The Librarianist

MR. MORE WANTED TO SHOW EVERYONE THE FRESHLY LAID, SPECIALLY ordered white pea gravel surrounding the hotel, and so the group moved in a lazy cloud formation to circle the property. Mr. More spoke as they walked. “I had the perimeter graveled around the time I sent you my optimistic missive encouraging your return. Now I lament the cost, but I do like the crunching sound it makes underfoot. Does it not create the impression of approaching drama? Is it not somewhat like a moat?” Picking up his thread from before, he turned to June and said, “Regarding the playbills. Let me get it over with and say it: yes, there are none. But I was the passive victim in that caper, and here is what happened: the printer hanged himself the day after I put in my order. What do you think of that? Thomas Conroy was his name; and I’d known him since 1905. We were in the one-room grade school together, in Astoria. Once we were caned for making cow sounds in Mass, and here he goes and does something like this. He tacked a note to the front door of his shop, which I read with my own eyes. It was a very sober and, I felt, fair summation of the why of it all.”

“He named his reasons for hanging himself?” said Ida.

“He did.”

“And what were they?”

“Tiredness.”

“Just that?”

“Pronounced tiredness, let’s say.”

“He should have taken a little vacation,” June said.

“Yes, and I do wish he would have, if only that he’d have completed my order. He was a talented printer, and there are none in the area to replace him.” Mr. More paused. “Do you know, now that I think of it, he was not a joyful child, either.”

“A woe-is-me type?” Ida said.

“I don’t know that he cultivated it, exactly. But the bitter crop came in all the same, and this year’s was apparently overwhelming in its fullness.”

“Was he distraught when you placed the order?”

“He was his usual not-so-glad self. But distraught? No, not particularly. He asked for five dollars down payment, which he’d not done before, and which I did give him, in cash, and who can say why he required this, but now I can’t help but wonder: Did he know what he would do some eighteen hours later? And if so, why did he take my order at all, to say nothing of my money, which I can only barely spare and shall never get back? In his letter’s postscript he stated a wish that the note would be printed verbatim in our local paper, and I myself brought this to the attention of the paper’s editor, but he wouldn’t allow it, suffering as he does from a grievous Catholicism.”

Having lapped the hotel’s exterior, and with the nighttime coming down and chill onshore winds growing stronger all the while, June proposed the time had come that they should remove themselves from the elements. Mr. More agreed; climbing spryly up the blue steps, he turned to face the group, taking advantage of his temporary elevation to give a little speech before granting them admission: “Friends,” he said, “I see you’re disappointed by the state of things, and I understand the disappointment, accustomed as I am with that mode of being; but in the meantime I am revitalized by your presence, and will do all I can to ensure your successes. I’ve wrapped the stage in three-quarter-inch red oak and rewired the footlights with a dimmer feature and the curtain has been cleaned and mended and dyed. Beyond this, I am simply beside myself with happiness at the thought of learning more about this new work. I put myself at your disposal, then, utterly and thoroughly; and while my abilities are finite, please know that my devotion to your practice is boundless.” June was pleased by this, but she was not quite ready to bury the whole hatchet, and so she repressed her pleasure as much as she was able. The truth was that she liked Mr. More to a degree that was uncommon in her life and experience. “Thank you, that’s fine,” she told him. “We can speak of the show after this much-heralded soup. Will you be asking for a role in the production right away, or later on?”

“Oh, right away,” said Mr. More assuredly, propping open the front door of the hotel with his foot and waving in his guests one by one. When Bob passed, Mr. More explained, “I always make an attempt to take part in their performances, and they always turn me down. It’s one of our small traditions. But in my two-armed youth, I was not unfamiliar with the life of the stage.”