The Librarians
In a cocoon of large, heavy books, the reference librarian Michael Marstella thumbs through the latest issue of a weekly newsmagazine before filing it with its brethren. There's a picture of an actress that he once saw on the street when he lived in New York. It was right around the time that her first big movie had come out, and he had recognized her, wearing a big faux fur hat, coming out of a bar on the Upper West Side. He'd walked straight up to her and asked her out on a date. She said no, but he was glad that he'd given it his best shot. You don't get anything in life if you don't ask for it.
It's almost noon, and it's been slow so far, although this is the largest and busiest branch in the Birmingham public library system. It's also Tuesday, and some shit is always happening on Tuesdays, so he's ready for anything. Any odd request, any paranoid rant. Last week a guy was requesting information about how the CIA has covered up our own government's participation in the UN's plan for world domination. Claimed the CIA was spying on him too. Wouldn't use the computers himself because he was afraid they'd be watching him through the monitors, so Marstella had to look everything up for him. Marstella almost suggested that he himself was in on the conspiracy and couldn't help the guy, but he knew that would be asking for trouble.
Marstella continues the Sisyphean task of categorizing and arranging media. Cataloging things has become his raison d'etre. What is the master plan, and how does each little thing fit into it? Everything has a place. The circulating books here still follow Dewey, but reference uses Library of Congress classifications, which is more epistemologically elegant, but still not perfect.
Sometimes Marstella likes to make a pun, little joke in his mind, that the Library of Congress is a collection of books about sexual intercourse, and that all of man's collected knowledge can somehow be divided into subsets of that larger category. Of course, in the real LOC system, sexual intercourse is just a fraction of a percent of the whole shebang--a subset under the social sciences, subcategory the family, marriage and women, call letters HQ. It's a fitting code, he thinks, as in headquarters. In Dewey, sex is in the 300s, also under social sciences, specifically--306.7, Institutions pertaining to relations of the sexes.
As the nearby church bells strike noon, Rob Peregrine shuffles in, looking paler even than he usually does, reeking of a whiskey-soaked death wish, his stringy red hair hanging loose instead of in its usual ponytail. Rob is not a librarian, but he works in a bookstore, so Marstella considers him something of a kindred spirit. Also, they play together in a band called Falafel Bicycle. Marstella thought of that name, from a list of over 2,000 potential band names that he keeps. A side effect of being a librarian is that he's a chronic filer and keeper of things.
Peregrine sits on one of the wooden chairs facing the librarian's desk. "I left Edie," he says.
"Why? For Renee?" Marstella knows that Rob has been diddling this married woman named Renee for a couple of months. But it wasn't the first time Rob had gotten some action on the side, nor was it the first time Edie had found out about it. Last he heard they were in couples' therapy, trying to work it out.
"I'm putting Renee on hold for now too. I have to figure some stuff out."
"Where are you staying?"
Rob says he's staying in his van, and Marstella offers to let him crash at his place for a couple of days.
"Thanks. I might take you up on that at some point, but for now, the solitude of the van feels more appropriate."
"That's the whiskey talking," Marstella says. "You've got no shower or bathroom."
"I use the one at the Y."
Marstella looks at him incredulously. "Don't be an idiot."
"I'll think about it."
Rob is in his late twenties, about five years younger than Marstella. He reckons it's about time for Rob to have an identity crisis. Marstella was about the same age when he and his ex-wife Denise broke up.
Rob's wife Edie is also a librarian, although not in the public library system. She works for a law firm, actually just a few blocks from Marstella's branch, managing their law library. Denise also was a librarian when Marstella was married to her, but at that time, Marstella was not a librarian. He went back to school to study library science after their divorce. Denise no longer works as a librarian, opting to go back to school herself and studying Chinese history.
Behind his head, a carrier arrives with a clunk at the terminal of the pneumatic tube. It's a primitive but charming technology that he still finds amusing after four years here. He removes the folded note from the carrier and laughs. On one of the slips of paper that library patrons use to request copies of pages from periodicals, there is a message:
Periodical Name: 87-Ogres
Issue Number: Tonight
Page Numbers: 10-12 pm
DDN: The Nick
He passes it across his desk to Rob, who gives him that pathetic puzzled look one always sees in movies during moments like this. Marstella decides to give him a break. "You know Scott Townsend?"
