“I didn’t know Europe was doing so bad as that,” Bob said.
“Try opening your eyes. Try opening a newspaper.”
“I’ll do that, sir. Have a nice day.”
Connie’s father turned away, and there in his place stood Connie, watching Bob from under her hood and with a sly look that told him she knew her father was a foolish person, that she knew Bob knew this, and that she was gratified they were in agreement on this point. From this moment forward, and whenever Connie came to the library, she and Bob engaged in a study of one another, but modestly, and with not a word between them. Many weeks passed, throughout which Connie’s father behaved himself; but there was always the sense, for Bob and Connie both, of the situation’s tenuousness, that Connie’s father would at some point lose control of himself. His undoing could have come on any day of any season and for any reason, but it came in the summer, and was encouraged by the presence of two priests.
It was not uncommon to see a priest, or more often a pair of priests, making use of the library. There was a seminary some miles away in Forest Park and so Bob came into regular contact with their ilk. They were unimportant-question-askers and very-small small-talkers, remarkable for their sameness and, according to Bob’s experience, uniformly desirous to make contact with the world outside of their own. Not one among them could ever simply check out his books and depart; he had to contemplate this or that author, ask for recommendations, review the day’s weather or the weather of the day preceding. Their reading favored current fiction of a page-turning sort: cozy mysteries, tales of wartime adventure, espionage — just so long as the narrative moved at a nice clip and was devoid of art and sex and vice. Bob had no particular care for or opinion of the priests. When they spoke to him, he picked up a labored modesty that was the result, he supposed, of their belief that they were representing God on Earth. As a nonbeliever, Bob found this weary-making but endeavored to think of the priests as eccentric rather than boorish.
The two who came in the day Connie’s father was barred from the library were well known to Bob. There was the full-faced, florid priest, a squat fellow of thirtyish years, and his senior, a priest of the classical Irish mold: tall and rangy, bushy eyebrows and thick white hair combed back. They walked among the stacks, the white-haired priest pointing out this book or that, while the florid priest listened with an attentiveness that did look embellished, sycophantic. Bob was pondering their dynamic when he noticed Connie’s father, a wolfish grin on his face, edging closer to the pair. Connie stood behind her father; Bob couldn’t see her expression behind the hood but her physicality read as worried, bothered: she held her hands together at her chest and crept forward, forward, then halted. She knew something had to happen, and that it would not be pleasant, and that there was nothing to do but wait for it, to watch it, and now it began: the white-haired priest was reading a book’s back jacket when Connie’s father moved in and snatched it from his hand. “Excuse me,” the priest said, “I was looking at that book.”
“Yes, and getting your dirty handprints all over it!” said Connie’s father. “You should be ashamed to come in here with hands as dirty as yours.”
The priest was surprised by the outburst, so much so that he couldn’t find his language; he turned to his colleague with a look of incredulity, an invitation to become involved on his behalf. The florid priest took up the challenge, asking Connie’s father, “Look here, what is this? What are you after, eh?”
Connie’s father turned. “And you!” he said. “Walking around with filth all across your face. How dare you speak to the likes of me with your face in such a state!” He batted a hand across the florid priest’s nose. It was not a blow of true violence; it did not injure the man, but he was startled by the physical contact and drew back in a flinch, raising a hand to shield his face against any further molestation. Connie’s father was pleased by the effect his behaviors had upon these two, and he considered them bettered. “What is it, don’t you have running water up at that buffoon’s academy you live in? Or are the pair of you simply too lazy to maintain the most basic levels of hygiene?”
Miss Ogilvie and Bob were standing side by side at the Information desk, and so had witnessed the episode together. Bob was moving to intervene when Miss Ogilvie clamped a hand on his forearm. She walked around the desk and toward Connie’s father with an eerie, sideways glint in her eye, as one in a trance. Touching her long finger to Connie’s father’s shoulder, she asked, “May I see your library card, please?” Connie’s father turned away from the priests to consider the person of Miss Ogilvie. They had been sizing each other up for months, each of them knowing this reckoning had to come, and here it was, and they stood staring at one another for what Bob felt was an awful length of time. The emotional information moving between the pair was unknown; clearly, though, there was some manner of psychic showdown taking place. In the end it was Miss Ogilvie crowned the victor: Bob watched as Connie’s father’s hand began to move, as if without its owner’s consent, to seek out and pass over his library card. Miss Ogilvie received this, held it up, and with a glorious slowness, ripped it in half. Tucking the two pieces into the pocket of her cardigan, she told Connie’s father, “You have irrevocably lost your rights to access the public library system in Oregon, effective immediately. If you ever set foot in this or any other branch in the state you will be arrested at once and prosecuted as a malicious trespasser. Now I’ll ask you to walk this way, please.” She gestured to the exit and stepped in that direction. Connie’s father did not follow immediately after but stood by, blinking and making to collect his wits. He had been temporarily dazzled by Miss Ogilvie’s awesome powers of negative confidence but now, recognizing his time of triumph had passed, some of his own negativity returned: looking back to the priests, he leaned toward them and spit at their feet. With that, he left the library, and Connie followed quietly after. After they’d gone, Bob came forward with a rag to wipe up the spit; Miss Ogilvie took the rag from Bob, got down on her knees, and cleaned the floor herself, bony backside bobbing in the air. Bob looked to the priests, to gauge their reaction at this unexpected visual, but the florid priest was gently touching his nose to check for tenderness while the white-haired priest made a discreet inspection of the state of his hands.
A week after this event, Connie came to the library alone. She was decked out in her usual garb but with the hood of the cape worn down. Her hair was middle length, blondish and flat, and she had not a trace of makeup on her face; but it seemed to Bob she was enjoying visibility, being a young woman in the world, in contrast to whatever genderless figure her father wished her to be when they were together. She set a tall stack of books on the counter and stood by, watching Bob. “Returning?” he asked, and she nodded. He was wondering if she was allowed to speak in public, or at all, when she shifted and said in a raspy voice, “I can’t tell if you recognize me or not.”
“I do,” he said. “The cape gives it away.”
“Oh, right,” she said, looking down. “Well, I’m returning my father’s books to you. But, I also have a list of books I’m meant to check out. Is that going to be a problem?”
“Why would it be?”
“Because of what happened. The books are for him, not me.”
Bob said, “It’s not for me to ask who the books are for; and you don’t have to say. If you have a valid library card and no outstanding fines, you can check out whatever books you wish.”