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Thursday, February 4th, 2010
When a worn copy of Riddley Walker and Volume 21 of Hana Kimi appear on her desk accompanied by a worn library card, a gust of wind and nothing more, Lily understands this to be the work of a man.
The books sit in front of her. A petite woman in a paisley dress stands a few feet away, waiting. Lily takes the card, swipes it, puts it down and scans his books. It’s an interaction she’s played again and again, but then she notices a smell, imperceptible at first, but growing. Lily pauses. It’s a different kind of scent from anything she’s ever experienced before. Lily has no words for it, no reference.
“Do you, do you smell something?” Lily asks the impatient-looking woman who just shakes her head.
It’s weird; it’s clashing; it’s like a breeze, like floppy disks, like meat. The smell swirls and surrounds her. Lily’s knees feel like rivers and her body shudders beyond her control
Lily swipes the card again, and, trembling, she pulls up information on its owner. She knows before seeing that it is Mortimer August. Lily’s eyes search the library for him but she can’t see anybody. “Mortimer?” she calls. There is no answer.
“Hon,” the woman in the dress says, “why don’t you just sign out his books.”
So Lily does. The books disappear along with the smell. She stands there for a moment stunned, unable to understand what just occurred. It was like somebody just leapt out of a television, touching her, after a lifetime of static. And she forgot to give him back his library card.
***
Lily exists in a quiet world, a half-world. She goes to work. She orders Chinese for dinner. She goes home. She
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works as an assistant librarian at a place a few blocks from her house. Her co-workers are her closest friends, yet even they try not to get too close. Lily thinks she’s like a plague rat with a flu mask. Nobody is quite sure what she really is and they prefer to keep her separate from themselves.
Lily’s never had a boyfriend and she never knew her father. She often wonders who he was. Her mother won’t tell her anything and she refuses to talk about him or even talk to him for her. All Lily knows is that he’d been caught in traffic during her birth, and by the time he got there, it was too late.
Lily survives and works as well as she can through her world of buses without drivers, classrooms without teachers, Grecian museums without sculptures. She reads wildly. She collects beach grass. She enjoys cooking in the morning. She imagines how much better Frank Sinatra albums would sound with the words. And she buries herself in her work.
Her job affords her a measure of comfort. It allows her to function without the need to interact with men on a daily basis, but also provides her with at least some cursory contact with them.
Lily often uses the cards to pull up information about their owners, to get a sense of them.
Landon Carl has a hold on seventeen back issues of Pro Wrestling Insider.
Guillaume Desjardins has racked up a stupendous late fee because of certain Hardy Boys novels being overdue for almost fifty years.
Mortimer August is twenty-seven. He lives a few blocks away. He has good taste and he loves the sorts of books that she loves. Lily has always had a strange fascination for him. He takes out books by Heinlein and Toni Morrison at the same time. He currently has out A Prince of Tides and A Confederacy of Dunces. He checks out books she finds interesting and books that she’s never heard of that later turn out to be great.
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