The Librarianist

AFTER CONNIE WENT AWAY WITH ETHAN AUGUSTINE THERE CAME into Bob’s life the understanding of a perilous vastness all around him. To be hurt so graphically by the only two people he loved was such a perfect cruelty, and he couldn’t comprehend it as a reality. He learned that if one’s heart is truly broken he will find himself living in the densest and truest confusion. There was the initial period of weeks during which he took a leave of absence from the library and only rarely ventured out of the house; he was not eating or sleeping according to any traditional clock or calendar, and his hygiene was in arrears. He began to daydream of a means of murdering himself, weighing out the pros and cons of each style and generally fascinating at the comforting thought of long and untroubled sleep. Connie sent him a letter that he threw away without reading; Ethan sent him a letter that he burned. Six months after Connie left, Bob received the divorce papers in the mail. He sat down and read them and signed them and sent them back and took a five-hour walk without a coat on and caught a cold that furnished him with a physical wretchedness to match his mood. His fever broke on the second restless night and in the morning he peeled himself off the mattress and moved to the bathroom. Looking at his pale person in the mirror, he decided he would not die, and that it was time he resumed his fastidious habits and behaviors. “Fine, fine — fine,” he said. Eleven months later he learned that Ethan had died. Bob was eating breakfast at a café up the road from his house, sitting on a barstool with a newspaper laid out on the counter and skimming through the Metro section when he happened on Ethan’s name. Before he read the piece he knew something bad had happened and he stood away from his stool, as if wanting to achieve a remove from whatever information was coming toward him. He read the article standing, with his hands on his hips, looking down at the paper:

HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER KILLS PEDESTRIAN: Ethan Augustine, 26, was struck by a motorist and killed in front of his house in Northwest Portland yesterday afternoon. Mr. Augustine had only recently moved into the neighborhood with his wife, Connie Augustine, 22 years of age. There were no witnesses to the accident. Any information should be relayed to Portland PD.

Bob sat and folded the paper and stood. He left the café without the paper and walked home and sat on the couch in the living room and stared at the dust motes floating around and around. Later that same day he was passing through the kitchen and saw by the window that there was a man on his hands and knees in the driveway. Thinking him injured or suffering an attack, Bob hurried out to the man’s side. “Are you all right?” he asked.

The man groaned as he stood, using the front bumper of Bob’s Chevy to lift himself up. “Altogether I’d say that yes, I am all right, thank you. Are you Bob Comet?” He identified himself as a police detective, produced a notepad and pen, and asked that Bob should name his whereabouts at the time of Ethan Augustine’s death. Bob answered that he’d been at work, and the detective took down the address and phone number of the library. He asked if he could borrow Bob’s phone and Bob walked him to the kitchen and stood by, listening to the detective’s conversation. After, the detective hung up the phone and told Bob, “All clear, buddy. I’ll let myself out.” Bob realized that when he’d first seen the detective in the driveway, the man had been checking the Chevy’s front bumper for incriminating matter.