“What can I do for you?” Lenny had gray-and-brown stubble growing on the bottom half of his face, and he rubbed his palm against it while he waited for Black Hat Guy to respond.
“I was wondering if you had some books.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He flattened it out on the counter and then handed it to Lenny, asking, “Do you have either of these?”
“Let’s see.” Lenny typed something into his computer. “We have that first one, but not the second. That first one is in. Come with me, I’ll show you where.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem. That’s what we do.” He gave Black Hat Guy a pat on the shoulder. “Jamie, keep an eye on the desk for me?”
“Sure,” I called back.
As Lenny walked him back to the stacks, I heard him ask, “You getting a pet or something?”
“No, nothing like that. Just curious about some stuff.” Black Hat Guy’s voice trailed off as he followed Lenny to the back room.
I was working on a mess of New Yorker magazines that had piled up on the magazine rack when Sonia returned to the circ desk, coffee cup in hand.
“Those brownies downstairs, Jamie, did you try them?” Sonia asked from the desk. “Or whatever they are, I don’t know. They’re excellent, though.”
“Yes,” I answered. “I’ve had two.”
She made a face. “That Lenny’s gonna make me fat.”
“I doubt that,” I laughed.
“Every day he brings a new treat!”
“Maybe we can ask him to bring carrot sticks once in a while then,” I suggested.
“And then he’ll bake them in coconut sugar and hand-tapped maple syrup!”
I laughed because she was right. He probably would.
I heaved the newly organized pile of magazines back into its shelf space and arched my back to stretch. Who knew working at the library would make my muscles sore?
“I’m gonna check the book drops, Sonia.”
“Let me go. I need to walk off my brownie thingie.” She grabbed the bag and hurried from behind the desk. “I hope it’s loaded so I have to make two trips. Or three trips. Or maybe I’ll just walk around the building a few times. That might be good.”
“Oh my God, Sonia.”
“I’m going. See you in a few.”
“Fine.” I waved. “Bye.”
Black Hat Guy emerged from the back room, a book in hand, and headed back to his chair. When he sat, his leg blocked the ending of a quote running across the bottom of the seat, leaving it to say only If you look for perfection, you’ll never be. Black Hat Guy turned a page and kept reading.
“How’s your day been, Jamie?” Lenny asked as he returned to the desk.
“So far so good,” I answered. “Is he going to check that out?” I pointed my chin at Black Hat Guy.
“Nah, just using it here,” Lenny answered. “He can’t borrow it.”
“Why not?”
Lenny turned his back to Black Hat Guy and lowered his voice. “He doesn’t have a library card.”
“But he’s here all the time. Why wouldn’t he have a card?”
“You need to have a residence in town to have a card.”
“Oh. So he doesn’t live here,” I concluded.
“Actually, he doesn’t really live anywhere,” Lenny said. “Nowhere permanent.”
“Like, he’s homeless?”
“At the moment, yes. But he’s staying at his buddy’s place right now—or in his garage.”
“Garage?” I mouthed.
“Rick’s wife is not on board and has no idea. If she finds out, he’ll need a new plan. But right now, Rick leaves the garage unlocked so he can slip in at night and then slip out in the morning.”
“He doesn’t have any family to go to?”
“He’s burned some bridges, from what I gather, so no, he’s on his own. He’s lucky he has that friend, though, and his garage.”
What would happen the day Rick’s wife had some special appointment and needed her car super early in the morning? Black Hat Guy would get busted and lose his only shelter for good? What then? He would have nowhere to go. Except the library. He could spend his days in the library, of course, but not the nights. Where would he go at night?
I really hoped Rick’s wife liked to sleep in.
“I know he looks peculiar, sitting in that same spot, using that same outlet every single day, but I think going to that chair makes him feel like he has a place of his own. And the phone, well, that’s all he’s got.”
I peeked around Lenny’s shoulder to look at Black Hat Guy again. He was busy at work, focused on his book, his finger moving along the page in sync with his eyes.
