The Librarianist

“Okay, that all makes sense, but where does he live?”

“I don’t know. Where do you live, Bob?”

“I live in a house in northeast.”

“Sounds plush,” Brighty told Maria.

“It’s all right,” said Bob.

“He’s modest. I’m sure it’s very plush and classy. His wife must be pleased with her — fortunate situation.”

Bob said, “I have no wife.”

Now Brighty looked at Bob. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t. I did have one, once.”

“And one was enough?”

“It must have been.”

“You’re a widower?”

“Divorcé,” said Bob.

“And when were you granted — your freedom?”

Bob did some quick addition. “Forty-five years ago.”

Brighty made to whistle, but the whistle didn’t catch and so was more a puffing noise.

Maria said, “Brighty has been married five times, Bob.”

“What do you think about that?” Brighty asked Bob.

“I think that’s a lot of times to be married,” Bob answered.

“I like a big party, is what it is,” said Brighty. “And I’ll take a wedding over a funeral any day of any week, if it’s all the same to you.” She walked off to a bank of mismatched couches lining the long wall of the Great Room, sat down, leaned her head back, and shut her eyes. “Brighty,” Maria told Bob. Bob noticed Chip was no longer in her chair but had taken up a standing position next to the front door, looking at it but not looking at it. He mentioned Chip’s movements to Maria, who sighed and led him to the far corner of the Great Room where a scowling woman sitting at a fold-up card table was working on a thousand-piece puzzle. She had stringy, unclean gray hair, and she wore a pair of reading glasses on top of her regular glasses. “This is Jill,” said Maria. “Jill’s one of our nonresident visitors. Jill, will you say hello to our new friend Bob? I won’t be a minute.” She excused herself to fetch Chip away from the front door. Jill, meanwhile, was staring up at Bob, who told her, “Hi.” She didn’t respond. When Bob asked how she was doing she raised her hands up in the style of a doctor who has just scrubbed in ahead of surgery, each finger standing alone, with space between itself and its siblings. “I can’t feel my thumbs,” she said.

“Just now you can’t?” asked Bob.

She shook her head. “I woke up in the middle of the night thinking there was someone in the room with me. ‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Hello?’ Then I realized, you know, about my thumbs.”

“You couldn’t feel them.”

“I couldn’t and still can’t.” She lowered her hands onto her lap. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know,” said Bob. “Who was the person in the room?”

“Oh, no one. Probably what that was was the presence of something new that’s wrong with me?” She cocked her head, as if in recognition of her own queer phrasing. She told Bob, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look like a doctor.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

Jill drew back in her chair. “Why are you asking me questions about my health if you’re not a doctor?”

Bob wasn’t sure what to say to this, so he decided to reroute the conversation in the direction of the puzzle: “What will it look like when you’re done?” he asked, and she took the puzzle’s box top and held it up beside her grave face. She asked Bob, “Do you know what this is?”

“It’s a harvest scene.”

She bobbed her head, as if to say he was partly right. In an explaining tone of voice, she said, “It’s about the fall feeling.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’m not sure that I do.”

“The fall feeling,” said Jill, “is the knowledge of a long dusk coming on.” She looked at him with an expression of significance. Her reading glasses had a sticker attached to the left lens that read: $3.99.

She resumed her puzzle work, rooting about for useful pieces, her numb thumbs held out at odd angles, her middle and pointer fingers stained yellow by nicotine use. Bob said goodbye and walked off in search of Maria, pausing before a bulletin board choked with notices and artworks and informational papers. One flyer among the many caught his eye: a call for volunteers at the center. Maria returned to find Bob writing down the phone number for the American Volunteer Association in his pocket spiral notepad.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m interested.”

“Have you volunteered before?”

“No.”