Ex Libris

by Paula Guran

  “I’m not mad at you.” She ran a finger across the cover, frowning. “But this shouldn’t have been shelved in the regular stacks. A bit past anything you need to be handling, right now.”

  “Does it eat your brain?” I felt my cheeks flare again, worse for the knowledge that it showed like a beacon.

  She smiled. “Not this one, no. But it’s not translated from any human language, and it’s safer to know what to expect before you get into it.” She tucked it under her arm, though not against bare skin.

  At this point, she could tell anyway that I didn’t know what I was doing. Still, it took a few dry swallows before I could get the words out. They were angrier than I’d intended. “Am I supposed to ask? Or am I supposed to figure it out all on my own and hope I don’t unleash a plague on the whole Gulf Coast?”

  She leaned against the edge of my desk, put Libris back down, patted the offending volume a couple of times as if to reassure herself that it was still closed. Then she pushed her cloud of hair away from one ear. The whole outer curve had been sculpted into tiny scallops, like waves of flesh, and faded to cheap newsprint gray. It stood like a scar against the warm brown of the rest of her skin. She let the hair spring back.

  “Happened my first day at Crique Foudre. I can hear the books, and hear people and other things thinking when they mean to do harm. Prophecies, sometimes. And people arguing in whispers down the block when I’m trying to sleep. The gifts have sharp edges. There’s no way to know beforehand who can handle it all and who can’t, and we’ve learned the hard way that you have to find out most of it for yourself. If someone explains everything straight up, it always ends badly.”

  “Suppose I quit?” I swallowed, because again I hadn’t meant to speak so bluntly, and because I knew the answer. I’d show up at David’s studio, and he’d support me as best he could—no one in Chicago was hard up for librarians—and he wouldn’t criticize me for not being able to cut it in the real world.

  “You could do that. The lady before you left at two months—that’s why we were hiring so late in the summer.” Nothing about how I’d leave them in the lurch if I quit just before the semester started, though it didn’t really need saying. “This is riskier than holding down a desk just about anywhere else. The best I can offer is that if you stick around, you’ll become something special. We all do. Whether that special is more like yourself, or less, depends on luck. And on your own choices, at least a little.”

  I didn’t know whether I ought to be tempted by the “more” or the “less”—or whether I was even crazier than usual to be tempted by either. “What can you tell me? Without things ending badly?”

  She sighed, fidgeted the beads on her earring. I wondered if they drowned out the voices of the books. “That’s always a gamble, but I’ll give it a shot. You know about our patron.”

  “Yeah. Although no one’s told me his name. Or her name. I’d think there’d be a plaque or something—is this one of the things it’s dangerous to know?”

  “No, he just likes to keep a low profile. You might meet him, one of these days.” She closed her eyes and inhaled sharply. “Maybe that’s not the place to start. I’m sorry. I don’t feel like I’ve explained this right to anyone, yet. Maybe this’ll be the time—unless you want me to shut up and let you track it all down for yourself.”

  I shook my head, a bit shaken by her uncertainty.

  “Well. The universe is a dangerous place. It’s not trying to be dangerous, and it’s full of things that have never heard of humans and wouldn’t much care if they did—but not caring can do at least as much harm as hatred, from things that can break you just passing by. The safest way, for a species that wants time to grow up, is to make a few places that can focus the strangeness, draw it away from everywhere else, and help keep it from getting out of control. People have been doing that on earth for millions of years, maybe longer, each learning from fragments left by those who came before, and doing just a little better as a result. This library is one of those places for humans.”

  “Out in—” I just stopped myself from asking what—if she wasn’t just making this up—a vital shield against extinction was doing out in the middle of nowhere, in a state that most of the country couldn’t even bother to protect from floods.

  She smiled wryly, making me think I’d been pretty transparent. “Safer this way. Crique Foudre is heir to Zaluski Library in Warsaw. Our patron traveled there in the 1920s, and when the Nazis destroyed it during World War II knew we’d need another one. He thought, a place that isn’t the capital of anywhere or the center of anything—it would be a lot safer from other humans.”

