Chapter 13 Reece
THIRTEEN
REECE
The library is on the fourth floor. The fourth floor is where they keep the bound periodicals nobody reads anymore and the books in fields no one comes to the library for.
The carrels back there are usually empty, which is why I go.
I’m back here on a Wednesday at three because I have a book on hold that has come in.
I have come to pick it up. I have brought a second book with me to read because the carrels back here are quiet in a way the rest of the library is not.
I get the held book at the desk. I sign for it.
I take it back through the stacks toward the far end of the floor, where the window faces the river, and I find a carrel, and I sit.
I read for forty minutes. The book is fine.
It’s a thing I had been told to read for a different class, last semester, that I had not gotten to.
It’s on a topic I had pretended for two years to be interested in and that I am, increasingly, no longer pretending to be interested in.
I read it because reading it is the kind of thing you do in the late afternoon when the alternative is going home and sitting on the couch and looking at the toothpaste bag.
I’m back to looking at the toothpaste bag, despite having put the toothpaste away. The bag is gone. I keep looking.
I read for forty minutes and at four-twenty I stand up.
I stretch. I walk down the row of stacks to find a different book, one that is referenced in the one I am reading.
I round the corner of the third stack from the window, and Griffin is there.
He’s at a stack with his back half-turned to me.
He’s reading the spines of a row of books at eye level.
He has his bag over one shoulder. He’s in the same coat as Tuesday.
He is holding a book in his right hand at his side, the spine out.
The book is one I recognize. It’s on the syllabus of the proseminar, the one for next week.
He’s here for next week. He has not seen me.
I have a second to back up. I do not back up.
I do not back up because backing up is, I realize, going to be the rest of my life.
Backing up. Re-routing. Switching aisles.
Finding different floors of different libraries.
I’m tired, today, of the backing up. I have been tired of the backing up for three weeks.
The toothpaste was the first sign. Not calling Mendez was the second.
Not changing my registration was the third.
I’m tired. I’m tired in the way you get tired when the work of avoiding a thing has gotten bigger than the work of facing it.
I take a step into the row. He hears me. Or, he registers me. He turns. He sees me. Something passes across his face.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.”
“I came up here for a book.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“It’s fine.”
“Yeah.”
We stand at opposite ends of the stack for a second. Neither of us moves. He’s at eye level with the books and I am six feet behind him. The stack is between us. The light from the window at the end of the row is doing something strange to his hair. I shouldn’t be looking at his hair.
“Did you get the article,” he says.
“What.”
“For Thursday. The Hartman article. There were only two copies in the system. I have one.”
“I… yeah. I got it. The other one.”
“Okay.”
“It’s good.”
“Yeah.”
“The argument is good.”
“Yeah.”
We are talking about a Hartman article. We are standing in a library at four-twenty on a Wednesday and we are talking about a Hartman article.
I am hearing my own voice and the voice is talking about historiography and the voice is doing a fine job.
The rest of me is registering that we’re having the first conversation we have had in two years and twenty-six days that’s not about whether one of us is dead.
It’s about a Hartman article. The conversation is in fact going.
“Are you,” he starts. “Are you going to come on Thursday.”
I look at him.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Why wouldn’t I come.”
“I don’t know. I’m asking.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Okay.”
He nods. He turns back to the stack. He runs his finger along the row of spines.
He pulls out a different book than the one in his hand and looks at it.
He puts it back. He looks at the stack. He is doing something deliberate with his hands, which is that he is keeping them busy.
It’s a thing he does when he doesn’t know what to do.
Something I had filed about him six years ago and had not had occasion to use until this minute.
“I should go,” I say.
“Okay.”
I take a step backward. I’m about to turn. I’m about to turn and walk out of the row and go back to my carrel. He says, “Reed.”
I stop.
“What,” I say.
He is still facing the stack. He’s not looking at me. He says, to the books, “Why are you here.”
“I came up to find…“
“Not the library.”
“Oh.”
“In this town. At this school. Why are you here.”
I look at the back of his head. The light is still doing something to his hair. He is still not turning around. He’s asking the question to a row of books because asking it to my face would be a different question. I do not say anything for a minute.
“I didn’t know you were here,” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
“I didn’t know.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a list. Of places. The program, there’s a list of places they put people. This was on the list. I picked from the list. You weren’t a factor.”
He still is not turning around.
“It would have been a factor,” I say, and I stop, and I think don’t, and I keep going. “If I had known. It would have been the only factor. I would have asked them to put me anywhere else.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“That’s two.”
“What.”
“That’s two times you’ve said sorry. I told you to pick a different word.”
“Right.”
He turns around. He turns around and he looks at me and his face is closed off in the way it has been for weeks, the way I cannot read. His eyes do the work. He looks at me and he says, “What’s your last name now.”
“What.”
“Your last name. The new one. What is it.”
“I…“
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t, Griffin.”
“I said okay.”
He’s looking at me. He has the book in his hand. The book is between us because his hand is between us. The book has a green cover that is starting to fade and the title is in a font from the seventies. I’m looking at the book because I cannot look at his face.
“Okay,” he says again, quieter. “I’m going to go work somewhere else. Before this gets worse.”
“Okay.”
He moves past me. He moves past me and his coat brushes my coat and the brush is the same as the brush in the pharmacy.
He is past. He is walking out of the row.
I am standing in the row with the books that I came for and I have not actually picked one up.
He gets to the end of the row. He stops.
He stands at the end of the row with his back to me and he says, without turning, “There’s a bench by the river.
Behind the science building. I sit there sometimes. After class.”
He says it to the air. He does not wait for me to respond.
He walks out of the row and he is gone. I stand in the stack for a long time.
I stand there until my legs start to ache.
I realize I have been standing in one position for I do not know how long.
The light is different. The window at the end of the row is going orange the way it does in the late afternoon.
I am in a library and I am alone in a stack and Griffin has just told me where he sits after class.
I do not go to the bench. That’s what I tell myself standing in the stack.
The bench is a piece of information he gave me, and that is all it is.
I go back to my carrel. I put my book in my bag.
I leave the library. I walk home the way I walk home.
I get to my building. I unlock the door.
I go up the stairs. I get to my apartment.
I stand in the kitchen. I do not sit down.
I think about the bench. I think about it for a long time.
I don’t go. Not that night. Not the next day.
Not Friday after the proseminar — which I sit through, during which Griffin and I do not look at each other once.
We both contribute to the discussion in ways that mean we have read the article.
Not Saturday. Not Sunday. On Monday I go.
I do not decide to go until I am on the path.
I’m on the path because I am going somewhere else.
I’m going to the gas station for coffee.
The gas station is not in the direction of the bench.
I’m on the path that goes in the direction of the bench because I have been walking, I tell myself, just walking, and the walking has taken me here.
I’m at the corner where you turn left to go to the bench.
I turn left. I get to the bench at four-fifty-five.
He’s on it. Of course he is. He told me he would be on it.
He told me he sits there sometimes after class.
After class is now. I am here at the time he told me he is sometimes here, and he is here, and I am the one who came.
He sees me. He does not say anything. I walk over. I sit down on the bench. I do not sit close. I sit at the other end. There is a foot and a half of bench between us. We both look at the river.
“You came,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
We sit on the bench. We do not say anything else for a while.
There’s a man on the other side of the river walking a dog.
There are two ducks on the water. The light is starting to do the orange thing again.
The bench is cold under me and I can feel his hand near the middle of the bench, not touching mine, near it.
His hand is just there, palm down, on the wood between us.
I look at his hand. I do not move mine. He does not move his. We sit there.