Chapter Three
Are you in there, Darcy?” Mordecai shouts into the women’s washroom.
I’m crying in a stall. I was feeling fine earlier, but then a man who resembled Ben came into the library. He was returning board books. He had a baby and a golden retriever puppy with him. People were cooing over the puppy and the baby. The man was grinning. Proud.
“Hello? Darcy? Are you in there?”
It’s not my fault he died, I remind myself.
I’m not the reason he died.
“Hello?”
I’m trying to do my therapy exercises, and my medication is helping, but there are still these moments when I feel so intensely anguished, I worry I’m going to lose my mind.
“Hello?”
I found out Ben died two months ago. Actually, he died six months ago, but I learned about it two months ago. I was here at the library, looking up an obituary for a patron, when I stumbled on his picture and froze.
I hadn’t spoken to him in years. When I broke up with him, I wanted to stay friends, but he didn’t take the breakup well.
He bombarded me with calls and left me long, rambling messages about being in love with me.
It was awful. I eventually blocked his number and deleted him off social media because I couldn’t handle it.
“Darcy?”
It was selfish of me to ignore him like that. It must have been confusing for his live-in girlfriend of five years to suddenly flip a switch and leave. I imagine he felt insane.
“Can you hear me, Darcy?”
I thought I dreamed the obituary at first. I didn’t feel lucid.
I wish I’d slept last night. I should have taken a sleeping pill. I feel fragile when I don’t sleep. I’m unsteady and easier to rattle.
“Darcy?”
“Yes?” I answer finally, annoyed to be shouted at in the sanctity of a public washroom stall. I chose to cry here, rather than in a staff bathroom, specifically so I could avoid my coworkers discovering me in this compromising state.
“Oh, thank God you’re there. Um. There’s a bit of a situation out here. Are you, um, busy?”
I exit the washroom expecting to find the library on fire, but instead I see Mordecai clutching a large orange cat.
“I’m so sorry for bothering you in the bathroom.
I know you’ve just been sick. I don’t know if you went in there to take medicine or something.
But if so, please forgive me. I heard you breathing loudly.
Is your medical issue related to your lungs?
Sorry. None of my business. Not the point.
Anyway, again, so sorry for disrupting you in the bathroom, I just didn’t know what to do.
This animal just came right in.” He’s holding the cat away from his torso.
He looks like he’s never held a cat before.
The cat’s body has stretched. He’s elongated and looks tube-like.
Mordecai has many good qualities. He’s creative, tech-savvy, and knowledgeable about manga. He is, however, lacking in some other areas. I wouldn’t recommend he interrupt someone using the bathroom to alert them to the presence of a cat.
“Did you try shooing him?” I ask.
“Yes, I tried that. It won’t leave. It just keeps jumping into my lap.
I thought maybe it needed help. Do cats do that thing dogs do, where they lead you to a kid stuck in a well?
Do you think there’s some sort of emergency?
I haven’t spent much time around cats. Or is it sick?
Oh God. Should I be touching it? Should I put it down?
Am I going to get rabies? Should we evacuate?
Wait. Is this a domesticated cat? It’s so big.
Is it a fox? What should we do? Should I call someone? ”
He rambles on with his questions while I smile and nod. A lump from crying still lingers in my throat. My head hurts, and there’s pressure behind my eyes.
I let the cat smell my hand before I pet him. I rub his chin and behind his ears. He closes his wide amber eyes.
I say, “He’s sweet.”
“Oh, you think it’s a he?” he asks.
“Most orange cats are male, I think. Maybe you should set him down. He looks kind of uncomfortable.”
He places the cat on the ground.
“What are we supposed to do now?” he says, as if this were an emergency.
The cat is exposing his belly at our feet.
He’s a good-looking cat. He has a masculine bone structure.
“He likes you.” Mordecai smiles.
THANK YOU FOR THE HELPFUL INFORMATION YOU PROVIDED ABOUT GROUSE DIETS. I HAVE A FOLLOW-UP QUESTION. COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME: WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF EVERY GROUSE ON EARTH WENT EXTINCT? I’M ALSO INTERESTED IN KNOWING WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF EVERY BIRD ON EARTH DIED OFF.
THANK YOU,
SAMMY
We don’t generally get many requests like these.
Most of the questions I field usually relate to technical troubleshooting.
How do I change my password? How do I print?
We do get questions relating to genealogy, law, taxes, financial aid, and that sort of thing, but generally, most people know how to google, and there’s a lot of free information available nowadays.