  “So we’re the quiet heroes who protect the world from terrible cosmic monsters?” I’d seen that show; I would have been happier to leave it on the screen.

  “You’ve been to the edge of the stacks. It’s not that simple. Sometimes we just keep the monsters happy, or distract them, or find a use for them, or study them to learn what else is out there. Sometimes we’re bait. Sometimes we can’t do a damn thing other than watch. And eventually we’ll lose the fight—either to other humans, like Zaluski, or altogether, like the three other species on this world that we know about before us.”

  I shivered. “One more thing to worry about.”

  “That’s one way to handle it, sure.”

  “What do you do?” I asked.

  “I go for distraction, personally. There are so many things to learn here, that you’ll never find in another library that isn’t doing the same work. Things to become. As long as you’re doing your job, the larger cosmic picture kind of takes care of itself, whether or not you grieve over it.”

  “Do you ever worry about asteroids?” I asked David. I was home, curled up with my laptop on the couch, insufficiently distracted by my pretty boyfriend.

  “Like the one that got the dinosaurs?” he asked. “Not really. It doesn’t seem like something that happens very often, and I’m not in a position to do anything about it in any case.”

  “Very logical.” I drew up my knees, watched him pass back and forth across the screen as he made French toast. “Suppose you could do something. Or thought you could?”

  “You mean like a desperate space mission to steer a comet away from Earth? Yeah, I would worry about that. I worry when there’s something I can try, and it matters if I screw up.” He smiled gently. “You’ve got to pick your battles—there’s only so much worry to go around.”

  “Unless you’re me.”

  “Even for you, gorgeous.”

  Later, I realized that I hadn’t asked if he’d rather be in a position to try something, even if he thought he’d screw up, or whether he’d rather do work he was better at, and not have to look.

  On the first day of classes, humidity spilled over the banks of the sky into a spectacular thunderstorm. I eased my car around puddles half-grown into lakes, breathing slowly through the constant strobe of lightning. I arrived ten minutes late, suit soaked through in spite of my umbrella. The AC set me shivering, but Sherise and the other librarians were talking and laughing in the staff room and one of them tossed me a giant beach towel.

  Sherise nodded at me and said, “We’re gonna get slammed even with the rain, so you know. And there are still a dozen professors who need pinned to the wall ’til they hand over their reserve lists.” By the time I got the last math professor to confess the identity of his textbook, and started on the English department, umbrellas filled the foyer and students swirled through the reading room.

  Most of the morning’s reference questions were about what I’d expected. Students wanted their course reserves and panicked about their first day’s homework and didn’t know how to manage the catalogue. But a lot of them seemed to realize they were in sacred space. I saw a dozen conflicting rituals. People blew kisses to the statues, or stood under the trompe l’oeil ceiling with arms raised. One student fussed at my desk for five minutes while I grew increasingly exasperated, then asked hesitantly if I could le
ave her offering “for the loa Epiphany” after the library closed. She slipped me a sandwich bag filled with cookies and tiny slips of calligraphed poetry, then wanted to know whether we’d fixed the PYTHIAS bugs over the summer.

  After the students cleared out at last, I stayed at my desk for a few minutes trying to catch my breath. Even the allegories seemed tired. Determination’s spear might have drooped a little, unless it just pointed at where some student had annoyed her. I got up and started to put the reference section back in order, then went to give Epiphany her cookies. In the wall below each statue, just above eye level, were little niches that I’d never noticed before. They were easier to spot now, as plenty of people hadn’t bothered with an intermediary for their offerings. There were flowers and pebbles, photos, cupcakes, a thankfully unlit candle, tiny jars of liquor that I was just going to assume came from faculty. I stuck the baggie in the appropriate spot.