“That phone”—Lenny kept talking—“that’s his news, his emails, all his contacts, his internet, television.”
“I get it. It makes sense,” I said quietly. “Thanks for telling me, Lenny. I had no idea.”
“There’s no way you could have known. I just found out myself.” He shrugged.
“So how can we help him?”
“We’ve been helping him. He needs the library, and we keep it here for him. We welcome him. We didn’t need to know his story to help him.” Lenny paused, then added, “We just need to remember that everyone has one.”
Black Hat Guy, Wally, Sonia, Lenny, Beverly, Jane Eyre, who still counted even though she was a fictional character.
Me.
Everyone had a story.
“And you found out all this how?” I asked.
“I found out because he started telling me. I bumped into him at the Bean Pot.” Lenny pursed his lips together, then said, “Sometimes you just need to talk, and I happened to be there, so . . .”
“No way, Lenny. It didn’t just happen to be you. He talked because it was you. Sonia says you are the bartender of libraries.”
Lenny took a step back.
“Sonia said that?” he asked.
“She always says that. She says you’re the easiest person to talk to in the world and that you have this way of making everyone feel comfortable and that you’re pretty much the best listener ever.”
Lenny’s eyes opened wide. “Wow, I never knew she thought that.”
“Well, she does!”
“See what we have here?” Lenny bounced on his feet a little.
“What?”
“An exchange of information.” Lenny was getting punchy. “Sharing is caring. You share with me, I share with you. We all pay it forward. The skies rain compassion. It’s a win-win-win-win-win.”
I laughed, then quickly lowered my voice when a patron on a computer looked up at me in irritation. I mouthed “Sorry” at him and then whisper-laughed to Lenny, “What are you even talking about?”
“I am talking about the rush of joy I am feeling at this momentous moment,” Lenny answered me. “I must bake. I am feeling a spectacular need to bake!” His eyes jumped to the clock above the library door entrance. “And how about that for the world being in sync—look at the time!”
“You’re done for the day?”
“I am done for the day.” He paused, then cackled a fake witch laugh and rubbed his hands together devilishly. “Or am I?”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Lenny. Go home and bake something delicious.”
“I shall,” he replied.
“With chocolate.”
“As you wish,” he said, bowing at the waist.
Lenny quickly logged his hours into the time sheet, gathered up his things from under the circ desk, and rounded his way from behind the counter.
“Oh, but what about his book?” I asked quietly, nodding toward Black Hat Guy. “You said I can’t check it out to him.”
“He won’t ask you to. Just shelve it and we’ll pull it for him again tomorrow if he wants.”
“Got it. Have a good night.” I smiled at him.
“You, too. Have a great one.” Lenny waved at me enthusiastically.
Black Hat Guy looked up a
s Lenny opened the library door. He lifted his hand and called, “Bye, man. Thanks.”
Lenny gave a big wave and replied with, “Anytime. See you later.”
Black Hat Guy’s eyes quickly darted over to mine after the door closed, and he caught me staring at him. I smiled, my lips pressed together in an effort to look professional and welcoming, like Sonia. I was trying to look like I hadn’t just learned some seriously private and personal information about him. After all, I knew firsthand what it felt like to have seriously private and personal information shared with the public. I wasn’t about to make him feel the way I had at school.
Black Hay Guy’s mouth twitched into a half smile in return. Then he lowered his head and got back to work.
My eyes wandered around the room and settled on a small empty space near Black Hat Guy’s chair. There was just enough room there for a table with a platter of baked goods, a coffeepot, and some cups and napkins, like Lenny had suggested to Beverly. I hoped we would be able to set it up.
The community bulletin board looked like it hadn’t been cleaned off in a while. It hung on the wall by the entrance, and I could see from my spot at the desk that it was drowning under layers of notices. The flyers were ripped, wrinkled, and curling up on themselves. From this angle, the board looked a lot like a giant paper sculpture one of the eighth graders made in Art Club last year.
