When Women Were Dragons(83)

And dragons who attended labor meetings.

And dragons who marched with farmworkers.

And dragons who joined anti-war committees.

No one knew what to do with them at first. Newspapers didn’t report it. The evening news remained silent. People averted their eyes and changed the subject. Cheeks flushed; voices faltered. Most people simply assumed that if they just ignored the dragons they would go away.

The dragons did not go away.





33.

I was still rattled the day after Marla’s unplanned visit, so I did something I had never done before in my entire life: I cut class. After dropping Beatrice off at the front steps of Saint Agnes (No dragoning at school, I told her. I mean it), I went home and called the main office, fraying my voice and adding in a few fake coughs just to complete the picture. “Touch of the flu,” I told the woman who was volunteering that day. “Something going around.” I could hear Mr. Alphonse shouting in the background and the poor woman sounded like she was going to cry. Silently, I resolved to never work in a high school.

I grabbed Dr. Gantz’s book and shoved it into my book bag and I walked over to the library. Mr. Burrows sat at the front desk. He was reading through a large binder, shaking his head as he turned the page. He looked up at me, smiled, and said, “Miss Green!” but then he frowned. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

I had spoken to Mr. Burrows a thousand times, but I realized with a start that I had never really seen him. He was just another adult. But today, as I approached his station at the circulation desk, I actually looked. He nibbled on the edge of his pencil as he curled over a book that he kept on his lap, mostly hidden from view. I watched him as he shook his head and wrote something on the page. He was a small man. Nervous and kind. He was the only man I had ever seen who kept a basket of yarn and crochet hooks at his desk. He did experiments making hyperbolic planes and M?bius loops and topographical conundrums and something called a snark and various three-dimensional approximations of four-dimensional objects. He had explained all of them to me before, but I had never actually listened. I was too busy with the weight of my life to pay attention to anything else.

I startled him when I said hello, but he recovered quickly enough.

“Mr. Burrows,” I said. I paused a moment as he twirled his nibbled pencil in his hand. “What’s your job?”

He blanched. “I’m sorry? I don’t know what you mean. I’m a librarian.” He made a weak gesture toward the stacks as though this was all the explanation he needed.

I reached into my bag and set Dr. Gantz’s book on the desk. He stared at the book. He stared at me. I watched his Adam’s apple go up and down. I rested my elbows on the desk and leaned my chin on my fists.

“I guess I’m just curious.” I blinked slowly and watched his face become pale. “What was your other job?”

He stood. His hands shook slightly. “You know, Mrs. Gyzinska has returned from her travels. She’s downstairs. Let’s go visit her, shall we?”

Mrs. Gyzinska already had our coffees poured—cream for him and black for me—and waiting for us when we arrived. How she knew I was coming remains a mystery to me to this day.

“Sit,” she said, sipping her coffee. “You have questions, I gather.”

“I’m guessing he’s not a librarian, right?” I said, pointing to Mr. Burrows with my thumb. He blushed. “Not really, I mean.”

“No,” she said, an indulgent look on her face. “At least not by training, though I would like to point out that he has excellent instincts. Mr. Burrows is a planetary physicist, and an excellent one—beautiful, elegant science, an intellect of pure creativity and insight.” His blush deepened but Mrs. Gyzinska didn’t relent. “I helped fund his research during his post-doc at Princeton, and it was money well spent. He’s an expert on the Jovian moons, and had a little side project tracking the movement of dragons on and around said moons, and was blacklisted as a result. And then, unfortunately, he got on the bad side of a few overly keen congressmen, and is now a bit on the lam, poor thing. It happens. His new name fits him, I think. Michael, dear, you don’t actually have to be here for this. Thanks for bringing her down.”

Mr. Burrows scurried out of the room. I picked up my coffee and swallowed it in several gulps. I handed her the book. She smiled and gave the cover a loving pat.

“You should definitely keep this. They’re quite rare. Chock-full of absolutely incorrect information too, as it turns out. Henry will be the first one to say so. The beautiful thing about science is that we do not know what we cannot know and we will not know until we know. It requires an incredible amount of humility to be willing to be wrong nearly all the time. But we have to be willing to be wrong, and proven wrong, in order to increase knowledge overall. It is a thankless, and essential, job. Thank goodness.” She sipped her coffee, gazing fondly at Dr. Gantz’s book.

Well. That was frustrating. What I needed was information, and what I had was garbage. I glared at the book, as though it had been incorrect on purpose, and wanted to give Dr. Gantz a piece of my mind. “Is he here?”

She frowned. “Unfortunately, someone spotted him about a month ago, recognized him, and called the police. Thankfully I had gotten wind of it, and packed him off to an instructor I know at the medical school in Madison. He’s happy as a clam, actually. He even has access to a lab—a real lab! And he’s assisting at a, um, rather unconventional clinic. I think they’ve appreciated having his help—he’s been at this for longer than most. Things are starting to get . . . interesting over there.”