"Doesn't ring a bell," Rob says.
"He works at the front desk upstairs. Been playing in hardcore bands around Birmingham since the early '80s. If I'm not mistaken, '87-Ogres' is his phone number. Sounds like he has a new project. Wanna go tonight?"
"Sure. It's not like I have any other plans."
"Great. Hey, let's get some lunch."
They go to a soul food place nearby, and both order the sides platter: collard greens, mashed sweet potatoes, and pickled beets, accompanied by a large slab of cornbread. Marstella loves the way they put sugar in everything down here, even vegetables. But he still hasn't gotten used to the sweet tea since he moved down South, and they don't serve it unsweetened here, so he has water.
"So what's really going on? You're feeling guilty?" Rob shrugs, and Marstella presses on. "What about? The sex? As I see it, there's absolutely no reason to feel guilty about anything to do with sex. It's the strongest human instinct there is. There's nothing wrong with it."
"Not so much the sex as the secrecy," Rob says.
"You don't have to tell Edie everything you do. Listen, so you've had a little fling here and there. If it upsets Edie to know about these things, isn't she better off not knowing about them? What she doesn't know won't hurt her. Just because it's a cliché doesn't mean it isn't true. Anyway, she knows now, right?"
"About Renee. About the one time, anyway. There's other stuff she still doesn't know about."
"She doesn't need to know the gory details."
"Ever hear 'we're only as sick as our secrets?'"
"You don't smell like you've been hanging out at AA meetings. Where'd you pick that up? . . . Never mind, let's eat."
Leaving the library that evening, Marstella makes a decision to walk a couple of blocks out of his way, not sure why. But at a public parking lot near the park, he sees Edie, walking quickly with her head down. She's lean and lanky, like a salamander, or maybe a tortoise without a shell. He increases his pace and catches up just as she's opening the driver side door of her car. "Hey you."
"Oh, it's you." She doesn't look up, just pretends to be looking for something in her purse. He can tell she's just fumbling around aimlessly, hoping he'll go away. She's never made a secret of the fact that she doesn't particularly like him, although he doesn't really know why this is.
"I saw Rob today. He looked terrible."
"So what else is new?"
"Edie, he's really torn up about the things that have happened. . ."
"Mike, HE'S the one who left. Not me. Yes, I'm mad. Yes, I've lost the ability to trust him. But maybe with some work, we could have gotten things back to normal. He doesn't want that. He hates normalcy more than anything."
She closes the car door and leans against it, arms folded across her chest, glaring at him seriously, as if all this was somehow his fault. And maybe he could have helped prevent it. He didn't exactly discourage Rob from sleeping with Amanda or Renee, or from staying out all night. But Rob's an adult, and he can make his own decisions.
"Just tell me one thing," she says. "You know him as well as anybody. . . . Is there anything else, anything I don't know about?"
"Edie, I don't know what you know, and I'm not about to start reporting on his whereabouts and goings on. It's not my business."
He watches her drive away. It's a hot afternoon, and the black asphalt parking lot is practically burning through his shoes. Other people's relationships are perplexing, he thinks. Interesting, but baffling. More stuff to file under HQ, or 306.7, those magical, mysterious letters and numbers that have confounded man since the dawn of time.
At a small grocery store across from the lot, he buys a 12-pack of beer, and then he makes his way to his car a couple of blocks away.
Denise is waiting outside his house when he arrives, her hair up and glasses on, no makeup, and that scolding librarian's scowl. She's obviously trying to make herself look intimidating with that stern, unadorned countenance and crossed arms; she probably has something serious to discuss with him. She never did understand that this look has the opposite effect on him, that it actually turns him on. That sexy librarian image is iconic nowadays. Every man he knows fantasizes about that cold, detached, unattainable woman behind the desk. And yet he was married to her for almost five years, and he let her go.
"We need to talk about your daughter," Denise says as soon as he's out of the car. "She's been head-butting the other children."