  “Hey,” I told Epiphany. I still wasn’t sure about talking with them, but ignoring them didn’t seem wise, and the students knew the place better than I did. “Long day. Keep safe, okay?” I felt her attention on me, and knew that safety didn’t interest her at all—not to give, and not to receive. I trembled: equal parts awe and anxiety, both uncomfortable. Her companions seemed to perk up, their notice sharpening. The air brightened with storm-tinged ozone, and my ears ached as if I’d gone up too fast in an elevator. I felt again the urge to kneel. But I’d spent the day doing my job, and doing it mostly right.

  I looked around, found myself alone in the reading room. “I’m not just going to do what you want,” I said. No response. I shivered.

  “I’m not ignoring you,” I went on. Then, swallowing. “I’m not running away, yet. But we’re going to work together on this, or it’s all going to fall apart.”

  Still no response—maybe Sherise would have been able to hear one—but the pressure lifted a little. My ears popped, painfully.

  “That’s better,” I said. I kept the shakes out of my voice, knowing I would pay later—if not through some screw-up here, then through breaking down when I got home and thought too hard about the whole thing. But then, I’d have paid that price anywhere. “All right. Was there something you wanted to show me?”

  I left through Epiphany’s door, and followed the pulse of my little galaxy out into the stacks.

  Special Collections

  Norman Partridge

  I had this shrink one time. I didn’t see her very long . . . well, only as long as I had to because of the probation deal. Anyway, she was the one who suggested that I get into library work. She said I led a highly compartmentalized life.

  I thought everybody did, but the shrink disabused me of that notion. Her name was Rebecca. Of course, I could never call her that out loud. In our sessions she always insisted that I address her as Dr. Nakamura. But in my head it was always Rebecca Rebecca Rebecca. I guess you could say that I thought about her a lot.

  Rebecca was tall. She liked to wear boots and long skirts and cowl-necked sweaters. Her hair was curly and a shade of blond that made you wonder what color it really was. And she wasn’t Japanese, so I have no idea where the Nakamura came from. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe that name was all that remained of an ex-husband or a misplaced father. I never did figure it out, even with all the internet stalking I did.

  (And, yes, I know none of this really matters when it comes to the story I’m telling you—unless it’s to say that there are just some questions you never can answer—but bear with me. I have an eye for detail, and I admit that I can be more than a little garrulous at times. It’s just me.)

  Anyway, Rebecca had firm viewpoints on compartmentalization. I didn’t argue with her. Only an idiot argues with a court-appointed shrink. Besides, it’s true that I like things neat and orderly. And, sure, as Rebecca pointed out you can get carried away with that approach to life . . . but then again, you can get carried away with almost anything, can’t you?

  Of course you can. That’s only human.

  But let’s get back to keeping things neat and orderly. General topic: compartmentalized devices. Specific frame of reference: boxes. If you approach life the way I do, you probably use a wide variety of same without even thinking about it. There’s a toolbox for your work behavior, and a toy box for behavior at home. There’s an easy-to-open box that holds the public you, and a Japanese puzzle box that holds the unvarnished real deal. Maybe there’s even a little glass dollhouse for your spouse, and a gone-to-seed Barbie playhouse where you can fool around with your lover while Trailer Park Ken’s out back cooking meth. And last but not least: a big metal safe full of secrets you’ll never ever face, and a nailed-down coffin where you keep dreams so dark you wouldn’t want to see them even if you dared to yank nails and open the creaking lid.

  That last kind of box . . . well, I guess the contents would look something like Dorian Gray’s portrait, wouldn’t they? Meaning: You don’t go traipsing up to the attic and pull the curtain on that one unless you absolutely have to. If you dare bring along a light, it’s just a flickering candle so you won’t have to eyeball the entire Goyaesque mess in a hundred-plus-watt glow. And to be honest, it’s probably a better idea to expose the naked guts of that thing in complete darkness. That way, the only sensory input you’ll receive is auditory—like grave worms wriggling around on slick, oily canvas.