Rarely do we receive obscure research questions.
I spend most of my time at the reference desk helping people find physical resources in the library or assisting patrons on the computers.
I don’t normally field repeated questions about birds.
While I begin preparing a response, I wonder what this patron will do with the answer.
Usually, I try to probe reference questions to clarify their purpose.
I ask things like, “Is this for school?,” to dig a little into the question, narrow it down, and clarify exactly what they’re looking for.
It’s a little more difficult to do that over email, though, and besides, this question is relatively clear enough.
The cat is sitting in my lap. Purring.
From my research, I learn that half of the world’s bird population is on the decline. Over the last half century, almost three billion birds have disappeared across Europe and North America alone.
The cat is watching the screen as I scroll past pictures of birds.
BIRDS HAVE A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON OUR ECOSYSTEMS, I type.
THEY DISPERSE SEEDS. THEY’RE PREDATORS, SCAVENGERS, AND POLLINATORS.
GROUSE BIRDS, IN PARTICULAR, OCCUPY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN MANY ECOSYSTEMS, INCLUDING GRASSLANDS, BOREAL FORESTS, AND TUNDRA.
IF THEY DIED, THERE WOULD BE A DOMINO EFFECT ON OTHER CREATURES, LIKE FOXES AND—
“How the fuck do you print on this thing?” a woman yells. I look up. She’s pointing at the printer nearby. “I have something I need to print urgently. I’m so fucking annoyed by this stupid machine. It won’t work. It’s garbage.”
I stand up to help her. After assessing the print job, I learn she sent it to the printer on the other side of the library. I explain that to her, but she scoffs. “Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that?”
Rather than point out it explicitly says so on the print job, I say, “I understand your frustration. Please let me know if I can do anything else to help you.”
“I didn’t have to help her. We don’t have to help patrons who swear at us,” I tell Joy. I’m sitting on a picnic table outside on my last break. “Our code of conduct stipulates you can’t swear at us, among other things. I could have asked her to leave.”
Someone has carved I HATE brAD into the picnic table. I’m running my finger along the grooves in the wood. I wonder if Brad did something cruel to warrant this, or if he’s just an unlikable person.
“Why didn’t you ask her to leave?” Joy asks.
Maybe the person who carved this is unkind, and Brad’s actually a nice guy.
“The code of conduct leaves it up to our discretion,” I say. “Employees are supposed to use judgment when faced with belligerent patrons. I find sometimes it’s more work to kick someone out than it is to just put up with them. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I get that. That’s why I dated Ruth for two years.” She laughs.
“Don’t mention Ruth to me,” I say, half joking. We have this bit where I pretend Ruth is my enemy. I’ve only ever met her once, and she was perfectly nice to me. She and Joy broke up on good terms. Obviously, I don’t like to picture Joy with someone else, but I’m mostly kidding.
“Fuck Ruth,” I say.
She snorts. “Don’t say that.”
I feel something in my stomach squirm. Joy used to rib similarly about Ben, but I’m sure she won’t do that anymore. She hasn’t since we found out.
Ben was my first serious boyfriend. Our relationship shaped my understanding of how to be someone’s girlfriend.
I learned from the mistakes I made with him.
That’s who Ruth is to Joy too. She was her first live-in partner.
Ruth and Ben are cornerstones in our relationship, our two big exes.
I know Ruth taught Joy how to make bread.
Joy knows Ben bought me the brass dove I keep on a bookshelf in our living room.
I dealt with my feelings about Ben by repressing them.
I don’t keep things from Joy. I tell her how I feel without hesitation; however, I rarely let myself dwell on him.
I felt so bad about what happened between us.
Because of that, I never really opened up to Joy about him.
I couldn’t even articulate my feelings to myself.
I still can’t, really. I know Joy has always understood that he is a sensitive topic, and she’s never pressed it.
Instead, she made light of him the way I did with Ruth.
We joked about them as if they were our enemies, both understanding without saying it that these were once very close, important people to us.
Moving past that thought, I say, “I forgot to tell you Mordecai found a cat. He waltzed right into the library.”
“A cat? Is he a stray?” she asks.
“I think so. He doesn’t have a collar, and he sort of looks like he’s been through it. I picked burrs out of the fur on his stomach. I’m going to take him to the animal shelter after work to check for a microchip. He’s cute. He’s this big long-haired orange cat.”
“Send me a picture of him.”