‘Yes, it’s “closed” but—’
‘But what?’ she said.
I don’t know where that ‘but’ came from but it vanished just as fast, returning to some conjunctional oblivion.
‘But nothing,’ I said.
‘You had better turn out the lights, then,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to waste electricity.’
‘Yes,’ I said, feeling a door close behind me, knowing that somehow this at-first-appearing shy unhappy girl was turning, turning into something strong that I did not know how to deal with.
‘I’d better turn the lights out,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
I turned the lights out in the library and turned the light on in my room. That was not all I was turning on as a door closed behind us and a door opened in front of us.
‘Your room is very simple,’ she said, putting her coat down on my bed. ‘I like that. You must live a very lonely life with all the losers and dingalings, myself included, that bring their books in here.’
‘I call it home,’ I said.
‘That’s sad,’ she said. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘Years,’ I said. What the hell.
‘You’re too young to have been here that long,’ she said. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-one.’
‘That’s a good age.’
She had her back to me and was staring at the cupboard in my kitchen.
‘It’s all right to look at me,’ she said, without turning her head the slightest. ‘For some strange reason I don’t mind your looking at me. Actually, it makes me feel good, but stop acting like a bandit when you do it.’
I laughed at that.
Suddenly she turned around and looked half at me, then directly at me and smiled gently. ‘I really have had a hard time of it.’
‘I think I can almost understand,’ I said. ‘
‘That’s nice,’ she said. She reached up and brushed her long black hair, causing a storm of bat lightning to flash past her ears.
‘I’d like some coffee,’ she said, looking at me.
‘I’ll put it on,’ I said.
‘No, let me,’ she said. ‘I know how to make good coffee. It’s my speciality. Just call me Queen Caffeine.’
‘Well, damn,’ I said, a little embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry but I only have instant.’
‘Then instant it is,’ she said. ‘That’s the name of the game. Perhaps I have a way with instant coffee, too. You never can tell,’ smiling.
‘I’ll get the stuff for you,’ I said.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Let me do it. I’m a little curious about this kitchen of yours. I want to find out more about you, and this little kitchen is a good place to start. I can see at a glance, though, that you are something like me. You’re not at home in the world.’
‘At least let me get the coffee for you,’ I said. ‘It’s—’
‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘You make me nervous. Only one person can make instant coffee at a time. I’ll find everything.’
I sat down on the bed next to her coat.
She found everything and made the coffee as if she were preparing a grand meal. I have never seen such care and eloquence applied to a cup of instant coffee. It was almost as if making a cup of instant coffee were a ballet and she were a ballerina pirouetting between the spoon, the cups, the jar, and the pan full of boiling water.
She cleared the clutter from my table, but then decided that we should have our coffee on the bed, because it was more comfortable.
We sat there on the bed, cosy as two bugs in a rug, drinking coffee and talking about our lives. She worked as a laboratory technician for a small institute that was studying the effects of various experiments on dogs in an attempt to solve some of the more puzzling questions of science.
‘How did you get the job?’ I said.
‘Through an ad in the Chronicle.’
‘What happened at San Francisco State?’
‘I got tired of it. One of my English teachers fell in love with me. I told him to buzz off, so he failed me. That made me mad, so I transferred to UC.’
‘And UC?’
‘The same story. I don’t know what it is about English teachers and me, but they fall like guillotines when they see me coming.’
‘Where were you born?’
‘Santa Clara. All right, I’ve answered enough of your questions. Now tell me how you got this job. What’s your story, Mr Librarian?’
‘I assumed possession of it.’
‘I take it then that there was no ad in the paper.’
‘Nope.’
‘How did you assume possession of it?’
‘The fellow who was here before me couldn’t stand children. He thought they were going to steal his shoes. I came in here with a book I had written and while he was writing it down in the Library Contents Ledger, a couple of children came in and he flipped, so I told him that I had better take over the library and he had better do something that didn’t involve children. He told me he thought he was cracking up, too, and that’s how I got this job.’
‘What did you do before you started working here?’
‘I kicked around a lot: canneries, sawmills, factories. A woman supported me for a couple of years, then she got tired of it and kicked my ass out. I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was all pretty complicated before I started working here.’
‘What are you going to do after you quit here or do you plan on quitting?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Something will come up. Maybe I’ll get another job or find a woman to support me again or maybe I’ll write a novel and sell it to the movies.’
That amused her.
We had finished our coffee. It was funny because suddenly we both noticed that we did not have any more coffee to drink and we were sitting together on the bed.
‘What are we going to do now?’ she said. ‘We can’t drink any more coffee and it’s late.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I guess it would be too corny for us to go to bed together,’ she said. ‘But I can’t think of anything else that would be better to do. I don’t want to go home and sleep by myself. I like you. I want to stay here with you tonight.’
‘It’s a puzzler,’ I said.
‘Do you want to sleep with me?’ she said, not looking at me, but not looking away either. Her eyes were somewhere in between half-looking at me and half-thinking about something else.
‘We don’t have any place else to go,’ I said. ‘I’d feel like a criminal if you left tonight. It’s hard to sleep with strangers. I gave it up years ago, but I don’t think we are really strangers. Do you?’
She turned her eyes 3/4 towards me.
‘No, we’re not strangers.’
‘Do you want to sleep with me?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know what it is about you,’ she said. ‘But you make me feel nice.’
‘It’s my clothes. They’re relaxing. They’ve always been this way. I know how to get clothes that make people feel better when they’re with me.’
‘I don’t want to sleep with your clothes,’ she said, smiling.
‘Do you want to sleep with me?’ I said.
‘I’ve never slept with a librarian before,’ she said, 99 per cent towards me. The other 1 per cent was waiting to turn. I saw it starting to turn.
‘I brought a book in here tonight denouncing my own body as grotesque and elephant-like, but now I want to take this awkward machine and lie down beside you here in this strange library.
Counting Towards Tijuana
What an abstract thing it is to take your clothes off in front of a stranger for the very first time. It isn’t really what we planned on doing. Your body almost looks away from itself and is a stranger to this world.