The Librarianist

ONE NIGHT, AFTER STAYING TOO LATE AT HIS APARTMENT, AND AFTER having drunk two too many fruit jars of wine, Bob laid himself out on Ethan’s itchy green couch and made to pass his night there. He’d been asleep some hours when there came a knock at the door. Ethan crossed the room in his underwear to answer; he led a heavily perfumed female figure through the darkness and back into his bedroom. According to the noises made by the visitor, their communications were successful on a scale Bob could not fathom; which is to say that he truly did not understand what was going on in that room. He stared at the ceiling and waited for the noises to end. He smoked a cigarette, then lit a second off the first. When the duo at last achieved finale and completion, the noiselessness was so sudden and total, it was to Bob a noise in itself, and there came from somewhere deep in the building a round of applause, neighbors of Ethan’s who were likely used to such sounds emanating from the apartment. In the morning Bob had a headache fashioned by the wine but also confusion, envy. He brewed a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Ethan and the woman to emerge from the bedroom, but then Ethan entered by the front door, alone, and with a pink box of pastries under his arm. “Good morning!” he said.

“Morning,” said Bob. “Where’s your screaming, agreeing friend?”

“She went home hours ago.” Ethan poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the table, waiting for the interrogation that he knew had to come. “So,” Bob began. With this one word he was saying many things. He was saying, So this is your life. He was saying, So that’s the way lovemaking sounds for you. He was saying, I don’t recognize those sounds in regards to my own lovemaking. He was saying, Is it all as nice for you as it seems?

“Yeah,” Ethan answered.

“But, who is she?”

“A woman I know.”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“On the street.”

“What?”

Ethan opened up the pink pastry box and perused its contents. “It was during a carless time of mine, and I was sitting at a bus stop on Broadway when she pulled up in a new Pontiac to ask me directions to the Rose Garden. She had Oregon plates and frankly, I didn’t think she needed directions in the first place. ‘All right,’ I told her, ‘you’ve got so much free time on your hands, why don’t you give me a ride home?’ That appeared to be what she was thinking about, anyway. And I hadn’t meant it meanly, but she took offense, or pretended to take offense. Then my bus came and I got on. I forgot about her, but when I got off at my stop, there was the Pontiac again. ‘Excuse me, young man,’ she said.” Ethan selected a pastry and took a bite, catching the crumbs with his free hand.

“And then what happened?”

“She said she supposed she was going my way after all. I got in her car and she drove me home.”

“Then what?”

Ethan raised and lowered and raised and lowered his eyebrows.

Bob said, “Right off the bat?”

“Yep.”

“Was this in the daytime?”

“Yep.”

“And when was that?”

“End of last winter.”

“How often do you see her?”

“Every couple weeks she shows up. There’s no schedule; it’s all down to her. I don’t even have her phone number.” Ethan pushed the pink box toward Bob but Bob couldn’t focus on anything other than the discussion at hand.

“But who is she?” he asked again.

“I really can’t tell you, Bob. I mean, that’s a part of the whole deal. I know her first name is Pearl, and I know she’s rich, and that she’s married, though she acts like she’s not — takes her ring off before coming up. Okay, fine. She wants to pretend about certain things and I’m comfortable with that. She told me once, ‘The first time you ask me for money, Ethan, you’ll never see me again.’ Can you top that? She’s always chasing after the upper hand, and I let her think she’s got it, but she never will — not really she won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I truly don’t care if she never comes back.”

“But you welcome her when she does.”

“Welcome her is a bit much. I don’t turn her away, though, it’s true.”

“I think she probably felt welcome last night,” Bob observed.

Ethan bowed in his seat. He took another bite of his pastry. “As time goes by, I think of my visits with Pearl, and the Pearls of the world, as practice. Because someday, buddy, I’m going to fall in love too, just like you. And when I do, that woman will be doted on to within an inch of her life.” When Bob said the scenario felt a little dark or heartless to him, Ethan said he was giving the whole thing too much credence. “Really, it’s just a small courtesy she and I are doing for one another, like holding the elevator open for a stranger.” He patted the pink box. “These sticky buns are excellent, Bob.”