The Last of the Wise Lovers (5 page)

   "Mr. K.," Ms. Yardley began
resolutely, "this young man, whom we accepted to work with us in
conjunction with the municipality's Program for Summer Vacation Youth
Employment, made a fine impression on us in the beginning - so fine, in fact,
that we agreed to allow him to work with the public, and we put him in the
Catalog Room instead of poor Simpkin."

   "Simpkin," Mr. K. noted,
though I wasn't sure if in wonder, uncertainty, or confirmation.

   But Ms. Yardley made sure to clarify
the matter.  "Who took ill last month...”

   "Ahh," said Mr. K.,
regarding me through his glasses.

   He had a doleful and contemplative
expression, but I wasn't taken in by it.  The thickness of his lenses
hinted that it was nothing more than extreme myopia, and that this seemingly
sympathetic little man might actually be a tough and ready bastard who would
throw me out on my ear without a moment's hesitation.  I didn't
particularly care one way or the other, and if it hadn't have been for the
accusation of theft that Ms. Yardley was just then beginning to detail, I'd
have walked out right in the middle of the `enquiry'.

   "Here," Ms. Yardley drew my
employee's card out of the pocket of her flared skirt, "your signature is
all we need to pass the matter on to the personnel depart...”

   "Hey," I interrupted.
 "I also have something to say," but Mr. K. didn't even hear.
 He brought the card close to his eyes, then moved it away.  His
mouth was very round and sensuous, like Byron's mouth in the portrait on the
flyleaf of his book of poetry.  We were all silent. The apple was still
perched precariously on the edge of the desk.  Ms. Yardley was the first
to lose her patience. "At the bottom," she reminded him, "where
it says `Date of Termination of Employment'."

   Mr. K. looked at me again and said,
"Why did you do it?"

   Both Ms. Yardley and I stood there
dumbfounded.  Each of us was astounded by the question - Ms. Yardley
because she hadn't understood it, and I precisely because I had.  He was
the second person in two days to speak to me in Hebrew.

   "I didn't do it," I said
after a moment.

   "She says you did," he
added in broken, heavily-accented Hebrew.

   "Could you manage to speak in a
language I understand?" Ms. Yardley bristled.

   Mr. K. apologized in English.
 Ms. Yardley gladly forgave him. His speaking to me in a language she
didn't understand was so rude that one would've expected him to punish me just
to even things out. But he merely asked in English, in a gentle voice,
"What were you looking for, there in the stacks?"

   "The terminals in the Catalog
Room were in use," I explained.

   "And this!" Ms. Yardley
presented the slide.

   "That's mine."

   "And I say that this is a slide
that was stolen from a book or from one of our collections."

   Mr. K. sent a tiny white hand
forward.  She placed the slide in it. He peered at it in the light that came
from the window and asked, "What's this a diagram of?"

   "That's exactly what I'm trying
to find out."

   He tugged at a drawer and took out a
magnifying glass.

   "You haven't signed," Ms.
Yardley reminded him.

   But Mr. K. was preoccupied.
 "How did you go about looking?" he asked.  "What did
you type into the computer?"

   "Agitator."

   He raised an eyebrow in surprise,
turned the slide over and examined it under the magnifying glass.

   "Your signature, Mr. K.,"
Ms. Yardley demanded.

   He discovered the words that were
printed on the bottom.  "Why agitator, of all things?"

   "I've seen that word someplace
before."

   He flashed a quick smile that seemed
almost like a twitch.  "How do you go home?"

   "From Port Authority."

   "Do you go through Times
Square?"

   "Sometimes."

   He picked my card up off the table
and held it out to Ms. Yardley. "It's all right," he hurled at her,
"it was a misunderstanding."  He turned his attention back to
me.  "When you stand opposite the Warner Cinema, look up."
 He glanced at the slide again.  "Are you interested in
science?"

   "Yes," I said, happy that I
didn't have to lie, "especially electronics."

   From the look on his face I could
tell he liked me.  You can trust me about this.  I'm so anxious for
people to like me that I can tell immediately when they do.  He tugged the
drawer open again, took out an envelope, and placed the slide inside.