Their daughter, Alexandra, is four and in pre-school. He couldn't begin to guess where she learned the behavior of head-butting. In LOC, child psychology is filed under BF--philosophy, psychology and religion. Dewey also pairs psychology with philosophy, under the 100s, but religion is a whole other category. But getting back to Alexandra, he's almost certain she somehow picked it up from that jackass Denise has been seeing, whatever his name is--Tad or something. Tad is a smug granola type who owns a bicycle shop in the suburbs.
He invites Denise inside to discuss the matter, puts his beer in the fridge. When he returns from the kitchen, Denise gestures with derision toward the fold-out table by the rear wall in Marstella's townhouse, atop which are displayed numerous desiccated food items, including a couple of fast food burgers in paper wrappers, a pineapple, and some exploded eggs--Marstella's food collection. He collects food, sometimes writes songs about it. Only a few selections are actually out. The full collection is upstairs in the second bedroom.
"Jeezus, Michael. Why do you have that crap out in the open?"
"Sorry, I was showing it off to somebody last night and didn't put it away."
Books about collectibles have their place in Library of Congress and Dewey, but an actual collection of something demands its own system of organization. The library has no system for classifying items in food collections, and a system like the ones used by grocery stores isn't really optimal for a specialized collection such as this. His own collection is divided generally into:
- Items that have been preserved by vacuum drying
- Canned or packaged items
- Items left in their natural state to decay
This last category is by far the most interesting and includes the burgers and other fast food items, which have hardened, but give off no odor and don't seem to collect mold of any kind. Clearly some hard core preservatives were used in the preparation of those foods. He realizes he's been lost in thought for a few moments, and Denise is staring at him. "So, what are we going to do about Alex?"
"I don't know," he says. "When she comes over this weekend, I'll have a talk with her about it if you like."
"Please do. Do you have any grass?"
He pulls a bong and a plastic bag of marijuana from behind a book case and hands it over to her. She sits on the sofa. Books about recreational drug use are found in several different areas, depending on the angle--criminology, medicine, sociology.
"This place is a fucking mess," she says. "You expect me to bring my daughter over here?"
"Our daughter… and you know I always clean house before she comes over."
"She was just here a week and a half ago. How the fuck does this place become a disaster area in just a few days?"
It's not so bad, he thinks. Other than the food collection, there are some papers and record sleeves strewn around, some beer cans stacked by the wall, a couple of ashtrays that could stand to be emptied and cleaned.
"And what if I have to bring her over here sometime on short notice?"
She lights up the bong and seems to relax. He doesn't feel like arguing anymore either.
The Nick is a concrete smokehole tucked under an overpass of Highway 31 in a narrow buffer zone between the trendy part of Southside and a large crack-infested subsidized housing project. It's just a few blocks from Marstella's apartment (on the trendy side, not in the projects). When he arrives, Rob is sitting at a table near the stage nursing a beer, and the show has already started.
Scott Townsend is a hulking figure who, in his demure librarian persona, keeps his obligatory tattoos covered with shirtsleeves and his unruly black hair in a ponytail. Onstage, he still wears his coke bottle glasses but keeps them secured with an elastic band. On the menu tonight is improvisational punkrock noise with Townsend playing drums, and he has the twins Vic and Bobby Orange on bass and guitar respectively. They give each other hand signals to change the pace or volume, or at least that's what Marstella assumes is going on, a kind of order to the seeming chaos. A woman with Betty Page bangs, wearing a black corset and fishnets, struts around on stage cracking a bullwhip.
It's a Tuesday, and there are exactly eight people in the audience, including the bartender, the security cop, and the sound man. Other than the bartender, they're all men. A short, greasy-looking guy next at the end of the bar is watching the dominatrix with particular intensity. When Marstella approaches the bar to get a beer, the guy taps him on the shoulder. "That's my girlfriend. She's on fire tonight, boy."
"Yeah, she's great," Marstella says.
His name is Ken, turns out, and his girlfriend the dominatrix is named Chandra. Ken and Marstella make vague conversation over the noise for a few moments until the requested beer arrives. "Come on," Marstella says. "I'll introduce you to my friend."
