—each deed referred to the previous one if she was lucky—Ainslie considered her rescuer
. Blake? He’s obviously better educated than a common plasterer, and he certainly is nice looking. I wonder if he has a girlfriend. He’s probably married and just being friendly.

She squashed that thought. She wasn’t in the market, not after her last disappointing evening out with another of her sister’s finds: a pompous know-it-all who was all hands.

She encountered no difficulties in her search, finished her job, picked up her papers, and found her way back to where she had parked her car. She paused for a moment to look back at the old courthouse. As required by the Historic District Commission rules, there were no outward signs of the interior renovation, just a discreet sign on the front door naming the contracting company. She went back to the office.

Ainslie was back at the courthouse the following Monday morning, much sooner than she expected. It was usually more of a once a month thing. The way in hadn’t been changed, and she remembered the route. She stood a moment, looking into the dimly lit bowels of the building
. I wonder if he’s still here. Should I get lost and look? No, that wouldn’t be very good form.