Chapter 18 #2
“I don’t see why the Astral Library needs modernization.” I tried not to jut my jaw at Elizabeth. “It seems to be trucking along just fine the way it is.”
“Alix, every system needs a periodic overhaul. Look at this old heap.” Waving a hand at the Abbey Room, at the Boston Public Library beyond it.
“Very picturesque, but a twenty-first-century library should be run along a business model rather than just operating as a book depository. Ideally a modern library should be one-quarter books, one-quarter computers, one-quarter tertiary media, and one-quarter monetized programming—”
“A library isn’t a business,” I tried to say, even as my outraged brain shrieked Only one-quarter books?! but Elizabeth was in full flow.
“Take spaces like this, now. What library needs a lot of Edwardian murals about fusty old knights?”
“Victorian murals,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Edwin Austin Abbey was commissioned to paint these murals in 1893; that makes him Victorian, not Edwardian. And that’s if he was English, but actually he was American.
And it’s not just any fusty old knight; the murals depict Galahad and the Grail Quest, which is all about the ceaseless search for what is longed-for and unobtainable except for those who strive and make themselves worthy.
Which is actually the perfect metaphor for a library, since it serves people who strive after knowledge.
But you didn’t actually know any of that, did you? ”
A brief flicker of annoyance crossed Elizabeth’s cheerful face. “You only know it because you read it on Wikipedia.”
“No, I read it here in the BPL. I saw the murals and asked the library staff about them, and they gave me books and I read the books and got even more interested and ended up going down a whole rabbit hole about Arthurian myth and symbology. Because that’s what people like me do when we can’t afford college but we can afford a library card.
” I folded my arms across my chest. “Which is the entire point of a library, it would seem to me.”
My boss tilted her head to one side. “You’re a bit of a fossil too, aren’t you, Alix? Young as you are. Well, given your upbringing, I suppose that’s understandable.”
I wasn’t going to talk anymore about my upbringing, not with her, not after she’d weaponized it against me.
“What is it you brought me here to talk about? I’m pretty sure this isn’t about me shoving Chad into a reading table.
” I was starting to wish I’d shoved him harder. Into Elizabeth, off a cliff.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Elizabeth flipped to a new page on her clipboard, all business. “You need to open the Astral Library for me tomorrow, when the Board convenes for the annual meeting to discuss the Library’s future.”
I opened my mouth, but she held up her hand to forestall me.
“Let’s skip the part where you tell me to go to hell, Alix. You open the Astral Library tomorrow morning, and not only will all criminal charges against you be dropped in regards to the violent assault on Chad—”
My stomach gave a queasy roll hearing those words again, violent assault.
“—but you’ll get your life back. Your online identity, your debit card, your bank account and all thirty-six dollars and eighty-two cents left in it. I’ll even throw in your mother’s current address and phone number.”
It wasn’t wholly unexpected, but I still sat there like I’d been sucker-punched. My frozen bank account; my stolen life. I looked at Elizabeth and something else slid into place. “You wouldn’t also happen to go by Libby Bibb, would you?”
“My little joke.” She smiled. “Libby, like for librarian? Clever, right?”
“Not really, no.”
“And Bibb, like for—”
“Bibliophile, yeah, I get it.”
“You really have quite a vocabulary for a girl who never went to college,” Elizabeth said, sounding vaguely surprised.
“Yes, I’m a sesquipedalian at heart,” I said. “That means someone who likes big words, in case you don’t know. I figure you don’t. You really have quite a limited vocabulary for someone who went to college. You ignorant bitch.”
Another flash of annoyance, but she covered it with an indulgent look.
I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought this woman was cool, or that cool was something a librarian should aspire to be.
Right now I’d settle for the old-school kind with glasses and a bun and a shush that could level city walls, who called books to her hand like falcons and whose oath was to the sanctuary she guarded and not some bunch of bureaucrats with clipboards.
A librarian who wasn’t a Board member, but a goddamn Book Dragon.
“What kind of librarian are you?” I heard myself asking, voice starting to rise.
“Why have you got the Astral Library in your crosshairs this way? Sending Library Security around like your own private army, attacking the Librarian—why? Are you one of those book burners who wants to ban every book they don’t like, all to Save the Children?
One of those people who thinks libraries are corrupting our national moral fiber? ”
“God, no.” Elizabeth made a dismissive little wave.
“These book-banning types are a bit over the top. We have one or two on the Library Board, and goodness, but they take themselves seriously!” Chuckle, chuckle.
“But they’re having a moment right now in the national conversation, so I’ve found it’s easiest to just give them a seat at the table. ”
I stared. “And who are you all going to invite to your book burning in Copley Square?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Alix. I’m just doing my job—an ordinary woman doing an ordinary job, remember?