I began leafing through the piles of papers thumbtacked crookedly on top of each other. Only director-approved notices were allowed up on the board, mostly just ads for town events and nonprofit groups, but tons of people came with thumbtacks and stuck up their own personal notices anyway. It was my job to weed those out, and also pull down flyers for events that had long passed, like the Earth Day event back in April and the Memorial Day Parade ad from May.
It took a good ten minutes to go through the whole board, remove the junk and dated material, and then rehang the current news neatly. I took my stack of old papers to the recycling bin and saw that Black Hat Guy’s chair was empty. He was probably in the bathroom. The book was closed, his phone shoved like a bookmark inside to hold his page. I recognized the cover immediately because my aunt Julie had a copy of the same book at her house. The title was Everything You Need to Know About Dogs.
August
Wally
It was the first day of August, and a Tuesday, so when the door jingled five minutes after opening, I expected to see Wally lumbering toward me at the circ desk, his five movies and flower in hand.
But it wasn’t Wally.
It was Trina.
I gasped one short breath at the sight of her. She walked straight toward me at the circ desk, her eyes piercing as arrows, her shiny hair twisted in a perfect fishtail braid.
“Good morning.” I had never been so relieved to hear Sonia’s voice. She lowered a stack of books onto the return cart but didn’t take her place behind the computer. I realized right away what she was doing. She was giving me a chance to show that I wouldn’t let Trina get to me anymore, that I had turned the page.
I stepped up.
“Good morning,” I echoed Sonia, smiled brightly, and looked straight through Trina as if she were nothing but a deserted cobweb, sticky but harmless.
Trina startled for a moment, then quickly turned her attention to Sonia, snubbing me, and answered, “Good morning.”
I stood my ground behind the computer.
“I have to grab some things from the back, Jamie. Run the desk for me, would you?” Sonia briefly touched my shoulder, probably to show Trina exactly whose side she was on.
Trina’s whole face fell.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked cordially, glancing at her, then at the screen, then back at her again. I put my hands on the keyboard to show her I had work to do.
Trina let out a short, hard breath. “No, forget it. I can do it myself.” She started to walk away, toward the back room. “I just wanted to get some art books for my brother,” she called over her shoulder to me. She was a bee, trying to sting.
“In the 700s, on the left.” My voice sailed out of me and through the room, smooth and clear. And I actually knew the correct Dewey decimal section.
Trina didn’t acknowledge me or say thank you, but I didn’t expect her to.
Sonia returned to the desk. “Well done, my dear,” she said, nodding.
“Thanks.” I smiled, not even trying to hide how proud I was of myself. “I Sonia-ed it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I Sonia-ed it. I worked my inner Sonia and nailed it.” I raised my eyebrows and grinned big. “Thank you for being so awesome, and for letting me copy your awesomeness.”
“My awesomeness,” Sonia repeated. “Well, I won’t argue with that, Jamie. You’re very welcome.”
The bells rang as the door swung open, and a Wally shape filled the doorway.
“Good morning to you, and a good morning—” Wally didn’t finish his greeting. He leaned against the doorframe instead and stood in place for a few breaths.
“. . . it is!” I finished for him.
He nodded yes and lifted a hand to acknowledge me, but held his gaze down on the ground. Then he pushed off the wall and slowly worked his way to the front desk. He rested both arms on the counter once he got there. His eyes were dull and his face was coated with a thick layer of sweat.
“Hiya, Jamie,” he managed to huff, extremely out of breath.
“Hey, Wally,” I said, in a softer voice this time. “You okay?”
“Just tired today, a little short in my chest is all.” He forced a half smile, then started his walk around the desk to his vase.
“Do me a favor and pull that old stem out of there for me,” he directed, breathing heavily the whole time.
“Of course.” I didn’t offer it to him to take home, and he didn’t ask for it.
