The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(16)

“And he won’t be making our meeting?” Liesl asked.

“Well, no,” she said. “He sends sincere apologies. He said that the cancellation could not have been avoided. He’s training for an Ironman, as I’m sure you know, and he has a calf strain that needed to be seen to immediately.”

“Is it you that I reschedule with?” Liesl asked. “It’s terribly important that I see him as soon as possible.”

“There is an opening next Thursday between his sports massage and the Icelandic ambassador. Could you come next Thursday morning?”

“You have to find something sooner than that.”

“President Garber is extremely busy.”

***

Liesl banged at her keyboard when she got back to her office. Extremely important, she wrote, that we meet right away.

She wiped an anxious bead of sweat from her hairline, looked around the empty shelves in Christopher’s office, looked at the picture of the Plantin’s brilliant-red binding in the auction catalog open in front of her. She typed the word stolen, then deleted it. Typed stolen again.

“How are you getting on then?” Francis poked his head into the office. “Did Garber melt into the floor when you told him?”

She deleted the word stolen again, hit Send on the email, and stood up.

“Are we prepared, Francis?” she said. “Did Dan pull all the titles on the list?”

“Nothing else is missing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s not. I’d like this event to go well.”

Francis fiddled with his open shirt collar and looked bored. Despite being in the research business, Christopher had demonstrated a disdain for early-career researchers that many of the others on staff had inherited. The derision for the annual new-faculty reception was a symptom. Christopher and the lot had little use for the pre-tenure crowd. The university’s administration loved the library building, though—the soaring ceilings, the sense of seriousness conferred on the event by all those books.

Francis waved his hand as he led her into the reading room. “It’s a few new faculty members, not the pope.”

“Exactly right.”

He looked at her, waiting for an explanation. She opened a first-edition Alice in Wonderland to look at the frontispiece. “We’re here to serve the faculty. I’d like to impress them.”

“Christopher never gave this event much bother.”

“Bully for him.”

She walked out of the reading room, and Francis followed her. “What about Garber then?”

“I didn’t see Garber. He had something extremely urgent come up.”

In the workroom, Miriam was the only one seated at her desk. She was wrapped in a big burgundy cardigan that Liesl could swear used to hang on a hook in Christopher’s office. Her monitor had gone to sleep, black from having been left unattended. She sat, her hands poised over her keyboard as if about to type. Not noticing there was nothing there.

Miriam had been an odd duck since she came to them at the library nearly fifteen years ago, teenager-skinny with an early-bird-special fashion sense. In the last couple of years her husband, Vivek, had been doing a postdoc in London, and solitude could make a person loopy, but Liesl didn’t think it fair to blame this strangeness on Vivek’s absence. Miriam had made evasive maneuvers against Liesl’s attempts at friendship and took weeks to even work her way up to a blushing “good morning” until Liesl cornered her in the basement one day, where she sat cross-legged on the dusty floor, inventorying a delivery of manuscript materials from a prominent Italian academic and author.

“I want to have dinner,” Liesl had said. “You and Vivek and John and I should have dinner.”

“Oh. Why?” When Liesl thought back to that afternoon, she had a perfect memory of Miriam’s knit eyebrows creating a pattern of lines on her forehead that Liesl had read to understand that Miriam thought the dinner was some sort of punishment. Liesl had not allowed herself to be dissuaded.

“To eat the food we all need to keep ourselves alive, for one thing.” She smiled when she said it, tried to make it clear that was a joke.

“But all together?”

“All together.” Liesl kept the smile fixed on her face, hoping that social norms, if nothing else, would force Miriam to reciprocate.

“Okay. Thank you.”

“I wanted to welcome you. Properly, to the library.”

“Christopher already has.”

“Christopher has? Welcomed you?” Liesl stepped back a second and was about to ask the meaning, but Miriam jumped to her feet and dusted off her trousers, making it clear she was looking to leave. Liesl stepped to the right to block her before she could go. “Saturday then?”

Miriam dropped her eyes to the floor, clutched her clipboard to her chest, flushed a spectacular crimson, and near-whispered her assent. “Saturday then,” she said, as though Liesl had suggested that the foursome go drown kittens together. Surprised at the resistance to a simple meal, Liesl put a hand on Miriam’s shoulder. She glanced behind her to make sure that no one else had come down to the basement who would be able to hear them. “I’ll stay down here and help you with this inventory. This shipment will take ages to document if you’re doing it yourself. I’d like to help you.” She took the clipboard from Miriam. “Get into the habit of asking me for help. I’m never going to say no.”