They order a pitcher of beer and Marstella brings him back to the table to meet Rob. Rob and Ken talk amongst themselves, mainly about Chandra, and Marstella's mind begins to wander. Then, between songs, Chandra asks for volunteers who would like to come up on stage and be spanked. Next thing Marstella knows, Rob is up there assuming the position and taking a few strong-sounding licks from her leather paddle.
Soon, the show is over, and Townsend joins them at their table. Marstella tells him he enjoyed the set, especially the hand signals.
"Thanks. All we did by way of rehearsal was sit around for an hour or so and work out all those hand signals. This was the first time we actually used them with instruments."
"Some were fake, right?"
"How could you tell?"
"I just had a feeling about it."
In Library of Congress, American Sign Language is in HV, under social sciences/people with disabilities. In Dewey, it's in the 400s under language and linguistics. In this case, Marstella thinks, Dewey has the advantage. He assumes that other kinds of non-verbal communication would be in the same category in Dewey, but he's not sure about LOC. For a moment, he thinks he might have accidentally said some of this out loud because he finds Townsend staring at him.
"I don't think I ever asked you this, but... what in the world are you doing in Alabama, man?"
"Married a girl from here. We met in college, in New York. Divorced now."
Ken invites them all to come over to his and Chandra's place to drink some beer and check out his collection of rare punk rock vinyl.
The five of them drive over to Ken and Chandra's apartment in Rob's van, and Rob finds a parking spot about half a block away. Their place is in the basement of a mid-century red-brick house near Highland Park, a structure that, to Marstella, seems out of place among the quaint Victorians that surround it. Ken shows them to the main room where a black leather sofa leans against the wall closest to the front door. The far corner is occupied by two multi-tiered display racks--the kind they have in record stores--filled with 45s. A gun rack full of rifles sits in the other corner, across from the sofa, and a few other rifles seem randomly strewn about, leaning against the wall or just laying on the cold tile floor.
Chandra slips off, Marstella presumes, to change her clothes. Townsend immediately heads for the records and starts flipping through them. Rob and Marstella plop down on the sofa. Ken points to a nearby rifle, which Rob has started to examine with interest. "That one's from the Civil War," Ken says. "Careful. It's loaded. Anybody want a beer?"
Hands are raised all around, and Ken disappears for a moment to another room, hidden in the shadows. Marstella feels nervous about Rob handling the gun and implores him in pantomime to put it down and leave it alone. He's too drunk to be handling firearms, and Marstella isn't sure Rob should even handle firearms sober. He thinks maybe it was a mistake to come here, and he wonders how to bow out gracefully.
Townsend finds something in the record stack he looks excited about, and he lets out a little yelp. But his grin softens when he realizes that Ken has left the room. Suddenly he seems to remember that Rob and Marstella are there too. "You guys should check this out. He has some great shit."
Marstella gets up to look. He has to agree that it's an impressive collection. The Dictators. Fear. The Stranglers. The Damned. Luchs Brothers. He has the first Television 7-inch, "Little Johnny Jewel" from when Richard Hell was still in the band. The first Government Issue 7-inch with the handmade sleeve. Lots of cool stuff.
Chandra returns to the room. She's changed from the leather corset into a form-fitting black tee-shirt and shorts. She's carrying a small wooden footstool in, which she sits on at the edge of the room. She doesn't say anything, and she looks tired, smokes a cigarette. Ken comes back with a couple of bottles of beer and hands them over. "I'd appreciate it if you could chip in a couple of bucks for the beer. We're not rich, you know."
Marstella nods and gives him some small bills. Nobody else makes any move toward their wallets, so he gives Ken another couple of dollars, and then he goes back to looking through the records. Rob asks Ken why he has all these old guns.
"Just a hobby. I'm interested in the history. I do re-enactments a couple of times a year. Hey, Chandra can strip for you guys if you want."
Marstella isn't sure he heard this right. Neither Rob or Townsend answer either, but Ken puts some slow electronic music on--especially crappy and weird given how great his record collection is--and sits down next to Rob. Chandra, on cue, begins a serpentine dance in front of Ken. Marstella complains to Townsend about Ken's organizational system for the records. They are roughly in alphabetical order by artist, though many are just out of order, and splits appear to be alphabetized by label. Townsend commiserates on the sorry order of things. Meanwhile, Ken tries to bring everyone's attention back to Chandra, who has removed her shirt and is massaging her breasts as she moves in front of Rob.
