The Librarianist

“Just move around, circulate,” Maria told him. “Ask someone what their name is, then tell them yours. It’s like a cocktail party but no cocktails.” She gave him a friendly little shove into the Great Room and he looped the long table, waving to anyone who made eye contact, hopeful for an invitation to linger. But nobody was inclined to speak with him, and he only continued walking. At the back of the room the woman named Jill was again at her card table, working on another puzzle. Bob was stepping up to greet her when he noticed the man in the electronic wheelchair and big beret sitting in the opposite corner beneath a wall-mounted television. This scenario struck Bob as the more promising of the two; he crossed over and pulled up a chair. The man in the big beret was watching a tennis match, men’s singles; Bob took advantage of his distraction to make a thorough inspection of his features: a countenance of high, true ugliness. The ample flesh of his face was mottled with inky purple staining, so that he looked as if he’d been poisoned or gassed; he had a broad and pitted nose destroyed by burst vessels; he had no eyebrows or eyelashes, and his eye whites were pink going red. These elements came together to form the picture of a man with unhealthy habits and gargantuan appetites running unchecked across the length of several decades. But there was also an animation about him that spoke of a defiant life force; something like joy, but mutant.

In a little while a nurse with a NANCY name tag and a gold crucifix necklace approached pushing a cart. “Snack time, boys,” she said. The cart held four rows of rounded lumps, ten lumps per row, half of them whiteish and furred, the other half dark brown and resembling brains in modeled miniature. “And who are these gentlemen?” asked the man in the big beret.

“Peanut butter balls and raisin balls.”

“Which are what, exactly?”

“Peanut butter balls are peanut butter rolled into balls and covered with coconut flakes. Raisin balls are just raisins mashed together.”

“And who fabricated them?”

“I did.”

“Can I assume you wore gloves?”

Nurse Nancy looked at Bob fatiguedly, as if for a witness. She brightened when she realized she’d not met him before. “Are you new?” she asked.

“Yes, hello, I’m here by the AVA.”

Now her face became cold, she wheeled the cart backward, away from Bob. “I’m sorry, but the snacks are not for volunteers.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Bob told her. He hadn’t wanted to partake of the snacks even a little bit. But she remained wary, as if Bob might try to lunge and snap up one of the balls when she wasn’t paying attention. The man in the big beret had put on a pair of reading glasses and now was looking over the cart with his head tilted back. “Is there a shortage of food in the pantry?” he asked. “Because it seems to me these are some bullshit snacks.”

“Actually, there is a shortage. And if you think it’s fun to try to piece together a healthy nutritional program from what they’ve given me in there, then why don’t you do me a favor and think again. Also, I believe I’ve already told you what I think about your language, have I not?”

“You did tell me, but it must have slipped my mind.” He took his reading glasses off. “Brass tacks, Nance. How many can I have?”

“How many do you want?”

“How many can I have?”

“You can have two.”

“Two of each?”