The Librarianist

Bob forgot he was injured and shifted his body. This occasioned a pain like an icicle in his stomach; he squinted hard and produced a low growling noise at the base of his throat and the young man asked, “Are you all right?” Bob shook his head: no. “Pain,” he said. When the pain passed, he told the young man, “I’d like to hear your patter.”

“You don’t want to hear that,” said the young man, smiling.

“It could be good for passing time,” Bob said.

“Okay, then. Only we don’t do patter anymore. Now it’s all about engagement.”

“What’s that mean?”

“In the old days, no offense, to sell was to utilize the monologue. But now, people want an active experience. The updated version is to ask questions that, coincidentally, lead the potential client where we want them.”

“Where’s that?”

“Where they’re talking themselves into buying our product.” The young man paused. “You really want me to do my thing for you? It’s a little gross. Phony-friendly, you know what I mean?”

Bob said, “I’m ready,” and the young man reconfigured himself into the shape of a salesman. He sat up straight, and his face became earnest, his voice jumped an octave: “Mr. Comet, you have a beautiful house. May I ask you how long you’ve been living here?”

“All my life, actually. It was my mother’s house before it was mine.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s wonderful. What a thing that is!” He was surveying the house interior, nodding, impressed. “And you know what? I can see at a glance that this is a well made house. Well made but also well cared for — which is critical. Because there’s a responsibility which comes along with owning a house like this, am I right? With a house like this, you’re not just the owner, you’re the custodian, would you agree with me on that, Mr. Comet?”

“Yes,” said Bob; but he wasn’t listening very closely. There was a moving or shifting inside him — something slipping into something else, something about to happen, and he was afraid as the something made its approach.

The young man asked, “Mr. Comet, have you ever heard that the windows are the eyes of a house?”

Bob said, “I’ve heard that eyes are the window to the soul.”

“Yes, and that’s a lovely turn of phrase — and true too. But, that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about, now.” He shook his head. “What I’m here to talk to you about is, I’m here to talk to you about the eyes of your house. And Mr. Comet?”

“Ah,” said Bob.

“Are you happy… with the eyes of your house?”

The something Bob had been waiting for arrived: it was a surging sensation, as if his every globule of blood was suddenly moving not in any one direction, but away. He was quite sure he was dying now, and he called out, “Oh! Oh!” and the young man pulled a silver crucifix necklace from under his safety vest, knelt at Bob’s side, and began silently, reverently praying. But still and Bob wasn’t dying; he’d had a spell and the spell was passing. He apologized to the young man, who, returning to his chair, said, “No apology necessary.” The ambulance arrived and a paramedic came in without knocking, a lean man eating a sandwich. He set this delicately on the banister at the bottom of the stairwell and leaned over Bob. Bob looked up at the paramedic’s chewing face. He asked, “You’re not going to touch me and ask me if it hurts, are you?”

The paramedic swallowed. “I was going to do that.”

“Please don’t. It hurts. I think my hip’s broken.”

The paramedic pointed. “Move your toes for me?”

“But that’ll hurt.”

“Pain is good, though; it means your person is intact. An injury like this, it’s the nonfeeling you’ve got to worry about.”

“Well, I’ll move my toes some other time.”

“Unless you can’t,” said the paramedic. He stood and picked up his sandwich and left the house. He returned without the sandwich but with another paramedic, a stern man pushing a gurney. The gurney was lowered to the ground just beside Bob. The stern paramedic said, “Okay, sir? We’re going to get you to a hospital to be x-rayed and tended to, but first we have to transfer you to the gurney, okay? I need you to bear with us.”

“Wait,” said Bob.

They did not wait, lifting him by the legs and shoulders onto the gurney. They were gentle in their movements but the shift hurt terrifically, and Bob made a noise he didn’t know he was capable of making, a prelanguage, animal-mind noise, and the young man in the safety vest stood by, covering his face.

“Can’t you give him something for the pain?” he asked the stern paramedic.

“They’ll give him something at the hospital.”

“But he needs it now, can’t you see that?”

The stern paramedic paused to look the young man up and down. “What is your relation to this person?”

“My relation is that I’m the one who found him lying there.”

“But why are you here?”

“I’m here because I sell windows.”

“Sell windows to who?”

“To whoever has need of them.”