  Just imagine that sound inches away in the darkness. Those little worms churning in a face that’s as much rot as paint, burrowing into bloodstained canvas . . . digging and devouring, writhing and twisting . . .

  Pretty creepy, right? I mean, you wouldn’t go tactile, reach out blindly, and bury your fingers like five little corpses in those wriggling worms, would you? Uh-uh. No way. But that’s exactly the way it is with the dark things we file away, in life and in libraries. If you want knowledge, you have to reach out and touch it. You have to take a chance, perhaps even suffer the consequences. Information—and secrets—aren’t always pretty or pleasant. Sometimes they can be dangerous, like hungry worms crawling through the winding tunnels of your mind. That’s why information management is so important . . . believe me, I know.

  Think three Cs: codify, consign, and care. This is especially important with managing dangerous information. Libraries deal with lots of things like that. Often they’re consigned to Special Collections. Such materials demand careful oversight and limited access—sometimes so limited that the items are almost forgotten . . . except by a select few, or (sometimes) only one.

  And really, to close the circle, you might say that’s the way things ended up with Dr. Nakamura, my court-appointed shrink.

  She was consigned to Special Collections.

  In other words: I put her in a box.

  Actually, I put Rebecca in several of them.

  All it took was a little foresight, and a few very sharp knives.

  I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I really made an effort to listen to Rebecca . . . at first, anyway. And I took her advice about libraries to heart. I’d actually worked in one when I was in college. So I started submitting applications, hoping they wouldn’t be checked too carefully. This was the late nineties, and you could still manage that. In those days there was barely an internet, and the term “computer literacy” was cutting edge.

  I had a few interviews. Nothing surprising about any of them. Sit through enough interviews and you’ll realize that search committees end up settling way more than anyone would ever admit. Basically, they see who walks through the door and pick the best of the lot. In the end it’s mostly about personalities.

  I knew I wasn’t much of a personality, so I developed a basic game plan to become one . . . at least long enough to get what I wanted. I built a box from good old-fashioned aromatic cedar and filled it with photocopied stories. I found them in library trade journals, and most of them were pretty funny. Then I looked up some articles about the basic interview questions, and I matched the stories to the questions. The whole exercise was
easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

  In most library interviews—at least for public desk jobs—there’s always a question about handling problem patrons. Which, of course, demands quick thinking and good people skills. I found a great answer for that one. It was about a homeless guy who sat in a library children’s room, clucking just like a chicken. Different staffers talked to him, but no one could shut him up. He’d quiet down for a few minutes then start up again: “Bawk bawk bawk!” Finally one staffer tried a different approach. You know, very understanding: “Sir, I’m really sorry to bother you, but could I ask you to keep your pet chicken quiet in the library? It’s disturbing the other patrons.”

  The way the story went, the homeless guy didn’t make a peep after that. He just sat there pretending to pet his (equally quiet) chicken, every now and then telling it to shush. End result of this patron interaction: You could have heard crickets.

  Anyway, you should have heard the search committee howl when I dropped in that last line. It set up the clincher, and that was this: “Working in libraries isn’t just about reading books. It’s about reading people, too . . . and I’m very good at that.”

  Boy, you should have seen their collective eyeballs light up when I said that.

  If only it had been true.

  I got the job. It was a night supervisor gig at a little college library. The campus had a reputation for social justice advocacy, and maybe that’s why they overlooked the minimal stuff I included on my application concerning my criminal record. Or maybe it was because the dot-com boom was still going strong. With a good portion of the emerging workforce making big bucks moving jillions of pixels around millions of screens, pickings were slim in the non-virtual playground of real-world Joe jobs.

  Anyway, the library was open late—you know how college students like to procrastinate. I didn’t have much to do . . . not at first, anyway. Just make sure students didn’t bring a six-pack into one of the group study rooms, keep the student workers busy at the desk, and lock things up at the end of the night.