 "If you'll leave this with me for a day
or two, I'll be able to tell you what it's a diagram of," he said, and
without another word drew his two books back toward himself and returned to his
reading.  The apple fell and rolled on the floor.

   Ms. Yardley went out first, striding
with such angry steps that her heels left little rings in the carpet.
 Along the corridors, on the stairs, in the Reading Room and in the
Catalog Room everyone stared after us in amazement.  The rumor about my
being caught had undoubtedly flashed through the library, and I must have
looked like a condemned man come back from a hanging.  I stood behind my
counter.  Ms. Yardley also took her place; after a minute or two of
self-control she picked up the telephone receiver and dialed someplace.
 Her words were lost in the usual noises of the Catalog Room -
conversations, the clicking of keyboards and the rasping of printers - but at
one point she raised her voice and I thought I could hear her say something
like `those two Jews settled it in their language.'

   As far as I know, a comment like that
would have made you so angry that you'd have dashed off a letter to the Board
of Trustees of the library, or the mayor.  But I was absorbed in something
else - something so important that it couldn't wait until the end of the day -
and at lunch break I left the library and ran to Times Square.  Above the
Warner Cinema there was an ad for a new movie,
Terror on the Roads
,
showing a long road that stretched off into blue-blue skies.  What had he
meant?  Just to be sure, I looked at the two adjacent buildings.
 Nothing.  But when I turned to go back, I found it. It seemed he
really was absent-minded, because it was above some dinky cinema that showed
porn flicks all day, on the other side of the road altogether, where Broadway
meets 42nd: a huge ad for a washing machine bearing the words, "The Only
One in the World With a Double-Action Agitator".

*

All that afternoon I was embarrassed that I had
made such a fuss over a washing machine.  I had a burning need to talk to
Mr. K., both to apologize and because that's just the way I am.  If
somebody shows even the slightest interest in me, I shower him with attention.
 Only discipline and a proper education prevent me from sticking like
glue.  The rest of the day I ran into him all over the place: twice on the
stairs (I volunteered to get the flow charts of requests to use the catalog),
once by the soda machine, and a few times in the corridor of the administrative
wing, where I'd passed on my more-frequent-than-necessary visits to the
bathroom.  I noticed that he was thin and had very white skin, that his eyes,
behind those thick glasses, were dull, and that the twitch that passed for a
smile actually expressed a lot of things, depending on the circumstances:
greeting, embarrassment, acknowledgment, or "leave me alone".

   At ten minutes to five he passed
through the Catalog Room.  I caught up with him just before he reached the
door.

  "Hi," I smiled.  "I saw
it - that is, the washing machine."

  "I'm working on it," he said,
completely ignoring my smile.  His gaze was focused on something behind me
and his brow was furrowed with worry.  "I'm working on it," he
said again and went out into the street.

   What more was there to work on when
it was clear that it was just a washing machine?  I didn't have much time
to think about it, because just then something else happened: again I felt
someone looking at me.

   It was a woman.  She stood at
the end of the Catalog Room by the farthest terminal, seemingly absorbed in the
list of operating instructions that was taped to the wall in an effort to mask
the interest she had in me, or in Mr. K. (who had by now vanished), or in both
of us.

   I went back to my counter, from where
I could look her over: There was nothing special about her.  Just a
regular woman wearing jeans patched at the knees - a bit sloppy for her age -
these completely crazy purple shoes, and a brown poncho with five or six horses
on it galloping up toward a long, long neck and a delicate face.  She
finished reading the list of instructions, bent over the keyboard and began to
type.  The printer next to her started to whirr and rasp, and immediately
stopped.  She typed a few more letters, and then tapped the printer
lightly.  Ms. Yardley took one step on her wooden platform.  The
woman looked around in despair, casing the room, Ms. Yardley, and the other half-dozen
people there before turning her gaze to the opposite, most distant, least
likely corner of the room: to me.

   Ms. Yardley walked over toward her,
but the woman was quicker; she was already leaning over my counter and saying,
"Hi. Could you help me?"

