“Lenders and sellers.”
“Neither with a penny to rub together,” he says, cheerfully. “I do enjoy talking to you, though. I hope you’ll tell me if you find anything else.”
“I will, Martin,” I say, and am startled to realize that I mean it. But there is no more time for reflection. The library beckons.
I shower, shave. The face looking back at me is tired. Messy black hair, a nicked chin, red bumps rising from an old razor and humidity that never lets sweat dry. Alice kisses this face. We’re having drinks at the Oaks tonight. There will be a band, a jazz quartet, I think — maybe funk? Music and drinks might make it a date, or two friends listening to music and having a drink. I press on my bleeding chin. Is this my breakfast face?
I grab the book and envelope. In the car, I stare back at the house. A gutter hangs precariously from the roof. When did that happen? I glance at the clock. I’ll need to get my hands on some braces. Easy-enough fix.
Ruminating over leaks, roof rot, jazz or funk quartets, I arrive at the library. The girls in circulation won’t look me in the eye. Marci turns away when I pass. The only greeting is an atmosphere of shame, which has a broad embrace.
I am losing my job.
A dignified man might go straight to Janice’s office, but I’m not dignified. I need my desk. The last stand I can make is sitting in the chair that has so become a part of me.
Not five minutes pass before the thumping of heels on high-traffic carpet approaches. Janice wears a dark pink suit today, a ragged edge material that’s too warm for July. Today’s earrings are silver periwinkle shells.
“Simon?”
“Can we do this here, Janice?”
She looks uncomfortable, her eyes maybe even a little shiny. Tears?
“It’s easier if we talk in my office.”
“If it’s all the same, I’d rather not walk by everyone again.”
A small parting of the lips, an ah. “I understand. Absolutely.” She begins the speech detailing how hard she fought, how if there was a way to scrape by without letting me go she’d have found it. I can’t listen, not even when she launches into how much she’s enjoyed working with me, seeing me grow. Pretending to listen is a favorite mask that wears comfortably.
“Reference will suffer for it,” she says.
Even if she means it, which she may, it rings of pity. There, by the periodicals, a thick red braid. Oh, hell. Alice gets to hear me get fired.
“I’m terribly sorry about this. There’s just nothing else to do.”
I hear myself agree to two weeks. Janice offers to make phone calls on my behalf. “Okay,” I say. Now I’m thanking her for letting me go, which is its own humiliation.
Fixing a broken gutter is pointless when there’s no money for the rest. With the passage of a few minutes both my homes are gone.
Janice is wrong; I’ve been here twelve years, not ten. Twelve years of solitary work — stacking, sorting, scanning, cataloging, researching, letter and grant writing, fund begging, and book repairing. I’ve become part of the papers. They were mine, twelve years of pages and volumes. Now I have a single book.
Alice walks toward me. We’ve been trying to stay apart at work. Libraries are hotbeds of gossip — everyone knew about Marci’s husband’s drinking almost before Marci did. We’ve been carefully professional, talking to each other only when we need things, when I want the schedule for a room, or when she wants visuals for a speaker, or has to reach something. How will anyone reach things when I’m gone? She rounds the 300s, her sensible brown pants brushing against an oversized volume. I see it: pity. It’s in the tight set of the mouth. It’s in the slightly lowered eyelids, which on Alice makes her eyelashes catch the light. It’s a look that pairs with I’m so, so sorry. The second so is the kicker. The potential for a second so is horrible. She catches my eye. Mouths an Are you okay? I shrug, because what else can I do? She’s by the photocopy machines when an older man taps her on the shoulder. Comfortable shoes, white socks, tissue-thin button-down, shorts, old man knees. Old men love Alice. Thank God for that. I can’t talk to her just now, not until I’ve tried to do something. I pick up the phone and dial Millerston Library.
“Leslie? Hi. It’s Simon Watson at Grainger.”
Forty-five minutes later and I’ve spoken with or left messages for the directors at nearly every library from Babylon to Mattituck. Gina at Comsewogue was kind enough to tell me that Janice had called on my behalf.
“She’s heartbroken. You’d think you were her son. We’d take you on if we could, but we’re in the same crunch. The best I could offer would be volunteering until you could transition into part-time once the summer kids head back to school. It would be an insult.”
Pinching the skin at the top of my nose may not change the situation, but the pain makes the conversation easier. It’s worse with Laura at Outer Harbor.
“Wish I could help, but I’m looking for me. I talked to Janice two weeks ago hoping you guys had wiggle room. Don’t you get funds for the whaling collection?”
“Not enough.”
When I hang up, nothing’s changed but the hour. A book club meets in the armchairs by the front windows and a group of kids climb the stairs. Books need lending, shelving, mending. I still need to finish the grant application for the digital catalog funds. That will continue without me. I start working through the website Liz Reed sent, sifting through links. The New York section is filled with jobs in the city — digital archivists, information system architects, whatever that means. Even if I knew what it meant, there’s no way I could handle the commute. The Long Island jobs are slim, most calling for interns or budget wizards, of which I’m neither. At the bottom of the page is a small green box advertising a manuscript curator position with the Sanders-Beecher Archive, a specialty library in Savannah, Georgia. Clicking around takes me to the archive’s website, which reveals a beautiful old columned building. Photos of the inside show gorgeous dark wood shelves — walnut or cherry? — and rooms filled floor to ceiling with leather-bound books. A brief paragraph describes Sanders-Beecher as an archive with “a personal approach to broader history.” They lay claim to volumes from Georgia’s first printing press, diaries from early settlers, and a museum affiliation. I glance up at the whaling collection — a static snapshot of Philip Grainger’s obsession crammed into two sterile rooms. Something about Sanders-Beecher feels warm and alive. Maybe it’s the romance of distance causing rose-tinted longing. The miles between here and Savannah make the position more wish than reality, particularly when I’ve got the house to think of. And Enola coming home.
“Hey.” Alice drops a stack of broken-backed books on my desk. She leans on them, petting the spines. Her nails are short and carefully filed; mine are chewed to the point of no longer being fingernails. Her pity comes with a sigh, and it’s all right. I want a little pity.
“Hey,” I answer.
“I’m sorry it wasn’t me.”
“Nice of you to say, but you don’t have to lie.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’m glad it wasn’t me but I’m sorry it was you. Better?”
“Better.”
“Tonight’s my treat, okay? As much as you want to drink, whatever. You can get sloppy, crash at my place, and I won’t tell anyone.”
I don’t even know what I’d drink. “What do you drink when you’re let go?”
“Rye, I think?”
“That sounds awful.”
She smiles. “Sounds about right.” We stay like this. Printers whir, copiers whine, fingers tap at keyboards. “You bring that book everywhere. Why?”