"Are you guys gonna tip her? C'mon. She's working hard here."
Chandra flaunts her tits in Rob's face, but he's still studying the Civil War rifle and hardly seems to notice. The gun is between his legs, pointed upward, and Marstella has a sense of foreboding as he sees Rob's fingers moving close to the trigger. "Seriously, Rob," Marstella says. "Put the gun down."
Chandra emits a quick, high-pitched squeal. Even though he's been anticipating it, the blast shocks Marstella. More shocking, somehow, is the fact that the music continues to play, as if in defiance of some universal rule about accidental gun shots. Then he notices, unexpectedly, that chunks of the ceiling are not raining down on Rob's head. Nobody--in fact, no thing--seems to have taken the bullet. Of course, Marstella realizes--Ken uses the gun for re-enactments, so it's loaded with blanks.
After a few seconds, the music actually does stop. Townsend has his finger on the button. "Ken, all these guns are legal and licensed, right?"
"Um, not exactly..."
"All right, folks. We've all got a couple of minutes to get out of here. If somebody called the cops, there won't be anybody home. Don't run. If somebody sees you, you don't want to look suspicious."
Marstella always has admired Townsend, but his calmness and leadership in this situation is beyond anything he ever expected. In an orderly manner, the five of them exit the premises, one at a time. Meanwhile, Townsend continues to convey his fallout strategy to the group.
"We should go in as many different directions as possible. If someone stops you, especially a cop, tell them you thought you heard something, but it could have been a car backfiring. And try to direct them away from this apartment. Tell them it sounded like it came from across the street or anywhere but here."
Following Townsend's instructions, Marstella and Rob split off from the group and walk north toward Highland Avenue. But then, Marstella notices that Rob still has the gun in his hands. "Jeezus, Rob. Get rid of that thing."
"What can I do with it?"
They quickly discuss the fact that Rob can't just ditch the gun because his fingerprints are all over it now, and of course, now it's not just disturbing the peace but also theft. Luckily, the van is close by, and Rob quickly throws the rifle inside via the side door. Marstella takes it upon himself to get in the driver's seat.
"How'd they not notice that you were still carrying it?"
"I don't know. You didn't notice."
Moments later, just as Townsend predicted, a squad car pulls up along side them, and the cop asks from the window whether they heard anything that sounded like a gunshot. Marstella points down a side street and tells the officer it came from down there. When the officer is safely out of sight Marstella drives toward home, deciding to leave his own car at the Nick for now.
There's a message on his machine from Denise. She's bringing Alex over in the morning, and could he please put the rotted food away. He begins collecting up the items to take them back upstairs while Rob spreads himself out on the sofa. "Tomorrow, I'll take the gun back over to Ken's. You think he'll kill me?"
He's not sure if Rob means this question literally. Ken does seem rather unpredictable, or maybe it's the gun itself that seems this way. He thinks about the gun, sitting out there on the back seat in Rob's van, and he can't quite imagine it. The image doesn't fit. There's something wrong with it. He isn't sure where weapons are classified--maybe under Military Science.
"He probably won't be thrilled to see you, but what can you do? You can't keep it."
"Maybe there's some way to return it without facing him. Maybe I can mail it to him."
In the morning, a little hung over, Marstella almost doesn't notice the rifle propped up against the bookshelves where he keeps his substantial record collection. He wakes up Rob and asks what the gun is doing in the house.
"I had trouble sleeping," Rob says. "I was worried about leaving it in the van, so in the middle of the night I went out and got it so I'd know it was safe."
"Well please put it back in the van, and you should get going yourself. Denise is on her way over here to drop off Alex."
He goes into the kitchen to get some coffee started, and the doorbell rings. Rob is still getting himself together, so he stalls, yelling out just a minute. When Rob has pants on, Marstella corrals him and the rifle into the kitchen, tells him to go out the back way. He opens the door, and it's Ken--grinning, but not in a happy way. Marstella doesn't have to ask Ken how he found the place; obviously Townsend sold him out.
