“And what if I don’t have a library card?”
“Then we’ll get you one.”
“And what if I don’t have any identification?”
“You don’t have any on you, you mean?”
“I mean I don’t have any at all. Personal identification is one of the things father is against.”
Bob wouldn’t have considered commenting on this were it not for the young woman’s obvious amusement in discussing her father’s behaviors, which prompted him to say, “He strikes me as the kind of man who is against many things.”
“Oh, yes, and more all the time,” she said, and began naming them off one by one. “Television, obviously, and film — moving images. But also radio — fictitious writing of any sort. Privately owned automobiles. All unnatural scent or flavor. All music. Exercise for exercise’s sake. Sunglasses. Calendars, watches. Escalators, elevators. Police, government, doctors, medicine.”
“What is he for?”
“Gender segregation. Sterilization of criminals. Public transportation. The death penalty. Disease. Gardening.”
“Gardening he supports.”
“He himself doesn’t garden, but he supports the action; it’s one of the very few things he encourages me to indulge in.”
“You like gardening?”
“Gardening is very important to me.”
“Decorative gardening or gardening for the table?”
“Both.” She liked that he’d asked that particular question. She watched him without shyness, and Bob felt exposed but he affected, as best he could, an unruffled ease.
“How can someone be in favor of disease?” he asked.
“He believes it achieves God’s will.”
“That’s not very friendly.”
“No, but friendliness isn’t in his wheelhouse. I mean, it’s not so simple as his believing that someone dying of cancer deserves it. There are many, he says, who the Lord calls back because He wants them close by.”
Bob and Connie were smiling at each other. “How does your father expect you to check out books without identification?”
“He believes I’ll fail; but he was game for me to try.”
“So this was your idea?”
“Oh, yes. His history books give him something to do. He’s away for hours each day, reading himself blind. For me these are precious and necessary hours, and I honestly don’t know what I’ll do if I lose them, and so here I am.” She paused. “I don’t mean to put you on the spot. I understand you may not want to involve yourself. I wouldn’t have bothered to try for a card at all but I thought I saw some sympathy coming from your side these last few months.”
Bob understood by this that his presence was a requisite piece of the young woman’s plan, and he was so delighted to have been in her thoughts he would have given her the keys to his car if she’d wanted to borrow it. “Of course, you can have a card,” he said.
“Really?” said Connie. “You’re sure that would be all right?”
“Why not? I’d ask you to keep my part in it to yourself.”
“Oh, yes.”
“And, I’d advise you to leave the cape at home next time. Even with the hood down, Miss Ogilvie might make the connection.”
“Is that the woman who went after my father?”
“Yes.”
“She’s formidable. My father thinks she’s inhabited by Satan.”
“That’s a popular theory,” said Bob. “I myself don’t believe it.” He brought out the necessary forms for receiving a library card, filling them out on her behalf, which allowed him both to spend more time with her and ask her all manner of personal questions. This was how he learned her name: Connie Coleman.
“What is your age, Connie Coleman?”
“Twenty years of age.”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Okay.”
He handed over the temporary card and watched her flipping it over. Bob wondered if her life was small in the way his was small. Knowing that he was crossing a boundary, he said, “I can’t tell if you believe any of this stuff your father believes.” Connie tucked her card away into the folds of her cape. “Well,” she said, “I live in an abnormal environment. So I must be at least a little bit abnormal myself, right?”
“Right,” said Bob.
“And while the partial truth is that I don’t believe, the fuller truth is that I believe just enough that I’m uncomfortable talking about my not believing.” Bob held up his hand, as if to say he understood, and wouldn’t follow the line of questioning any further. “My aspiration is to become a completely normal human being,” Connie said. “That’s my aspiration as well,” said Bob. Thinking this was the conclusion of their conversation, and wanting to end on a note of charity, he told her, “I’m sorry about what happened with your father.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Connie lightly.
“What I mean is — I’m sorry that it happened the way it happened.”
“Well, thanks,” she said. “But, that’s the way it always happens.”
Bob wished her a good-day and stepped tentatively away, watching as she looked over the list of titles her father had written out for her. Looking up, she stood puzzling over her position in the library. Bob returned to her and volunteered to assist in collecting the books, which she agreed would be helpful. “It’s a funny little list,” she said in warning. “I’m just the man,” he told her, and together they walked up and down the aisles. He soon found each of the books her father wanted, then checked them out for Connie. After, he walked her to the exit, and they stood together a little longer, awkward in their parting. Connie told Bob, “I’m not sorry my father was kicked out of here. Because it’s nice to get out and speak to people without having him around. Honestly, it’s nicer than I can say. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll see you again sometime, maybe.”
Bob pointed at the Information counter. “That’s where I like to stand.” After Connie was gone Bob walked to the restroom and locked himself in a stall to stand and relive his meeting with this new person, this young woman. He was confused and giddy and scared. At one point he wondered if he was charming. Was he? He had never been before. Or was it that he’d simply never had the chance to indulge?
By this time, Bob had established the beginnings of a friendship with Ethan Augustine. Male comradeship, like romantic love, had eluded Bob through the length of his life, when suddenly here was Ethan, and he was charming and good or goodish, and he liked Bob, and Bob didn’t quite understand why, but he went along with it if only to see where it might go. The night of the day Bob had first spoken with Connie, he met Ethan for a drink at the bar down the block from the library, and set about explaining his experience in detail. By telling the story, it sounded flimsy to Bob, as if nothing much had happened at all. But why could he not stop thinking of Connie even briefly? And was he such a fool to think the connection was shared? “Maybe it was all in my head,” said Bob. Ethan, who understood as well as anyone that romantic emotion was often to the side of language, said, “But maybe it was in hers too.” Bob was doubtful, but he began watching his days afterward, watching the door of the library and wondering when this person would come again. When he next saw her she was cape-less, in a wine-colored sweater and tweed skirt, black tights and flats, and he understood when their eyes met that he was very seriously sickened by an ancient and terrorific affliction.
IT WAS ON ONE OF BOB’S FAVORED QUIET LIBRARY MORNINGS THAT he first met Ethan. Bob pulled into the lot and discovered a battered and hubcapless 1951 Mercury parked at a skewed angle in his spot. He sat idling in his Chevy, and he understood for the hundredth time that it was other people who made for problems in this life. He parked and approached the Mercury. There was a body slumped facedown across the front seat, and for one instant Bob thought it was a corpse. But when he rapped on the window the body stretched itself, and groaned, and this was Ethan. Sitting, he looked up at Bob, smiling already, easy in the skin of himself, handsome in his dishevelment. “Hi,” he said, rolling down the window. “How you doing?”