The Librarianist

She lowered the toilet seat and gestured that Bob should sit, and so he did, resting the drum on his lap and readying his sticks. When Ida bowed, Bob leaned over and commenced with his audition. Having spent so many minutes and hours recently banging on the drum, in returning to the act, it felt familiar in some elusive way, as though he were re-creating something that had already occurred. This time-confusion marred Bob’s coordination, and the press roll began falling to pieces. “Stop,” said Ida. Bob stopped and watched her. “Start again.” He started again. He was focusing with all his might; Ida held up her hand and Bob ceased playing. She told him, “I’m aware of your struggle.” “Thank you,” said Bob, and Ida shook her head. “I’m not complimenting you. What I want is to think only of the sound produced by the drum, but not of the emotional truth of the drummer. Do you understand? Your problems are not my problems. Keep them to yourself, hidden away. Take a breath and try again.” Bob tried again and was playing well, but peripherally he could see that Ida was distracted; her head was bent toward the closed door and after a time she held up a hand and said, again, “Stop.” Bob stopped. “Did you call out to me?” she asked, through the door.

June answered, “Yes, several times I did.”

“All right, and what is it?”

“I just was pointing out how timely your drum practice was.”

Ida looked to Bob with a weary face. She said, “Did we ruin your powwow, or what’s the problem?”

“I don’t believe you helped, I’ll say that much.” June paused. “Do you wish to know how my media-seeking campaign has gone?”

“All right.”

“It went well, in spite of Bob’s drumming. Not that it was Bob’s fault. Bob? It’s not your fault. It’s Ida’s fault.”

“Okay,” called Bob.

A silence, then June said, “I believe I’ll print off those handbills now.”

“Yes, well, thank you for your numerous updates.” Ida shook her head and refocused her attentions on the audition. “What I’m after,” she told Bob, “is ten seconds of clean playing in a middle register. Take two breaths, deep ones, and try again.” Bob breathed and breathed and gave Ida twenty seconds of straight, solid playing. She raised her hand, and Bob stopped. “That’s very good,” she said. “Do you think you could do it with an audience present? You will be offstage, in the wings, but an audience is very there, you know, and so can cause inhibition. I suspect our numbers will not be high, but often the small audience is the more pronounced, the more there. This tension is the very thing lacking in cinema, you see, and this is the reason I detest the medium with such exuberance, with such, such—”

From the next room there came two unique sounds, one after the other: the first was a clanking and grinding, metal working against metal; next was the noise of the dogs, whom Bob had not heard bark before but who were now both barking loudly and dedicatedly, this in reply to the clanking and grinding. Ida and Bob exited the bathroom to find June working a hand crank on a small printing machine set up atop a dresser, and blue handbills seesawed through the air while the dogs jumped and barked and behaved generally in high emotion while the pages drifted down upon them and their pointy black witch hats. Over the noises of the printing machine’s grindings and the barking of the dogs, June called out to Bob, “It’s the one thing that makes them passionate beyond reason.” He picked up a handbill from the floor:

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT!

The TRIUMPHANT RETURN of BELOVED VETERANS of the STAGE

JUNE & IDA and their TRAINED CANINES, PAL & BUDDY

shall ENTERTAIN w/ UNCANNY VERVE and UNLIKELY ACCURACY A DISSECTION of our COMPLICATED POSITION

JUNE & IDA TRANSLATE this PRECARIOUS MOMENT w/ LEVITY, BREVITY, GRAVITY, and ETCETERA!

Ida took the handbill from Bob and read it. “It has a sly something,” she admitted, and June continued working the hand crank and the handbills continued their snowing down and the dogs continued to leap about and shout, and a large faux cauldron was leaking the faux smoke of dry ice which moved in a lateral stream across the room and toward the open window. Along the coastal road, Bob noticed, there was a convoy of National Guard vehicles moving south.