The Librarianist

“Maybe,” Connie said to Bob, “maybe his heart was nicked by that steak knife after all, and now it’s all flat and rubbery like a popped balloon.” She took Ethan’s face in her hand and crushed it slightly. “Does that not look like the face of a man with a popped balloon heart?”

Bob couldn’t understand where Connie’s meanness was coming from, and it made him uneasy as they moved away from Portland and in the direction of the mountain. They drove for forty-five minutes along a winding, two-lane highway. The cloud cover lifted and the sun came down over the road, steam rising off the pavement. Connie put on a pair of sunglasses and rolled the dial on the radio, landing on an antic jazz number. She snapped her fingers and popped her mouth; when the station dropped away she changed over to the news station. They came to an isolated diner and Connie volunteered that Bob should go and get them a thermosful of coffee. It had been Bob’s job that morning to fetch the thermos from the Chevy, but he’d forgotten to fill it before they left. “Now,” Connie told him, “you can turn back the clock and set your mistake to rights, Bob. Isn’t that lucky?” Bob pulled over and walked across the parking lot with the empty thermos. He entered the diner and the waitress said it would be five minutes until the pot was brewed and so he sat in a booth to wait. Looking out across the parking lot he saw that Ethan was sitting up high in the backseat of the Chevy, and speaking to Connie as if he were scolding her. Connie had shifted to the driver’s position, hands on the steering wheel, looking forward, sunglasses still on, expressionless. Bob watched as Ethan reached up and touched Connie’s shoulder. Connie pulled away and turned to face Ethan, addressing him sharply, fiercely. After she had finished, and resumed her forward-facing driver’s position, Ethan dropped back in his seat, his posture sullen and low. Neither of them was speaking anymore. Minutes later, as Bob crossed the parking lot with the full thermos, they still were silent, ignoring each other. When Bob got in the car, and before he could ask what was the matter, Connie said, “Ethan’s trying to ruin the day, Bob. But we’re not going to let him, are we?”

Bob asked Ethan, “Why are you trying to ruin the day?”

“I don’t know why,” he said.

“Notice that he doesn’t deny he’s trying to ruin it,” Connie said.

“I did notice that,” Bob said. He asked Ethan, “Won’t you deny it?”

“I won’t, no. Because I am trying to ruin it.” He reached for the thermos and, unscrewing the lid, poured himself a cupful.

Connie was adjusting the rearview mirror. “Well,” she said, “if he’s going to try to ruin the day then he should just get out of our car and walk home, or walk into traffic, either one.”

Bob turned to Ethan and made a face of mock shock. He wished to defuse the situation, to undo whatever was the matter, but Ethan was distracted by his own bitter mysteries and wouldn’t go along with this. He took a sip of the coffee, winced at the heat of it, fanned his tongue, and put his tongue away. “You know what, though, Bob? She’s right. And I’m sorry. I’ll stop. I’m stopping.” And then he did stop; by the time they arrived at the trailhead he was sitting up and behaving normally, or more normally than he had been.

It had turned into such a pretty day: brisk but not cold, damp but not raining, with bright, dazzling sunlight coming through the breaks in the branches of the trees as the trio moved along a footpath toward the rounded static-sound of the running river. Ethan was leading the way and moving at a skipping half-jog, with Connie behind Ethan, and Bob behind Connie. From time to time Ethan would look back, his face reflecting a high and uncomplicated happiness. Bob wondered what it was that had made him so sickly before, and also how he could simply turn that sickliness off. Connie rolled her eyes at Ethan, but she was amused, back to liking him again.

The river was high and roiling and they had to raise their voices to hear one another. Connie consulted the map in her hiking guidebook and pointed north, upriver. There was a footbridge, she said, that would connect them to a trail on the far side of the water. But, when they arrived at the place where the bridge was said to be they saw it had been damaged and almost entirely washed away, timber gone, and the rope handrailing hanging down in a tangle, frayed ends bouncing and dragging across the surface of the swollen, glassy river. It was impassable, and they continued walking north in search of some other way across.