The Librarianist

Linus wheeled away and Bob sat alone in the dark, looking into Maria’s office. Chip’s son was standing now, pulling on his gloves and hat, shaking his head at Maria, who stared wanly, saying nothing. Bob considered Chip’s son as he left the center. He was in his middle forties, working-class, and his handsome face was tight and he was muttering to himself, still angry, and who could blame him. But Bob felt sorrier for Maria than Chip’s son, or Chip, even. He watched as she rose up and pulled on her coat. When she left her office, Bob scraped his chair to let her know he was there; she startled and squinted. “Bob? What are you doing?” It was past midnight. Bob told her he needed a ride home. “Well, why not?” Maria said, aloud, to herself.

It was odd being in Maria’s car; the cramped vehicle was filled with fast-food trash and smashed coffee cups. The roads were empty and Bob said, “Left here. Left again. Right here.” The car slipped around corners and slid past stop signs and Maria was quietly laughing; she was dead on her feet, she said. The car pulled up in front of Bob’s house; Maria said, “What a nice little place.” Bob felt her disappointment and frustration regarding the Chip situation, and he wanted her to know how much everyone at the center liked and appreciated her. Maria in turn intuited that something bulkily sincere was moving in her direction and she told Bob she was too tired to field anything of the sort. “One kind word and I’ll burst into tears, Bob, I’m serious.” Bob said that he understood and thanked her for the ride and exited the car and walked up the snow-covered path to the house. There was the sound of his footsteps and of Maria’s car driving away. There was the sound of his keys jingling, and the soft sound of his breathing. The house was completely silent. He went upstairs and drew a bath and bathed and put on his pajamas and lay down to sleep but couldn’t sleep. He put on his robe and came downstairs and sat on the couch to read but couldn’t do that, either. He moved to sit in the kitchen nook and look out the picture window. All was still, the snow glittering in the moonlight, untouched save for Maria’s car tracks and his own footsteps. Bob was thinking of the events of the day. Nobody had congratulated him on finding Chip, and he wondered if anybody ever would. No one will ever thank you, he remembered Maria telling him. It occurred to Bob that he would never have come to the center in the first place if it weren’t for Chip; and how curious a thing it was that their story had looped back onto itself at the 7-Eleven. Bob thought of Chip’s son, and the look of anger on his face, but also how handsome he was, and of the unlikeliness that Chip should sire such a specimen. He had looked familiar, Bob realized, like some famous bygone film actor, or politician. Or was it a face from the past, a library regular? It nagged at Bob, and he made to locate the answer. The furnace groaned in the basement and now the heat came on and Connie’s dress, which Bob had never put away, started its undulations, and something in this visual delivered Bob the answer to his question; and when the answer arrived, then did Bob shoot away from himself for one airborne moment, as if his tether had been cut. Chip’s son looked like Ethan. Bob covered his shut mouth with his hand. He worked out a problem of arithmetic in his mind. The data was sound and he crossed the kitchen to seek out Maria’s business card and found it pinned to the cork board beside the phone on the wall. The clock on the oven said it was almost two o’clock in the morning but Bob couldn’t not call, and he punched in the number and waited. It rang four times and went to voicemail. He called again and Maria picked up but didn’t speak. Bob said, “What’s Chip’s real name?” Maria wasn’t fully awake; she thought she’d entered another chamber of the multivenue persecution nightmare she’d been having relating to Chip’s disappearance. In a crouching voice she said, “Connie Augustine,” then hung up the phone.

2 1942–1960

BOB CAME TO READING IN HIS YOUTH. IT WAS THE OLD STORY OF AN isolated child finding solace in the school library while his peers shrieked their joys and agonies up from the playground. Books led Bob to libraries which led to librarians which led to his becoming one. His first librarian was Miss Middleton. She was gentle to the level of docility, and she enjoyed Bob, and so was kind to him. From time to time she would silently cross the room and set a peeled orange on the table beside him, a cup of water. She did not smile, exactly, but she did give Bob the occasional softish sideways grin, which he took as proof of her fondness for him, and it was proof.