“You were for it,” Bob said.
“Oh yes. And I assumed a role of leadership that was quite a surprise to myself and my colleagues both. It was a case of my not knowing I felt so strongly about something when all at once I was shouting my demands from the podium at the union hall.” She sat up straight. “Do you know what I like most in life, Bob? Practicality. A child is unruly. The child is struck. The child is no longer unruly. Mathematics of the heart. Oh, it was a fine tool. But they’ve taken so many of our tools away from us, and now our youngsters grow ever more blunt, ever more pointless, ever more coarse. The thing I don’t understand is, why should it come down to us to teach them manners? Why should it come down to me?”
Miss Ogilvie and Bob had no common ground aesthetically or intellectually but Bob, always mindful of Sandy Anderson’s advice, was supportive of her quest for soundlessness, and did not attempt to bend her will toward a more moderate environment. She was wrongheaded, perhaps a little bit insane; she was also two years past the traditional point of retirement. Soon enough and she would be gone; in the meantime, Bob was learning his craft.
The work itself was not ever difficult, at least not for Bob. He felt uncomplicated love for such things as paper, and pencils, and pencils writing on paper, and erasers and scissors and staples, paper clips, the scent of books, and the words on the pages of the books. Sometimes he thought of the women and men who’d composed these documents sitting at their desks and aiming for the elusive bull’s-eye and almost always missing but sometimes not, and Bob was certain that a room filled with printed matter was a room that needed nothing. His colleagues weren’t unfriendly, but vague in the face, and with not much to say. Some among them complained of the tedium of the profession, and Bob always expressed his sympathies, but really he had no comprehension of the sentiment. He understood that the people who knew boredom in the role of librarian were simply in the wrong profession. He didn’t judge them for it but felt a relief at not being like them.
As the newcomer, and lowest on the pole, he was given the morning shift, which was considered undesirable owing to its hours, but for Bob it achieved a lifestyle ideal. Every morning his alarm sounded at 5:00 a.m., and he came downstairs in his pajamas to light the fire he’d assembled the night before. As the fire took shape, Bob went back upstairs to shower and dress for the day. He owned two suits and alternated one to the other, going casual each third day: tieless, white button-down shirt under a dark V-neck, black slacks, black socks, black penny loafers. Dressed, his naked face stinging with aftershave, Bob returned to the living room to find the fire crackling and throwing its shifting light across the floor and walls. He ate his breakfast, then prepared and packed his lunch. If it was a particularly cold morning he would start the Chevy and leave it idling in the driveway while he washed the dishes.
As a child and teenager, Bob had been afraid of becoming an adult, this in response to an idea his mother had unwittingly instilled in him, which was that life and work both were states of unhappiness and compromise. But Bob’s mother had never understood the pleasures of efficiency, the potential for grace in the achievement of creature comforts. She cooked but hated cooking. She cleaned and felt cheated. Bob didn’t feel this way; the actions he performed each morning were needed, and each one fit into the next. He drove over empty, rain-wet streets and across the river to work. The parking lot was empty, the library silent as he crossed the carpeted front room and to his desk, where he turned on his green-shaded lamp and smoked a cigarette and read the library’s newspaper. After, he set up for the day, turned on all the lights, unlocked the doors, and then came the workday proper. At the commencement of his career he was uncomfortable in his dealings with the public but his shyness passed when he recognized they were not addressing him as a human being but using him as a tool, a mechanism of the library machinery.
Miss Ogilvie saw in Bob a librarian in his element, and she left him to his own devices. When she told him she was taking him off the mornings and putting him on afternoon shift, he asked if he couldn’t stay on as he had been. She asked him why and he explained his preference, his affection for the quiet mornings, and Miss Ogilvie stared, surprised that she should still be able, after all this time, to feel any manner of connection with another person. Her path was ever more rigid, crueler than Bob’s; but she liked that he was the way he was, and she understood it, even if it didn’t mirror precisely her personal experience.
Here was where Bob Comet had landed, then, and he was not displeased that this should be the case. The northwest branch of the public library was where Bob Comet became himself. It was also where he met Connie and Ethan. Connie came first but she didn’t appear as Connie until after Ethan, so really, Ethan came first.
CONNIE CAME FIRST BUT WAS OBSCURED BY HER FATHER, SOMETHING of a legend around the neighborhood in that he did wear a self-made cape and was given to bursts of critical public oration. His mind was teeming with unfriendly thoughts and special threats and he felt these were of a rare and high quality and that it was for the greater good that they be heard. But the era of the soapbox-in-the-square had passed; for want of a forum he gave voice to his points of view in the streets, in parks, often at bus stops, but most commonly on the buses themselves, where people were held captive. The content of the speeches was various but typically of a nature hostile toward mankind’s contemporary behaviors, with close attention paid to the Catholic Church.
The bus drivers did not like Connie’s father’s performances very much, and some did eject him, but many, owing to complacency or fear, let him go on and on. There was one driver who encouraged him via the overhead address system, saying things like “Could you repeat that, sir?” and “Do you have any documentation to support the argument?” and “He seems to really mean that, folks,” and “Let’s give a round of applause to the lively little fellow in sandals.”
There was a figure behind this obstinate individual, and that was Connie. Bob didn’t notice her for a time, as she was hidden away beneath a cape of her own, hers featuring a generous hood, obscuring not only her face but also her gender. She never spoke or made any sudden movements; she trailed after her father or sat in a chair by the library entrance to wait for him, sometimes for the better part of an hour, her posture straight, her hands folded on her lap, gaze focused on the ground.
Connie’s father was on his better behavior in the library. He was always curt, but he was quietly curt. When Bob engaged him, Connie’s father did not try to hide his contempt, but neither did he rail against Bob, as he surely would have had they met on the sidewalk. Connie’s father’s area of focus in terms of his reading was American history, from the country’s conception and up to the current year of 1958. It had become something of a game among the younger library employees to try to uncover the mysteries of the man; one morning at the checkout counter, Bob asked, “No interest in European history, sir?” Connie’s father sighed at the energy he would need to expend in answering the question. He said, “Europe is in the past, is deceased, and so is not my concern. America is imperiled, and will almost certainly follow Europe’s path, but we’ve not yet fallen, and we’re here now, and must do what we can with the time remaining.”