"Ken. Listen, I think I know why you're here. Rob was just on his way to your place to return the gun. He'll be coming around the corner any second, and we. . . "
The next thing Marstella knows is he's been punched in the stomach (epistemology, causation, humankind is in the 120s under Dewey, LOC is escaping him), and then he's hit a few more times, and he's on the ground. He's actually never been punched before; even as a kid, he'd always been able to avoid fights through diplomacy, and the sensation, for a few moments, distracts him from focusing on the primitive anger and irrationality behind Ken punching him at all. He lies there, in the wake of the event, facing the floor in a kind of suspended animation fueled by disbelief in his own situation. By the time he looks up, he doesn't see Ken anymore, and Denise's car is pulling up to the curb.
It seems as if no time passes between the car arriving and Denise standing over him, asking what happened and if he's alright. He's more stunned than injured, and he tells her he's okay as he slowly stands up and brushes himself off, asks where Alex is.
"She's in the car. I told her to stay there until I found out what was. . . should I call an ambulance or something?"
He tells her no, hoping to avoid even hinting at having been assaulted. He spots Ken down the street standing by Rob's van, and he assumes Rob is still hiding out in the backyard waiting for clearance. Yet another car pulls up--Edie.
"Uh oh. Excuse me one second."
He slips past Denise to intercept Rob's wife as she gets out of the car.
"Where's Rob? I see his van. I want to talk to him."
"Shh. See that guy over there? He. . . "
"Edie!"
Rob is shouting her name from behind the house. He comes out, thankfully without the rifle, although Marstella shudders to think where he left it. Ken starts rushing toward Rob, and Marstella becomes aware of himself running toward Ken, the muffled beating of his own footsteps against the grass growing louder in his ears as he moves closer, and just as Ken has his hand cocked ready to punch, Marstella smashes into him, pulling him down, arms wrapped around him, twisting to the ground. He finds himself throwing a few punches in for good measure, though he can't really tell if these are effective at all. After some struggle, he realizes that he has Ken's shoulders pinned.
"Okay, Ken. I don't know why you felt like you had to hit me, but here's what's going to happen now. Rob has your gun. He didn't mean to take it, and he never had any intention of keeping it. I'm sorry for the confusion. Are we clear?" Marstella barely recognizes his own voice. He knees Ken in the groin, repeating his question. Ken nods, apparently stunned. "Now, my daughter is here. So you have to go home. And Rob will bring the gun back to you later this afternoon. Got it?"
He leads Ken by the collar and puts him in his car, kicking the door for emphasis as he drives away. Marstella starts walking back toward his house, for the first time cognizant of the scrapes on his arms and knees, grass and blood staining his clothes. Denise is standing there, foot tapping, arms crossed. God, he still loves her.
"Alex is NOT getting out of the car until somebody tells me just what the FUCK is going on around here."
Alexandra plays with a wooden drum on the living room floor, with Denise supervising, until Marstella has cleaned himself up from the fight. When he returns with a fresh shirt and washed face, she gathers up her things. "I don't know. You say Rob was too drunk to drive home last night so you brought him here."
"Yup."
"And you've never seen that guy before."
"Apparently Rob had been flirting with the guy's girlfriend last night."
"It doesn't really add up," she says. "But I have to say, you looked uncharacteristically heroic out there." Marstella blushes and opens the door for her. "And you keep Alex away from your idiot friends."
"It's just her and me today. Oh, one more thing."
"What?"
"Can you give us a lift to go pick up my car?"
According to the Library of Congress system, library science, or more correctly, information science, is a "social science," which some would say means it isn't any kind of "science" at all. Most librarians and researchers are really only interested in the practical matters that directly affect their individual tasks, and very few people seem to be interested in the more general theory of information science, the theory of how everything is related to the whole. Marstella's branch has less than a dozen books on the subject.
Marstella takes comfort in the womb of the stacks--and in the 800mg of ibuprofen he's taken. There's a certain kind of time warp about finding oneself in the bowels of the Birmingham Public Library. It could be a hundred years ago, but he knows it's only Thursday.
Back to fiction