Wally kept one hand on the counter while he searched with the other in his tattered plastic bag. He came out with a bloodred carnation. From a distance, it almost looked like a rose. Wally lifted his arm to slip it into the mouth of the vase and completely missed. It fell onto the counter and then dropped to the floor.
“I’ll get it!” I nearly shouted, rushing from behind the desk to retrieve it before Wally could even consider bending down for it himself.
“I’ve got it, Wally,” I told him, and I placed it in the glass jar. “It needs fresh water again. I’ll take care of it. Can I check in your movies for you?” I reached for his bag without asking, something I had never done before, and he let me. I noticed Trina had come back into the main room and was watching, studying Wally and me instead of the large art book in her hands.
Lenny came downstairs from the loft, finished with fiction shelving for the moment.
“Good morning, Wally, my man,” Lenny greeted him. “Shopping for some movies, I’m guessing?”
Wally smiled a genuine smile then, returning a bit to himself, and answered, “You know my routine. Gotta stick to my routine.” He smiled a big, yellow-toothed smile. Even the gaps in his teeth smiled.
“Let me get you a chair. You feeling all right?” Lenny swung a chair from a computer station over to the DVD wall, blocking the aisle in that way Beverly allowed for Wally but nobody else.
“Not great, actually. Not so good. But not so bad, either.” He perked up with his last words and mustered a laugh, as if he’d just told the punch line to a great joke. His laugh turned into a cough, of course, and Lenny grabbed him by the elbow to steady him as the cough rattled his body.
Lenny got Wally set up in his chair so he could search the DVD display, while Sonia and I returned to the front desk.
“Let me know if I can help you with anything, Wally,” Lenny told him. Then he walked to the desk to tell Sonia he’d be downstairs in the supply closet if we needed him.
After Sonia renewed books for one patron and then helped an older woman with a reference question, she turned to me. Her face was tense.
“His color is off,” she said. “H
e needs a doctor.”
“Lenny tried that already. He wouldn’t go,” I reminded her.
“We have to try again.” She looked back at him. He was seated, his hands on his knees, his round belly resting in his lap. I watched a drop of sweat trickle off his earlobe and land on his thigh like a tear. He didn’t seem to feel it.
And then it all happened so fast.
His whole body slumped down into itself like a deflating balloon, and he collapsed out of the chair and onto the floor.
I saw the whole thing as if it were screened in slow motion, even though it must have been only one second from the beginning to the end of his fall.
“Sonia!” I shrieked as I ran toward the lump on the floor that was Wally.
Beverly appeared out of her office in a flash and seemed to teleport to the closest phone. She dialed 911, gave all the information in a clear calm voice, hung up, then wedged open the front door for the ambulance’s arrival.
Meanwhile, Sonia met me on the other side of Wally.
“Roll him, Jamie, on his side, this way,” she said, and started to push.
Lenny flew up the stairs and pushed in next to Sonia, helping to move Wally into position. He felt for a pulse. “It’s there, but it’s barely there,” he told us, a tremor of fear in his voice.
A mixture of dried spittle and fresh saliva pooled onto the carpet beside Wally’s mouth. It looked frothy. His eyes rolled back in their sockets.
I felt my throat close up and an icy sweat break out across my body. I moved the chair out of the way, pushing it into the room behind me, which was when I saw Trina, standing there, eyes wide, mouth open, frozen in place. The book she had been holding was splayed open at her feet, pages folded over themselves, the spine bent from hitting the floor.
“Please clear the entrance area,” Beverly called out to all the patrons in the library. “If you could all just come to this side, please.” She directed the small crowd to Black Hat Guy’s side of the library. His quotes chair was empty, but no one sat down. No one sat anywhere. Many of them strained to see Wally’s limp body, exposed and vulnerable on the worn carpet floor, then turned their backs and looked out the window instead, their hands over their mouths in shock.
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