The Librarianist

Jill said that her pain was near constant and impossible to get used to, to not be surprised by. She spoke of a wish to measure it, a volume or weight she might assign it, to share with doctors, with strangers, bus drivers. “People would be impressed if they knew the size of it,” she said. “The way it is now, they simply can’t understand. You can’t.” They worked on the puzzle in earnest, silent competition. With both of them going full tilt they completed the image in ninety minutes; as soon as it was done, Jill broke it up and returned the pieces to the box. Later, they were sitting under the television watching a show where four adult women screamed at each other in front of a live audience of adult women who also were screaming. There was an unknowable emotional connection between the women onstage and those in the audience; the more the women onstage screamed, then did the screaming of the audience also increase. At times the two groups were screaming with all of their vigor and volume: altogether too profound a passion for one o’clock in the afternoon, was Bob’s thought. During a commercial break came a comparative silence, and Bob turned to Jill, who was staring at him. She asked Bob if she’d told him about her new heater, and he said she hadn’t. “Tell me now,” he said, and she did.

Her new heater, a fickle and mysterious device. It would sit in cold silence, in defiance of its own on-ness, then roar to life in the middle of the night while Jill slept, overheating and smoking — black, acrid smoke, which set off her fire alarms, which woke up her neighbors, who twice had called in the fire department, who permanently damaged Jill’s carpets with their clanking, filthy boots. This was a classic Jill yarn in that the problems were multifold and collectively unwieldy. In listening to such stories as this it was easy to become lost in the mirror-maze of her misfortune; but Bob wished to be helpful, and so he always made to seek out the root of any one particular problem in hopes of uncovering a solution and improving the quality of her life in some small way. “You should unplug the heater before you go to bed,” he told her.

“I did unplug it, Bob. That’s what I’m saying. The heater turned itself on when it was unplugged.”

Bob said, “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Anyway it was turned off when I went to sleep,” she said.

“That’s not the same thing, though.”

They watched a commercial for laundry detergent that featured an animate teddy bear crawling into a washing machine. Jill said, “He’s going to get more than he bargained for.” The screaming show resumed but Jill hit the mute button. “I’m not done talking about the heater,” she said.

“Okay,” said Bob.

Jill paused, as if steeling herself. “I think that the heater is not just a heater,” she said finally.

“What else is it?”

“I think that the heater is what’s called an oracle.”

“What?” Bob said.

“The heater’s behavior feels threatening to me.”

“You believe the heater has a point of view?”

“I believe it’s communicating bad news.”

“But what is it telling you?”

“It’s telling me my future.”

“What’s your future?”

“Well, think about it, Bob. Where is it hot?”

Bob looked into Jill’s eyes for some sign of levity, but he found only the dark and swirling galaxy of herself. He understood she was confessing a difficult and fearsome truth, which on the one hand was flattering, that Bob had achieved the status of the confidant; but then, and on the other hand, the confession disturbed. Bob asked Jill if she’d kept the receipt. “It was on sale,” she whispered. “No returns.” At the conclusion of the screaming television show, Bob said goodbye to Jill and made for Maria’s office. “Jill thinks her space heater is psychic and that it’s telling her she’s going to go to hell,” he said. Maria looked over Bob’s shoulder, then back at Bob. She said, “Okay.” She waved goodbye but Bob lingered in the doorway.

“May I make an observation?” he asked.

“You may.”

“I don’t want to overstep.”

“Spit it out, Bob.”

“I think Jill would be better off as a resident.”

Maria winced. “Full-time Jill?”

“I know. But maybe she’d be less Jill-ish if she felt safer.”

Maria made a long exhalation. “Let me think about it,” she said.

Bob took a new route home, a long and roundabout line. He was not killing time, for Bob was not a time killer; but he knew that when he entered his home, then the part of the day where something unexpected could happen would be over, and he wasn’t ready for that quite yet. He was looking up and into the windows of the houses as he passed them by; he was wondering about the lives of the people inside. It was a late fall afternoon, damp in the air, damp on the pavement, but it wasn’t raining. Now the lights were coming on in the windows of the houses, and smoke issuing from certain of the chimneys. Was this the long dusk that Jill had warned him about? Bob sometimes had the sense there was a well inside him, a long, bricked column of cold air with still water at the bottom.