—and I was hired to make sure that the Astral Library moves with the times.
Institutions have to change, or they won’t remain relevant.
That’s true of any institution, in any field.
And in any field, someone has to see which way the wind is blowing and what kind of rules need to be enforced.
I’m just here to enforce the rules.” She gave a bright, meaningless smile. “Not have opinions about them.”
No fanatical gleam in her eye; no grand ideology propelling her down this lunatic path.
Just a rule enforcer with a clipboard. Well, any dictatorial movement needs plenty of those—can’t get it all done with frothing fanatics, after all.
Gotta have the ones with their well-organized clipboards who say afterward, I was just doing my job.
I looked down at my hands, spread flat before me, and folded them very precisely so I wouldn’t fly across the table and bitch-slap Elizabeth right out of her purple-framed glasses.
“So why me?” I couldn’t help asking. “Why go to all that trouble wrecking my life? What did I ever do to you?”
“Alix, this isn’t about you. From the beginning, we never meant any harm to you. I said you’d get your life back no harm done, didn’t I?” She moved to pat my hand, but I slapped her away. She tutted at that. “Don’t be violent, Alix. Violence is never the answer.”
“Except when you’re slicing up the Librarian and me with your death cards, right?” I raised my eyebrows. “What, no corporate comeback on that one? Go on, then. Go back to telling me why you ruined my life, Libby Bibb.”
She exhaled a little sharply but continued. “Given the Librarian’s lack of cooperation about allowing the Board entry, alternative methods of access were explored. A focus group was convened, and it determined the best method would be through one of her Patrons.”
“You use the passive voice an awful lot when you drop into bureaucrat-speak,” I noted. “‘Alternative methods were explored’; ‘a focus group was convened.’ Does that make you feel like none of the consequences are actually your fault?”
She smiled again, but I could tell I was pissing her off.
That cushioned complacency was fraying around the edges, and it gave me a spurt of savage satisfaction even as she went on.
“I was inserted here at the BPL to find a candidate who could gain entrance to the Library. A bookworm with an underprivileged background, minimal education, few family ties—”
“You can just go ahead and say loser,” I said. “That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”
“—and as soon as I met you, Alix—!” A little voilà gesture. “Of course, it takes a great deal for someone to walk away from their whole life and head off into a book to live. Really, a very impractical plan. So it was felt—”
Stop with the fucking passive voice, just stop it stop it STOP IT.
“—that we’d need to apply additional pressure. Some financial urgency. Just to make sure you’d take the Library’s offer.” Elizabeth sat back as if to say There now, isn’t that reasonable?
“So you stole my entire life,” I said. “Probably voted on it at your last Board meeting, right?”
“You can have the meeting minutes if you want to review the vote,” my boss said. “It’s all entirely aboveboard.” A little smile. “‘Aboveboard,’ for a Board vote. That’s funny, isn’t it?”
“Hilarious.” My fists were clenching and unclenching in my lap, under the edge of the red tablecloth.
Red cloths to match Galahad’s red cloak in all these Victorian murals that marched around the Abbey Room, and I wished Galahad would march in here with his sword and sweep me out of the Perilous Seat in which I’d so unexpectedly found myself.
Or better yet, Beau with his sword cane.
But no one was coming to rescue me, not today, not ever.
“One thing I can’t figure out,” I said at last. “You saw me and thought, Here’s the perfect deadbeat bitch to get a foot in the door to the Astral Library—”
“Alix, please don’t use words like that.” Her smile had curdled. “The Library Board has a very strong stance against abusive language and pejorative—”
“Shut the fuck up, fr?ulein. What I want to know is how you figured the Astral Library would open a door for me exactly when you needed it to.” I gave a smile of my own, thin and edged.
“Because I’ve been a deadbeat bitch—sorry, deadbeat loser—my whole life, and I only just got the magic invite.
So how did you know the Library would choose me now? ”
Elizabeth stared at me a long moment, then went into a peal of laughter.
“Oh, you think you were chosen? Oh dear.” Another succession of chuckles banishing her annoyance; this was just too funny.
“The Librarian has shut us out of most of the Astral Library’s inner workings, but she hasn’t been able to keep out all the modern updates.
The Board has full access to all the information on who the Library extends its invitations to.
Getting access to the invitational process wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, considering we didn’t have access to the Library itself, but—”
“But what?” My heart was thumping away in my chest, tolling like an alarm bell. “What?”
“The Library didn’t choose you,” said Libby Bibb. “I submitted your name.”