The Librarianist

“Maybe he did make it up after all,” Jill said. “Maybe he did come up with it on the fly.”

“Please,” said Linus. “Have you ever looked in Neil Armstrong’s eyes? Talk about infinite space. You can see forever in that handsome head of his. The man couldn’t compose a shopping list. We want to think of astronauts as the embodiment of the best of our collective flesh and blood when actually they’re half-mannequin, and probably more than half.”

In a deep voice, Jill said, “‘One small step for man.’”

“It’s a man,” said Linus. “‘One small step for a man.’ Otherwise the quip doesn’t even make sense. Armstrong says that there was transmission interference and that he delivered the line with the ‘a’ intact.”

“You don’t believe it?” Bob asked.

“I’m doubtful.”

“I feel like you have a low opinion of astronauts generally.”

“I don’t like them very much, it’s true.”

“Well,” Jill said, “I don’t think Mr. Armstrong did such a bad job as all that.”

“You may take solace, my taciturn comrade, in the fact that yours is the majority opinion.”

Bob said, “I wonder what the second man on the moon’s words were.”

Linus said, “Buzz Aldrin: ‘Beautiful view. Magnificent desolation.’”

“What do you think of that?”

“The first part is chilling for its banality. The second part at least achieves some general shape of a human being, though it’s not a human being I’d want to, you know, go camping with.”

They made their way back to the center, following their own partly filled-in footsteps and wheelchair tracks. When they arrived they found Chip still was missing, and that Maria had broken down and called 911. A muscular police officer in his early twenties was interrogating her in her office. Bob and Jill and Linus lurked near her door; Maria was in trouble, and they wished to protect her in some way. The police officer eventually stood away from Maria’s desk, pausing in the open doorway as he flipped his notepad closed. “We’ll do what we can, obviously,” he said. “But it’s a shame we’re in this position in the first place, wouldn’t you agree?” Maria nodded contritely, but when the police officer turned away she held up a long middle finger at the back of his head, which stirred Linus in his chair, stirred him almost to the point of mistiness; later he would admiringly describe the gesture as a “Firm, firm bird.” After the police officer departed, Maria noticed that Bob and Jill and Linus had returned. “Where the hell have you been?” she asked Bob, leading him by the arm to stand apart from the others.

“We went out looking for Chip,” he told her.

“In this weather? At this time of night? You can’t just take out a resident without telling someone, Bob. Jill’s blood pressure is so low she’s practically flatlining. And there are so many things wrong with Linus I wouldn’t know where to begin naming them. Either one of them is teetering — they could drop dead at any given minute.”

“We can hear you,” Linus called.

Maria pulled Bob a few steps farther away. “Well, what the fuck?”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you mad at me?”

“Can you not see that I’m mad at you?”

“You seem mad at me.”

“I am mad at you! The whole time I was in there giving that smug shit the details on Chip, I knew I should also tell him about you three being gone as well. But I just — I couldn’t do it.” She touched the side of her face and she went into a kind of swoon. Her phone rang and she shooed Bob away and shut herself into her office. Brighty stepped out of the elevator and walked up to join the others. “I napped the whole goddanged day away,” she said. “What’d I miss?” Linus was filling her in when Maria came out of her office and announced that Chip’s son was on his way to the center.

“Chip has a son?” asked Brighty.

“Yes,” Maria said, “and he sounds very angry.” She returned to her office and laid her head on her desk. The group discussed the mysteries of Chip’s biography. They pooled their information and found there was none; they knew not a single thing about her. “Not even her name,” said Brighty.

“It’s Chip Something,” said Jill helpfully.

Brighty was shaking her head. “I hung that on her when she first came in. Chip, like chipper, get it?”

Jill said, “But she’s not chipper at all.”

“Yes, Jill, I’m aware of that. The function of the nickname is ironical.” She looked to Bob and Linus. “Try to keep up, kids.”

Bob asked, “Is Brighty a nickname?”

Brighty said, “Who gave you the green light to get personal?”