The school years were unremarkable, but Bob was contented. His earliest class began at ten o’clock and the house was empty as he roused himself to meet his day. The schoolwork itself was boring, and often impressively boring. One of Bob’s instructors explained that very little of what Bob was being taught would ever be put to use; and indeed, he found that almost none of it ever came up again. This same instructor also told Bob that the reason the degree took as long as it did was to scare off loafers who saw the role of librarian as a soft career; which it both was and wasn’t, he would learn.
Bob graduated with top honors, which afforded him nothing that he could see. He had decided he would not take part in the graduation ceremony but both his mother and Sandy Anderson insisted, and so he was fitted for cap and gown, and then came the day, the event, which took place on a too-tall stage in an outdoor amphitheater on a muggy summer evening in the southwest hills. Bob’s mother and Sandy looked on from the crowd; they’d never met but took to one another at once, leaning in and sharing humorous confidences. After the ceremony Bob’s mother insisted Sandy come along to the celebratory dinner; as Sandy climbed into the front seat of the Chevy, Bob was visited by a premonition of catastrophe.
They went to a seafood restaurant, though Bob didn’t like seafood. Sandy and Bob’s mother drank four martinis each and became chummy in their teasing asides about Bob’s solitude and self-seriousness. “All this time I’ve been living with a librarian and I didn’t even know it,” his mother said. “If only someone would’ve told me when he was born, then it all would have made sense to me. Years of him sitting silently in his bedroom.” When Bob’s mother went to the restroom, Sandy slipped Bob a letter. He said it was a graduation gift, but that Bob mustn’t open it until he was alone.
At midmeal the mood was high, but by the time the dessert course arrived, a gin-born sullenness took hold of Bob’s mother and Sandy both. Bob’s mother was sitting lowly in the booth with her arms crossed; Sandy began making barbed, catty asides to himself, and his typically wry, kind-but-tired eyes became blotted and blurred, as though his thoughts were wicked. The bill came and Bob volunteered to pay it and to his surprise no one made to debate the gesture. Bob lifted his inert mother up from the booth and walked her through the restaurant and across the parking lot to the Chevy. After installing her in the backseat, he got behind the wheel and started the car. Sandy was standing in the headlights, trying and failing to connect the flame of his lighter with the end of his cigarette. Bob rolled down the window and asked him what he was doing and he answered, “I know a place, perfect for us.”
“I have to get her home.”
“Leave her to sleep it off. I don’t think it’ll be the first time she woke up alone in a car. And we’ve got so much to celebrate.” Gesturing toward downtown, he asked, “You want me to get us a cab? I’ll get us a cab. Should I get us a cab?” Bob backed the car up and the headlights jumped away from Sandy. Halfway home Bob’s mother woke up suddenly and completely and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
She sat looking out at the world as they drove along beside it. “Did you think I’d be upset? Give me some credit for having lived a bit, Bob. I mean, look: you can keep the details to yourself, but I say it takes all kinds to make a world, and good luck to the both of you.” The idea that Bob would have any manner of romance with Sandy was so far away from his mind that he didn’t know what his mother was actually saying until the next morning. He corrected her over breakfast, but her hangover was severe, and she obviously didn’t believe what he was saying. In the time between her meeting Sandy and her death, fifteen months later, she occasionally asked how he was. “He’s welcome to come by, you know. Why don’t you invite him to dinner sometime? We had such a laugh at your graduation.” The letter Sandy had given Bob was a passive-aggressive, constantly evasive declaration of what he named a devotion of special friendship but which Bob, for all his inexperience, could see was something carnal, amorous. Bob had no negative impressions of homosexuality, but he didn’t feel the same way Sandy Anderson did, and was at a loss in terms of what his reply should be. Months went by, and no word between them. Bob felt badly about the schism, and he missed his friend; he wondered what he was reading. After he landed his first library position, clerking under the dread thumb of Miss Ogilvie in the northwest branch of the Portland public library, he thought to tell Sandy the news, and Sandy received it with sincere enthusiasm. He invited Bob to his apartment for dinner and Bob happily accepted.
Sandy answered the door in a cooking smock, a cigarette dangling from his lip. “The quiche is cooling,” he said. He led Bob to his den, put on a Martin Denny record, and promptly made a pass. Bob drew away, wiping his mouth and describing his disinclination; Sandy looked surprised, almost incredulous. “You’re telling me you’re not a fairy?” he said.
“Yes, I’m not.”
Sandy sat down. “Are you just saying that because you don’t trust me? Because, Bob? I’m a fairy to the tips of my toes.”
“Yes, I understand. But no, that’s not why I’m saying it.”
“Huh,” Sandy said. “All along and I was sure you were.”
Bob wanted to say he was sorry, but that didn’t feel correct, or fair, or true, so he said, “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.”
Sandy shrugged, his face reflecting a thorough disenchantment. He said, “What a lot of time I gave you.”
Bob was hurt to learn that Sandy’s lengthy attentions were rooted in something other than fellowship. Sandy saw this hurt and said, “I’m sorry, Bob. I know I’m being an asshole about it. But you have to understand I had a whole story going. I thought this was the beginning of something, and it’s not, and that’s okay, but I’m going to need a minute to recover.” They sat to eat the quiche and Sandy told Bob what it would be like to work under Miss Ogilvie. “Ogilvie the Ogre. People call her a bitch and in their defense I believe she is a bitch. But she’s also the librarianist par excellence. The northwest branch is the tightest of tight ships, which endears her to the top brass, which is why she gets all the new stock and periodicals, new carpeting installed every five years, fresh paint, amenity updates, and all the rest of it. Actually, Bob, you may have lucked into something good here, because the Ogre’s not getting any younger — not that anyone is. But she’ll be gone before too long, and whoever gets her recommendation will likely inherit the kingdom. A word to the wise. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes.”
“Any intelligent young person’s inclination would be to go against her. It’s the correct thing to do in that her ideas are old and awful and in all honesty she probably should be cast aside; but it’s the wrong way to go about it if you want to make a difference in the long term. Don’t battle a battler, is what I’m telling you. When she’s put out to pasture, or when she receives her last reward, then you can slip right into her hobnail boots and revamp the entire apparatus.”
As the evening wound down, Sandy became maudlin in the looking-back manner. “All my life, all I ever wanted was to be alone in a room filled with books. But then something awful happened, Bob, which was that they gave it to me.”
“But that’s the same thing I want,” said Bob.
“Well hang on to your hat, funny face, because it looks like they’re going to give it to you, too.” Later, when he walked Bob to the door, Bob held out his hand to shake and Sandy looked at the hand and said, “Oh my God.” Bob never contacted Sandy again, and neither did Sandy contact Bob, which was fine, actually, though Bob would always think of him with a fondness of almost-admiration. Bob had liked him for his meanness, drollness, intellect, and antiworldness; but he was relieved by his own relative simplicity, if that was what it was.