The Librarianist

Connie and Ethan told Bob they’d had enough of hiking and wanted to head back to the car. Bob said that was fine, and it was, but as they made to leave, Connie took Bob by his shoulders and set him at the front of the group. Why had she done this? He walked on, carrying his worries, and he told himself he wouldn’t look back, not even once, but then he did, and he saw Connie was herself looking back at Ethan. They weren’t speaking; she just was looking at him, and Ethan at her, and he was smiling behind his eyes so Bob knew that Connie must also have been smiling. Bob turned around to face the path. “You are limping, Bob,” Connie told him. They came away from the river and the sound of it became quieter, while the highway sound grew louder. They arrived at the car and settled into their seats; there was a silence among the three of them that for Bob had the texture of a nightmare. He had a bad moment where he thought he might shriek or come away at the seams of himself, but then he turned the key in the ignition and the news came on the radio and saved him: a bland male voice imparting sensible human world knowledges at a patient rate of speed.

IN THE DAYS AFTER THE HIKE BOB WOULD ENTER A ROOM TO FIND Connie standing at a window, lost to some dream or reverie. When he would ask her what she was doing, she would kiss his cheek and breeze away to stand at another window. This phase lasted a week. Then there came another phase, also a week, of peevishness. Bob felt she was not angry at him, but at the world. Actually, she doted on Bob during these days; she cooked all of his favorite meals and instigated bullying intercourse during which she demanded to know what pleased him — was it this or was it that or what was it? Bob wasn’t sure what was happening but wondered if he hadn’t stumbled onto a chapter of the marital experience undiscussed by the masses.

Ethan stayed away from Bob and Connie’s house, but his visits to the library carried on as was usual, and he and Bob had their weekday lunches at the Finer Diner. His apartness had returned, deepened; he still claimed not to know what was bothering him. He never ate; he only drank cup after cup of black coffee.

“You don’t eat anymore,” Bob said.

“No,” said Ethan.

“You should eat something. You should eat food.”

“Okay.” But, when Sally came to take their order, Ethan wanted only coffee. He told Bob, “I’m not sleeping, I can’t sleep.”

“You should sleep,” Bob counseled.

Ethan groaned, and began rubbing his face with his palms. He seemed agitated, even angry; after a long silence, he told Bob, “Say something.” There was an accusatory slant to these words which surprised and confused Bob; it was as though Ethan believed Bob was keeping some crucial truth from him. And Bob wasn’t sure what Ethan actually needed, but decided to tell him about the two children whose conversation he’d overheard at the library that morning: a boy and a girl, seven or eight years old, were sitting side by side in the children’s nook. As Bob was passing by, the boy was proclaiming that something, some event he’d just described, had really and truly occurred — the girl having apparently doubted the tale. The boy’s face was solemn, his voice sincere. “But I swear that’s what happened,” he was saying. “I swear to God it did.” And the girl, without looking up from her book, without raising her voice, told the boy, “Don’t bring God into this.”

Ethan’s laughter in response to the anecdote was loud, true, and weird; their fellow diners all were startled, and Sally came by and said, “Goddamn, Patty, can you spare us a laugh or are you gonna hog it all for yourself?”

“I’m going to hog it,” Ethan said. He walked Bob back to the library; when Bob waved goodbye, Ethan only stared. He looked so hungry, Bob thought. “Eat,” he said, and Ethan waved a hand that he would.

Meanwhile, back at home, Connie was entering into a third phase, another phase of happiness, but this was different from the looking-out-the-window happiness. It was something richer, more like a baseline satisfaction, a thorough confidence. She no longer was cooking for or seducing Bob; she only performed a caretakerish doting over his person, as though he were suffering under some nonfatal yet unenviable impairment.

These days and phases amounted to clues for Bob. The clues came together to form a sense of error in him, and there was a return of the revulsion in crossing the threshold of his front door when he left for work each morning, as though the house itself was telling him, stay.