The Librarianist

Ethan and Connie had returned to the same state as that first day they’d met, when they’d entered the library together, happy with themselves and each other. Bob watched as Ethan reached out to touch Connie’s forearm. He was only making a punctuative gesture, but it continued for such a duration, and Bob believed that this contact pleased Connie, so that he felt a quick queasiness. No sooner had Ethan and Connie finished their desserts than they began stacking dishes and gathering the cutlery, and again they went away to the kitchen, this time to do the washing up together. Eileen watched them leaving with a glazed expression; she’d drunk too much, too quickly. Reaching up to draw a lock of hair away from her face she toppled her wineglass, afterward contemplating the liquid as it soaked into the lace tablecloth. Bob sat there thinking of what it would be like to be married to this person, and decided it would be partly but not thoroughly terrible. It would be lonely. He didn’t understand Ethan’s decision to marry her, and he didn’t understand why she was in his home. Connie’s laughter sounded from the kitchen, and Eileen and Bob were looking in the direction of the noise. Again the screen door opened and shut and Chicky came in correcting her dress and picking pieces of grass from her hair. “Well, he screwed me in bushes,” she announced as she sat down. Chance entered the dining room smoking a cigar.

“How was it?” Bob asked.

Chicky made the half-and-half gesture; Chance said, “What are you talking about? It was great.” The chatter and laughter from the kitchen continued and Bob wondered how it was possible the dishes weren’t done yet. Eileen’s face had gone pale and she told Bob, “I’m going to lie down for a little while, if you don’t mind.” She moved to the living room; Bob heard the couch groan. He went into his head for a time and when he returned he decided he was ready for his guests to leave his house. He called out to Ethan that Eileen was ill.

“What did he say?” Bob heard Connie ask.

“That Eileen is ill.”

“Eileen is not well?”

“She has suffered a spell.”

“Has she toppled and fell?”

“Shall we give her a pill?”

Their laughter was a raspy cackling and Chicky sat watching Bob with a look imparting, he thought, condolence. He forced his face into a smile, to show he was not bothered, that there was nothing to be bothered by; but Chicky’s eyes were cold and staring. Connie still was laughing and Bob was no longer smiling and Eileen started retching, then loudly throwing up wine and meat loaf on the carpet in the living room, and everyone came into the room to watch, and after she was done then the dinner party also was done.

THE ENGAGEMENT WITH EILEEN DIDN’T LAST OUT THE MONTH. BOB found out from Ethan, who called him at work and told him, “I’m at the hospital.”

“Has someone been hurt?” Bob asked.

“I’ve been hurt. I’m still hurt, actually. Will you come visit me? There’s no one fun to talk to here.” Bob took a long lunch break, stopping for a bouquet of flowers on the way. When he arrived at the hospital he found Ethan abed, bored-looking but apparently healthy. When he made to sit up, though, he winced in what Bob took for significant pain. Bob pulled up a chair and asked what had happened. “The whole thing started,” Ethan said, “with Eileen’s mother, Georgie.”

Georgie, Ethan told Bob, was Eileen but twenty-five years older, and hardened by a life of lovelessness and languor. She could drink a bottle of champagne at brunch with never so much as a slur, she smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and her pastime was viciousness, directed at her daughter in the morning hours and her husband after the sun set. Georgie endeavored to get Ethan off on his own and she succeeded without very much trouble at all, for she wore her age and vices well, and Ethan had not met a woman before who thought so little of telling him precisely what she wanted him to do. Georgie was a force, and she had style, and for a time these two were simpatico. “The other waiters got wind of my position and explained my good fortune to me. All I had to do was keep the husband in the dark and at season’s end I’d have a hundred-dollar tip and fond memories to boot. Fine, but there was Eileen, looking up at me as I poured her coffee, and I just had to engage with her. Georgie got wind of the budding friendship and made to head us off at the pass but it was too late, we’d already broke bread. Broken bread. The bread was in pieces.”

“So, the story you’re telling me,” Bob said, “is that you made love to your fiancée’s mother.”

“No, Georgie wasn’t my fiancée’s mother at the time of our entanglement. If we have to name a crime here, I guess you could say that I became engaged to the daughter of a woman I’d had an affair with.”

“So there was never any overlap?”