1. The Librarians Quiet Life #2
When he left, I caught myself watching the glass doors until they stopped swinging.
Alone again, I pushed my cart down the next aisle, breathing in the smell of old paper, the faint trace of aftershave left on the air, and the familiar antiseptic tang of floor polish.
I adjusted my glasses, smoothed my hair, and resumed the ritual.
If the world outside was a chaos of things I could not control, then here, at least, I could insist on the illusion of order.
Every book had its place. Every question had an answer, given the right search terms. Even the unmanageable, my body, my nerves, could be corralled, for a little while, by the steady application of process. It wasn’t happiness. But it was enough.
At five on the dot, I logged out of the terminal, stacked the incoming request forms into a neat pile, and checked that every cart was back in its designated nook beneath the reference desk.
Most staff drifted out with the first exodus of students, but I always lingered until the sweepers started vacuuming the entry mats.
Some sense of stewardship, I suppose; or maybe the reluctance to abandon a space that, for nine hours a day, made sense.
The lobby outside was warm with the last low sun, March pretending it was already late spring.
Even so, I buttoned my navy, calf-length, conservative as a funeral suit, coat up to the throat.
I could feel the stares of late-leaving undergrads as I adjusted the lapels, as if I were some curio from a lost epoch of formality, a Jane Eyre exiled into suburbia.
I did not meet their eyes. I left the building with my head slightly down, my bag clutched close.
The walk home was only six blocks, straight through the old residential grid where the houses grew smaller and more uniform the farther you went.
On warm evenings, neighbors sometimes chatted across driveways or walked small, ridiculous dogs down the sidewalk.
Tonight, there were only the hum of air conditioners and the distant drone of a riding mower in the next street over.
The regularity of the route was a comfort.
Every block was a beat in a familiar litany: the yellow Victorian with the cracked front step, the duplex with Halloween window clings still up in March, the bodega where someone once tried to rob me with a pair of garden shears.
I maintained a purposeful pace, one that discouraged lingering or casual engagement.
Sometimes I imagined myself invisible, moving through the world without a single atom displaced. Sometimes I wished I really could be.
My building was the kind of postwar brick rectangle no one bothers to gentrify, four stories, eight units, the only distinguishing feature a plastic Christmas wreath the upstairs landlady never remembered to take down.
The lobby smelled of disinfectant and old coffee.
I took the stairs, counting each step, and made it to the third floor without encountering another soul.
My apartment was at the far end of the corridor.
I let myself in with two quick turns of the key, then closed the door and engaged both deadbolt and chain.
Habit, not paranoia. The interior was, by most standards, bleak: a vinyl-topped kitchen table with one matching chair; two pressed-board bookshelves arranged with surgical precision; a loveseat salvaged from a faculty office cleanout, still faintly scented with pipe smoke.
The bed occupied a quarter of the living space, always made, the duvet taut as a drumhead.
Overhead, the single fixture gave off the cold blue light of cheap LEDs.
I hung my coat on the hook, aligned my shoes in the rack, and set my bag beside the table.
The ritual was so automatic I could perform it while thinking about something else entirely.
Which is, of course, the point. I put water on to boil, then rummaged in the freezer for one of the microwave dinners I bought in bulk.
Turkey tetrazzini tonight, which looked and tasted almost exactly like the chicken version from the same brand.
I did not mind. I did not require variety.
I ate standing at the counter, fork in one hand, e-reader propped up beside the microwave.
I scrolled through news headlines without really reading them, filtering out the political carnage and celebrity humiliations, pausing only for the odd human-interest story about someone losing a pet and then finding it two years later, half a state away.
There was comfort in knowing some creatures, at least, knew how to get home.
After dinner, I rinsed my fork, set it in the drying rack, and wiped down the counter with a disinfectant wipe.
My movements were practiced, almost ceremonial.
I did not think of the library, or of the man with the cello tie, or of the way his gaze had lingered for a split second before he left.
I certainly did not think of the blush I had failed to suppress, or of how my skin still tingled with embarrassment.
I was good at not thinking about things.
The rest of the evening unfolded in scheduled increments: forty minutes of yoga (always the same video, instructor’s soothing voice now a kind of low-grade hypnosis), a shower, the same chamomile tea in the same chipped mug.
I set my alarm for 6:10 a.m., then spent fifteen minutes reorganizing the loose papers on my desk, even though there was nothing urgent to file or arrange.
I just liked the sound of the sheets as they slid against each other, a crisp, clean shuffling.
The only true extravagance in my apartment was the book collection, which I dusted religiously every Saturday.
The shelves were arranged not by author or genre but by a proprietary system of color and size and sentimental value.
I would sometimes stand before them, eyes closed, and pull a volume at random, letting fate select my evening’s reading.
But tonight I did not trust fate, so I only stared at the shelves, my gaze snagging on the lowest row where the forbidden books were kept.
They were not pornography, though I imagined some would see it that way.
There was Ana?s Nin and Jeanette Winterson and a battered trade paperback of The Story of O, its cover discreetly papered over with a brown grocery sack.
There was even a self-help book about embracing your “sensual potential” which I had bought as a joke, but which still made my ears burn when I read more than a page or two.
I allowed myself a full minute to look at the row, then forced myself to turn away, telling myself that tomorrow was a workday and I had already had enough excitement for one fiscal quarter.
I closed the curtains, checking that the edges met flush, with no gap for outside eyes to peer through.
In the tiny bathroom, I brushed my teeth, catching a glimpse of my own reflection in the mirror above the sink.
I had always found my face an odd mix of traits: cheeks a little too round, jaw too determined, eyes an ambiguous shade of green that looked different under every light.
If I squinted, I could almost believe in a version of myself that belonged here, a librarian in a made-for-TV movie, the sort whose solitary life was a charming quirk and not a failure of imagination.
I set my glasses on the nightstand and slid into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin even though the room was warm.
I lay flat, hands folded over my chest, staring at the popcorn ceiling as if it held the night’s secrets.
In the silence, I could still hear the echo of the library, the measured cadence of my own voice, the click and whisper of turning pages.
I waited for sleep, and when it didn’t come right away, I pretended not to notice.
I held still in the dark for a long time, the only sound the soft hum of the refrigerator through two plaster walls.
I tried counting breaths, the way the yoga instructor suggested, but the numbers kept looping back, zeroing out whenever my thoughts strayed toward anything even remotely personal.
Lying flat and inert felt like a punishment, or a dare, and I found myself staring at the ceiling, waiting for a sign that never came.
Eventually I gave up. I slid one leg out from under the covers, then the other, then swung my body sideways, feet pressed to the floor.
I didn’t turn on the lamp; even the thin streetlight bleeding through the windowshade was enough for what I needed.
The carpet was scratchy under my knees as I bent beside the bed, hands trembling in a way I told myself was just from the cold.
There was a slit in the box spring, one I’d made myself with a razor blade, the seam so clean you’d never notice it unless you knew where to look.
My fingers found the gap instantly, even in the dark.
Inside: a paperback book, its cover so battered the original image had all but worn away.
I pulled it out, cradled it against my chest, and then sat cross-legged on the carpet, the book hidden in my lap as if someone might walk in and find me exposed.