The two faces of Eve

Eve is a booklender by day but business has been slow. They still get the older patrons, but the younger ones seem to be getting their reads elsewhere, maybe magazines or online. Eve's not really sure what they're reading. She just knows there are shelves full of potentially life-enhancing books going to waste. Every time she can get a book into someone's hands and out the door, she feels like she makes the world just a little bit better of a place. In a perfect world, the shelves would be a lot emptier because more books would be checked out. Emptier shelves - that's what she strives for everyday. A few months ago, on her bus ride home (Eve likes public transportation) she was trying to dream up new ways to achieve this. Then, while walking home from the bus stop, Eve saw some kids spray painting words on the back of a store in an alley. She couldn't stop thinking about that, and later that night, after she drank her evening cup of green tea, she went back to that alley and sprayed words of her own: "Read Books Now." That weekend, she found a new canvas on some other building and wrote quotes from some of her favorite books, then put the title of the book and author. One week, she just wrote a haiku. It read: "All these books scare me. I much prefer empty shelves. Help erase my fears." Eve's hooked now, and she knows her extra night work is paying off, as some kid came in last week, asking for one of the books, and had a few other kids with him as well. He even had the quote written down. She treated them all real nice, to make them want to keep coming back to the library for more books. She likes her new little night life, and adored the secret nature of it. One day, Eve might write a book of her own. But for now, I dropped her at Dicey Riley's to have a Guinness while she plotted her evening's work. She says the Guinness helps spark her creativity.