NOS4A2(25)
The Library
THE GIRL THUMBED BACK HER OLD-TIMEY FEDORA AND SAID, “I’M Margaret. Just like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, only I hate when people call me that.”
“Margaret?”
“No. God. I’ve got a big enough ego as it is.” She grinned. “Margaret Leigh. You can just call me Maggie. If we go inside and I get you a Band-Aid and a cup of tea, do you think your bridge will stay?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Okay. Cool. I hope your bridge doesn’t disappear on you. I’m sure we could get you home without it—we could hold a fund-raiser or s-s-something—but it might be better if you went back the way you came. Just so you don’t have to explain to your parents how you wound up in Iowa. I mean, it wouldn’t be too bad if you had to ss-ss-ssstay awhile! I have a bed down in Romantic Poetry. I crash here some nights. But you could bunk there and I could camp out with my uncle in his trailer, at least until we raise your bus fare.”
“Romantic Poetry?”
“Shelves 821-point-2 through 821-point-6. I’m not supposed to suh-ss-sleep in the library, but Ms. Howard lets me get away with it if it’s only now and then. She pities me, because I’m an orphan and kind of weird. That’s okay. I don’t mind. People make out like it’s a terrible thing to be pitied, but I say, Hey! I get to sleep in a library and read books all night! Without pity, where would I be? I’m a total pity s-s-ssslut.”
She took Vic’s upper arm and helped her to her feet. She bent and collected the bicycle and leaned it against a bench. “You don’t have to lock it up. I don’t think anyone in this town is imaginative enough to think of s-s-stealing something.”
Vic followed her up the path, through a sliver of wooded park, to the rear of the great stone temple of books. The library was built into the side of the hill, so it was possible to walk through a heavy iron door into what Vic guessed would be a basement. Maggie turned a key hanging from the lock and pushed the door inward, and Vic did not hesitate to enter. It didn’t cross her mind to mistrust Maggie, to wonder if this older girl might be leading her into a dark cellar with thick stone walls, where no one would be able to hear her scream. Vic instinctively understood that a girl who wore Scrabble tiles as earrings and called herself a pity slut did not present much in the way of threat. Besides, Vic had wanted to find someone who could tell her if she was crazy, not someone who was crazy. There was no reason to be afraid of Maggie, unless Vic thought the Shortaway could willfully lead her wrong, and on some level Vic knew that it couldn’t.
The room on the other side of the iron door was ten degrees cooler than the parkland outside. Vic smelled the vast vault filled with books before she saw it, because her eyes required time to adjust to the cavernous dark. She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness. The iron door settled shut behind them, the weight of it clanging heavily against the frame.
Maggie said, “If books were girls, and reading was s-ss-ssss—f*cking, this would be the biggest whorehouse in the county and I’d be the most ruthless pimp you ever met. Whap the girls on the butts and send them off to their tricks as fast and often as I can.”
Vic laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth, remembering that librarians hated noise.
Maggie led her through the dim labyrinth of the stacks, along narrow corridors with walls of high shelves.
“If you ever have to escape in a hurry,” Maggie said, “like, if you were on the run from the cops, just remember: Stay to your right and keep going down the steps. Fastest way out.”
“You think I’ll have to escape the Here Public Library in a hurry?”
“Not today,” Maggie said. “What’s your name? People must call you something besides the Brat.”
“Victoria. Vic. The only person who ever calls me the Brat is my father. It’s just his joke. How come you know my nickname but not my name? And what did you mean, you were expecting me? How could you be expecting me? I didn’t even know I was coming to see you until about ten minutes ago.”
“Right. I can help with all that. Let me s-stanch your bleeding first, and then we’ll have questions and answers.”
“I think answers are more important than my knee,” Vic said. She hesitated then, and with a feeling of unaccustomed shyness said, “I scared someone with my bridge. A nice old guy back home. I might’ve really messed up his life.”
Maggie looked across at her, eyes shining brightly in the darkness of the stacks. She gave Vic a careful once-over, then said, “That’s not a very bratty thing to s-say. I’ve got doubts about this nickname of yours.” The corners of her mouth moved in the smallest of smiles. “If you upset someone, I doubt you meant it. And I doubt you did any lasting damage. People have pretty rubbery brains. They can take quite a bit of bouncing around. Come on. Band-Aids and tea. And answers. They’re all right this way.”
They emerged from the stacks into a cool, stone-floored, open area, a sort of shabby office. It was, Vic thought, an office for a private investigator in a black-and-white movie, not a librarian with a punk haircut. It had the five essential props for any PI’s home base: a gunmetal gray desk, an out-of-date pinup-girl calendar, a coatrack, a sink with rust stains in it—and a snub-nosed .38 in the center of the desk, holding down some papers. There was also a fish tank, a big one, filling a five-foot-long socket in one wall.