The Librarianist

“But they serve pizza, beer — chocolate. And maybe that’s where Chip is, did you ever think of that? Just sitting in there waiting for us.” Bob made no reply to this but walked on in silence. Linus said, “This was a huge mistake.” Bob said nothing. Linus swung his chair around to face Bob. “I never should have listened to you!”

“This was your idea,” Bob reminded him.

“All right,” said Linus, “let’s not cast aspersions.”

Bob agreed, anyway, that they couldn’t remain outside in such weather as this for much longer; and when he proposed they retire to a café for a hot cup of coffee, Linus was enthusiastic. Jill, however, was shaking her head. “Coffee makes me go to the bathroom.”

“But going to the bathroom is fun,” said Linus.

Jill didn’t know what to say to that.

“How about a hot chocolate?” asked Bob, and Jill said that sounded pretty nice, after all. Bob said he knew a restaurant four or five blocks away; Jill said, “If we’ve got that far to go, I’m going to need a puff,” and she paused to tap a cigarette from her pack. Bob noticed she was smoking Camels. Bob had smoked Camels in his day, and he felt an impulse to ask for one. He didn’t, but then when Linus said, “Let’s smoke one of Jill’s cigarettes, Bob,” he surprised himself by instantly agreeing.

They stood together as Jill handed out Camels and passed her lighter around. They each lit up, inhaling, exhaling, enjoying the lark of the day in spite of the weather. “It feels just like skipping school, doesn’t it?” said Jill. She was in something like a good mood, the first Bob or Linus had witnessed, and they shared discreet looks between them in honor of the uncommon event. The snowfall seemed to decelerate as the nicotine seeped into their bodies. Linus said, “I haven’t had a smoke in ten years.” Bob said, “I haven’t had one since 1959.” Both men were transported back to the place of loving tobacco wholly; the terrible efficiency of the device was thrilling and frightening in equal measure.

As they made their progress toward the café, Jill became animated, speaking gaily of the many deaths in her family. Everyone was dead but her, she said. Her mother and father, of course; but they had not died in their dotage, but by grisly disease in the prime of their lives. They had died from what Jill called eating diseases.

“What do you mean, eating diseases?” Bob asked.

“I mean the disease ate them,” she said.

“You mean like leprosy?” asked Linus.

“It was in the leprosy family. I can’t remember the clinical name. Something exotic — a lot of syllables.”

Jill’s sisters were dead and her brothers were dead and her aunts and uncles were dead and her cousins were dead. Her husband was dead, but there was something in her tone which said that this was not so significant a tragedy as the others. Bob imagined Jill had been trapped in a decades-long marriage with an abusive, alcoholic tyrant; but when he asked if the union had been combative, Jill shook her head. “Goodness, no. Clarke didn’t have an angry drop of blood in him. But was he ever a damp one.”

“A what one?” said Linus.

“A wet-seat.”

“What?” said Bob.

“Unfun,” she said peevishly. “But it was intentional, the unfun-ness.”

“He was against it.”

“Strongly, yes. He found grace in solemnity.”

“That sounds admirable, actually.”

“Thank you, Bob. I did admire him. I just wish he’d taken me out for a hamburger dinner every once in a while.” She took a final drag off her Camel and flicked it into the street. “After Clarke passed, I thought, Now I’ll finally have some fun. But, I haven’t had any. Not really I haven’t.”

Bob said he was surprised to hear she had an interest in fun at all.

“Of course I’m interested. Can’t you see I crave it?”

“I can’t see that. Linus, can you see it?”

Linus said, “I can’t, no. But then, and possibly you’ve noticed this, I don’t really care about or consider anyone else’s point of view other than my own.”

They arrived at the café and were sheltered in a Naugahyde booth. Basking in the room’s warmth, they elected to indulge in full meals. Bob wanted breakfast; Jill and Linus both followed suit, and in a little while their food was delivered to the table. Jill picked up a piece of bacon from her plate, sniffed it, and held it out, asking, “Does this bacon smell funny to either of you?” Bob said he didn’t want to smell someone else’s bacon, but Linus said he did, and Jill held it under his nose. “It’s just a normal bacon smell,” he told Jill, and so she ate it.

They finished their meal but lingered; outside, the snow continued to fall. Bob saw a figure in pink move past the café and he hurried across the dining room to peer out the front door and see if it was Chip, and it wasn’t. When he returned to the table, Jill and Linus were discussing the moon landing. Linus said, “Neil Armstrong was playing at being off the cuff, but he had memorized the words before Apollo even left the ground. He always claimed to’ve improvised the line, but evidence suggests it was written by an ad agency hired via NASA.”