The Librarianist

By this time, Bob had established the beginnings of a friendship with Ethan Augustine. Male comradeship, like romantic love, had eluded Bob through the length of his life, when suddenly here was Ethan, and he was charming and good or goodish, and he liked Bob, and Bob didn’t quite understand why, but he went along with it if only to see where it might go. The night of the day Bob had first spoken with Connie, he met Ethan for a drink at the bar down the block from the library, and set about explaining his experience in detail. By telling the story, it sounded flimsy to Bob, as if nothing much had happened at all. But why could he not stop thinking of Connie even briefly? And was he such a fool to think the connection was shared? “Maybe it was all in my head,” said Bob. Ethan, who understood as well as anyone that romantic emotion was often to the side of language, said, “But maybe it was in hers too.” Bob was doubtful, but he began watching his days afterward, watching the door of the library and wondering when this person would come again. When he next saw her she was cape-less, in a wine-colored sweater and tweed skirt, black tights and flats, and he understood when their eyes met that he was very seriously sickened by an ancient and terrorific affliction.

IT WAS ON ONE OF BOB’S FAVORED QUIET LIBRARY MORNINGS THAT he first met Ethan. Bob pulled into the lot and discovered a battered and hubcapless 1951 Mercury parked at a skewed angle in his spot. He sat idling in his Chevy, and he understood for the hundredth time that it was other people who made for problems in this life. He parked and approached the Mercury. There was a body slumped facedown across the front seat, and for one instant Bob thought it was a corpse. But when he rapped on the window the body stretched itself, and groaned, and this was Ethan. Sitting, he looked up at Bob, smiling already, easy in the skin of himself, handsome in his dishevelment. “Hi,” he said, rolling down the window. “How you doing?”

“You can’t park here,” Bob told him.

“Can’t I?” Ethan looked around at the empty lot. “Why not?”

Bob pointed at the sign in front of the car: PARKING FOR LIBRARY STAFF ONLY. Ethan read the sign. He said, “I’ve parked in your special space.”

Bob couldn’t say for certain whether or not this person was making fun of him. “Just, move it along, all right?” he said, and Ethan began the ritual of starting his car: pumping the gas and jiggling the steering wheel back and forth. He reached to turn the key in the ignition, then froze. “I just remembered something.”

“What?”

“I can’t move the car. Or I could, but I can’t go home, and so I’d really rather not move it, because there’s nowhere else for me to be right now.” Ethan pointed. “What if I parked in one of these other, less special spots?”

“Why can’t you go home?”

“Well, there’s a whole long story there, but in a nutshell it’s that it could be bad for my health.”

“Why?”

“I’d have to tell you the whole long story to answer that question.”

Bob looked at the library and back. “Couldn’t you tell me a shortened version?”

“Yes, I could do that,” said Ethan, and he sat up straight to tell it.

He lived in an apartment above the pharmacy across the street from the library. The night before he’d returned home after seeing a movie, and in prowling up the block in search of a parking spot noticed that the light in his apartment was on, though he distinctly remembered turning it off. He sat idling awhile, and soon saw an individual he now described to Bob as “a man I know who wants to kill me” stepping around inside his bedroom. Thinking to wait it out, Ethan moved his car off the street and into the library lot, behind a shrubbery bisecting the library property from the sidewalk. From this vantage point, Ethan explained, he could see into his apartment but was himself hidden away. He had spent the night on stakeout, then, succumbing to sleep only as the sun was coming up.

Bob asked, “How do you know he’s still in there?”

“That white pickup truck’s his,” Ethan said.

“Why don’t you call the police?”

“That’s a fair question, but a complicated one, and the answer, unfortunately, is that the man who wants to kill me is himself a policeman.” Ethan lit a cigarette and sat there as if considering the experience of smoking. It was here that Bob had his first sense of liking Ethan. It came over him strongly and was confusing in that he didn’t understand what had happened to inspire it. At any rate, his initial annoyance at the distraction from his perfected morning was gone. “Okay,” said Bob. “Next question. Why does the man want to kill you?”

“Well, now, there’s a story there, also.”

“A long story?”

“No, it’s quite a brief story.” He ashed his cigarette out the window. “Can I ask your name?”

“Bob.”

“Nice to meet you, Bob. I’m Ethan.”

“Hi, Ethan.”

“Hi. Now, the truth of the matter in terms of this man’s wanting to kill me is that there is a wife involved.”

“The man’s wife.”