   Ms. Yardley was pretty close by, and
I didn't want to get into any more trouble.

  "Certainly," I said, "Ms.
Yardley here will be able...”

   But she had already spilled the
contents of her bag onto my counter: notebooks, lists, chewed pencils, a few
magazines.

  "Here," she smoothed out a list
of books, "I need to find these, and the computer doesn't...”

   "Yes, madam?" Ms. Yardley
said from behind her.  The woman moved aside, revealing the pile of her
possessions on the counter and the list in the middle.

 "The computer," she explained
again.  "I can't seem to find what I need...”

   Ms. Yardley took the list and
narrowed her eyes in examination.

   "Articles," the woman said,
"scientific, mostly.  I photocopy them for a media resources
company."

   Twenty or thirty
"regulars", most of them students, earned their wages photocopying
articles in the library at the behest of various companies for 20 cents a page.
 Ms. Yardley detested them in particular. She claimed that the library was
meant to serve the residents of New York, and not to make a bunch of middlemen
rich.  

  But now she said rather cordially, "I
don't think Mr. Levin will object to giving you ten minutes of his time."
She glared at me maliciously.  "I'm sure he can feed the information
into the computer for you."

   The large clock on the wall showed
five-forty.  Feeding the information into the computer, including waiting
for confirmation that the information was correct and that an article was
indeed in the library, took about five minutes per title.  There were
eleven titles on the list, which meant it would take a little less than an
hour.  I threw a glance at the sign that read,  "No Requests for
Books Received After 5:45".

 Ms. Yardley quickly added, "You're
lucky there are five minutes left in which you can request this service...” and
went back to her post.

   "Thanks," the woman said in
a low, soft voice.  While I was filling out the order form, I was certain
that something was amiss.  Very much amiss.  I didn't know what, I
didn't know how, but it had something to do with how she had come up to me - of
all the people in the room - with this long list of titles that had to be found
fifteen minutes before closing time; something even in her voice, which wasn't
the voice of someone who wouldn't know how to use a computer - especially a
user-friendly computer like the one in the Catalog Room.

   "Name," I asked.

   "Doherty," she pulled her
poncho back, "Annie."

   "Tomorrow," I said drily,
"at 9:00 o'clock."

   I went over to the terminal she had
abandoned.  There was nothing that wasn't in order, other than the fact
that she had stopped in mid-function.

"If you want," I said over my shoulder,
"I'll show you how and you can...” but she was no longer there.  She
was already in full stride toward the door, where she was waving goodbye.

   At exactly 6:00 p.m. Ms. Yardley
left.  Mrs. Kahn left immediately after her.  At 6:10 the guard
turned off the chandeliers.

 "You be here long, kid?" he asked.

   "An hour."  At least
he didn't call me `young man'.

   "I'll leave you the small
lights."

   "Great."

   The books she'd requested were
approximately what you'd expect from a company that employed these gofers:
electronics, chemistry, astrophysics.  It was 6:40 when I finished typing
in all the information. I pressed the "SAVE" key and waited for the
printer to spit out the list. In the meantime, I looked around.  The small
lights twinkled between the tables.  The darkened terminals looked like
blind eyes.  Again I had the sensation that someone was looking at me.
 I walked to the door and pressed the electricity switch, but it only
turned on two lights in the hall.

   I left the door open to let light in,
a lot of light.  I tore off the sheets that came off the printer and
stuffed them on the shelf under my counter.  As I was leaving, I heard
steps from the head of the stairs. I immediately went back to the Catalog Room.
 Two days earlier, I wouldn't have done so.  But then, two days
earlier I wouldn't have gotten into trouble with Ms. Yardley and I wouldn't
have felt confused enough to let myself be badgered into staying to enter a
request for books that some strange woman had brought in too close to closing
time.

   Through the glass I could see a
blurry figure pass under a row of fluorescent lights.  I cautiously opened
the door.  It was Mr. K.  He was dressed in a coat that was too big
for him and was reading a book as he went.  When had he come back?
 How?