That Night in the Library

Chapter 10 Davey

The library was closing in eight minutes. Davey’s students had disappeared into the evening, and he sat at his desk with nothing to do. The waiting was the hardest part. Because his hunger had left him in a foul mood, he decided he wouldn’t put away the Ge’ez manuscripts. Presumably, he’d have to move desks when Ronald told him he’d landed the permanent job; this cluster of tables was always reserved for the student employees, but he didn’t care about leaving work for his future self.

Davey wanted Ronald to see the manuscripts strewed about when he finally left his office. If this was really his last day, he’d have gone to Ronald’s office and shook his hand and thanked him for the two years, for the opportunity to work in this magical space, but to do so would be to admit he wasn’t coming back, and Davey believed no such thing. It wasn’t for lack of other opportunities. Davey hadn’t applied for other jobs, but he could have, and he’d have been desired. When he thought about what he might want to do after graduation, he tried to imagine what would make his mother proud. He wrote a list of options. School teacher—too common. PhD candidate—too impractical. Nonprofit worker—would his mother want him toiling away, always begging for funds to support development of the Ethiopian American community? It was the part of the list that gave him pause. But no. His mother was a reader. The library was the thing. He’d decided early, and once Davey made a decision, he was immovable.

He was so convinced he’d be staying in Vermont that he’d put his eggs in a basket so baffling and against type, his roommate had to be talked down from calling the mental health hotline at Student Wellness Services.

Davey got himself a little dog. He was a Jack Russell terrier who Davey named Nero, and he was such a nightmare that Davey had to pay that same roommate $100 so he’d agree to care for Nero the night of the ritual. Davey and his little dog and his sunny Vermont apartment. This was going to be his life.

Ronald interviewed all three of the graduating student assistants for the one permanent role. It was tradition: that everyone be given a chance. It was tradition, too, that they didn’t attend each other’s candidate presentations, though Davey didn’t think everything needed to be cast in stone, so he’d lingered by the open door to listen to both Soraya and Mary talk to the staff about their plans on their respective interview days. Mary talked about social media; of course she did. She called it “outreach to a new generation of users,” but she was talking about Instagram posts. If he’d been coaching her, he’d have encouraged her to talk about building the East Asian collection, but to her detriment, she hadn’t asked his advice. Soraya, too, talked about outreach. A snooze.

The assignment was ostensibly to talk about future plans for the library, but Davey was no dummy, and he knew that jobs are won on past successes.

“It’s a library because it wants us to remember who we are,” he said, and then he listed his articles in peer-reviewed publications and the dozens of tours for graduate students and faculty he’d conducted that very year.

Ronald had nodded. Ronald who had such an encyclopedic knowledge of the library and its collection. Ronald who so appreciated history.

“We have to keep an eye to the future, sure, but we can’t forsake our past in order to do so.”

Davey populated the presentation with photos of him in the library, in the reading room showing manuscripts to groups of students, at a summer training institute to learn preservation techniques. Once they went down the path of abandoning the old ways, they couldn’t ever get them back, and Ronald knew it. Ronald had smiled at him—made direct eye contact and smiled—and Davey knew at that moment the job was his.

“Do you have an announcement?” he asked Ronald a week ago. Only a week before graduation, not at all a lot to ask, to know about your future with so little time left. Ronald had put down his auction catalog.

“There’s a process, Davey,” he’d said.

“Even unofficially, if you could say so I can make a decision about my lease,” Davey said. His lease wasn’t up until September; Nero loved to snooze in a morning patch of sunlight in the kitchen. The thing with the lease was just a line, but Ronald didn’t know it was a line and making him wait this long was cruel.

When Davey had left the office, without an answer, Ronald closed the door behind him. A statement, since Ronald’s office door was never closed.

Only a few minutes to go, Davey thought, running a finger along the manuscripts on his desk. He was so hungry he nearly broke his fast right then, nearly went to the small lunchroom and ate a sugar cube to clear his wooziness. The library was the type of place that had sugar cubes. No one would ever know and he’d have his head about him to lead the events, but he’d know and even if it was just in his own head, it would spoil everything.

Tomorrow morning he’d emerge from the basement unafraid, tomorrow morning he’d learn about the job, tomorrow morning he’d graduate and his anger at Ronald would be forgotten and the rest of his life would begin. People would come to him to have their volumes appraised and dealers would take him to lunch and he’d plan exhibitions so stunning that their catalogs would win awards.

In these last minutes, he went to his desk to gather supplies. He was lingering now; this should have been done an hour ago, but the hunger was making him brave, or reckless—he dared Ronald to come out of his office at this very last minute and try to stop them. He’d left his backpack under his desk that day—disallowed under the rules of the library should someone be tempted to slip a volume into a nearby bag—but Ronald hadn’t noticed. Most of what he needed was already in the basement, snuck down under stacks of books, one trip at a time.

The ritual required that every initiate speak Greek, and he’d told them all, he’d warned them to learn a few words at the very least, but he had no trust that anyone would listen, so he’d also printed a stack of Greek poems, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, with their phonetic reading alongside. They’d fool the gods, if need be. There was a package of white taper candles. They weren’t so much for light as for atmosphere. When he imagined the ritual, he imagined it happening by candlelight. There was food to break their fast. So many broken rules in one backpack. His parcel had honey and goat cheese and pita, but he couldn’t bring himself to carry the food downstairs. A single crumb could attract a pest, and a single pest would wreak havoc in the massive basement. He left the food in his backpack; they could come eat upstairs when it was time to break the fast.

There was a letter opener on his desk. Pewter and heavy. He used the sharp edge to scratch his mosquito bite. So close to his eye, it was foolish, but the cool metal was heaven against the hot itch. The letter opener had come with the desk; he often opened correspondence from donors and the like, and Ronald told him it had been passed down from student to student for years. It was funny, this job, the type of job where one still needed a letter opener. He considered putting it in his pocket. No real reason, but a blade seemed like the type of thing one should have at the ritual. In the end, though, he couldn’t think what he’d do with it.

The last ingredient for the ritual was the most difficult. Participants are to learn a secret, found in a physical object that could only be revealed when they concluded the rite and broke the fast. Where were there more parcels of secrets than in a building full of books? Davey’s initial idea was to point to the shelves, but that felt incomplete, so he’d hidden a basket in the stacks with a symbol he hoped they would all find gratifying.

Satisfied he had all he needed, it was time to go to the basement and hide. Still, he lingered a little longer. It was unfathomable that Ronald wasn’t coming to say goodbye, wasn’t saying anything at all. He stood there in the empty workroom and waited, but Ronald’s office door didn’t budge.

Davey pocketed the last of his supplies and disappeared to the reference area, where the stairs to the basement were propped open and waiting for him. It was time to begin.