From Scriptophobia
by Genna Duplisea
It occurred to Holly as she cleared all the books off the third shelf up, seventh shelf over,
that she really needed to stop spying on people. Quite possibly, this habit would start to interfere
with her job.
Nevertheless, she continued to sort and re-order and line up those 37 books on
woodcrafts and carpentry. The low-pile carpet dug into her knees as she knelt and peered
through the shelf at the figure two aisles down, but she still laboriously organized the books and
shot glances, hoping for a motion of an arm or a reach for a book that might reveal a flash of
toned belly, or, or, best of all, a glimpse of what his face might look like.
The green-gray bookend squealed against the slot in the shelf as she pressed it against the
row of books. She cringed. It was ironic to her that all the books on arts made from wood were
kept on these disgusting metal mid-century shelves, instead of the lovely old wooden ones
downstairs. With a sigh, she decided in the following order that thus was the way of the world,
that she had been kneeling on the carpet for far too long, that her shelf window was now full of
books, and that she should probably continue with the rest of the art section, since, after all, that
was what the university was paying her eight twenty-five an hour to do.
Passing through the study area, Holly noticed that no one noticed her, which struck her as
odd, considering that she had yet to master the skill of making those ridiculous bookends silent
and that she happened to be dressed in bright red and white today. She thought that maybe she
was just the distracted type, but she could not imagine being so focused that loud noises or
brightly colored passers-by would not disturb her. Libraries, she thought, are indeed strange
places.
Palms pressing against books to line them up and eyes flicking from one call number to
the next, Holly made her way down the long corridor of aisles of books, regiments and columns
and tombstones of books, until she turned a corner and stepped back so quickly that the float of
her skirt swirled and followed slowly. The young man on the floor looked up, but only saw a bit
of red fabric retreating to the aisle beyond him. He did not shrug, or raise his eyebrows, or do
anything that would indicate he was confused by, or even interested in, the occurrence. Slumped
on the floor, back against one shelf, feet resting against the opposite, he continued reading about
baroque art (Holly had recognized the pictures on the page, and now hunted for places to watch
him through the shelves).
Perhaps she should skip that shelf and move on to the others. Yes, yes, that would be a
very good idea, indeed. She tiptoed past the aisle in question, and frowned when she saw no
more shelves of books to be cared for by a loving librarian, but a wall containing a reproduction
of Van Gogh’s Starry Night and the door to the stairway. Holly checked her watch. She still had
two hours until she could go home. Well, she could always go through the European history
section one more time. The door-handle clicked as she pushed down on it, and the click echoed
down the stone stairwell. No one else was going up or down, so she skipped down to the first
floor, the sound of her shoes hitting each step amplified in the vast space. Yes, yes, the
European history section always seemed to need work, with all those scholars convinced that
knowing what had happened in another continent hundreds of years ago would make them better
citizens. Or something. Holly didn’t know. She just liked to flip through the pages of every
book she pulled out before placing where it belonged, to see the pictures of great people, and
wonder what they were thinking when they knew they had “made it,” done something that the
world would remember.
It was a lovely old library downstairs, with wooden shelves stretching to the ceiling and
ladders attached to slide along to whatever section one desired. Holly climbed the ladders a lot
to reach everything on a shelf over five feet high, and for this reason she tended to wear shorts
under her skirts, much like an elementary-school tomboy. She had yet to ride the ladder like it
was a fixture on an amusement park, up and down a shelf, but she had a feeling that once she
started working nights, her job would become vastly more interesting, and she could glide along
the shelves, bindings of books blurring into smudges of color and text. Yes, Holly would enjoy
that very much.
While atop the honey-colored ladder, Holly spent almost as much time with her eyes on
the books as the people studying in the great hall below her. Calm students, stressed students,
students typing on laptops flanked by columns of books on the tables: Holly saw them all, loved
them all. One sad-looking girl, possibly the saddest-looking girl Holly ever saw, tore her eyes
from her books (Holly thought they might have been on religious mysticism, although from her
height it was impossible to be sure) and settled them on Holly for a moment. In reaction to the
quizzical look she received, Holly thought it would probably be best to concentrate on books, not
students.
Holly passed the two hours reveling in dusty dates and names, and it just so happened
that when she had made it to the very last book in the section at the very top shelf, she looked at
her watch and saw that she had completed her shift to the very minute. Such was the library life
ingrained in her. She hopped down the ladder, her skirt flouncing with each bounce, and crossed
to the circulation desk, where her lipstick red coat hung on a drab cream-colored wall. One
finger started to lift it off the hook when,
“Holly, before you clock out, can you cover the desk for five minutes?” made her hang it
up again.
She substituted at the circulation desk post, and who should come up to her but the navy
blue sweater man with his books on baroque art and architecture, and one on the evolution of the
piano. He did not read any of the various notices posted around the desk, but watched as Holly
fumbled through the checkout process.
“Sorry,” she said in her happy voice, a pitch higher than her normal speaking tone, “can’t
get used to the computer system.” He nodded, half-smiled, his hands in his pockets. The
situation was rather awkward, and Holly tried to go faster, but that just confused her sluggish
fingers more.
When she got to the last book, the piano book, she wanted to ask, “Do you play?” or “Do
you ever go see the symphony?” or mention, “Oh, I’ve played piano since I was very small,” or
“I used to play piano with my mother,” but she did not dare. She had a feeling that any
innocuous, piano-related comment would pop out of her mouth as, “You know, already I am
really quite enamored of you.”
She told him the date the books were due; he thanked her; she turned away to busy
herself away from his eyes; he left. And that was that. “My shift is over; may I leave now?” she
asked quietly, and her supervisor nodded with a smiling farewell. Holly grabbed her coat and
buttoned it around her as she flew out the door.
As she crossed the quadrangle at the center of the university campus, leaves rustling at
her flat shoes, she sucked in the crisp air and sighed at the nearly silver sky to the west. The
trees with yellow leaves were still dressed, but almost every other color now lay at her feet, the
trees themselves bare and cold. She smiled and wound her scarf one more circuit around her
neck.
Holly never took the subway. She could never get a seat and her balance wasn’t good
enough to cling to something while standing. On cold days, when the air crept through her
stockings and up her skirt (even with her shorts on underneath), days like this, she paused at the
top of the stairs down to that gloomy dungeon, but she could never quite subject herself to it and
skipped off, a child in a long-legged body utterly independent of public transportation.
Elevator, yes or no?
No. Stairs.
So up the stairs, five floors—a floor was called a piano in Italian—and down the hall,
almost too out of breath to remark to herself, “I live on the fifth PIANO! I wish I had five
pianos, although it’s not like I could play them all at once. I suppose one does me just fine.”
While her heavily gloved fingers dwarfed her key and she prodded the lock with it, the door
flung open and a much taller young woman announced that oh dear, something very terrible had
happened.
Well, she didn’t put it that way, not exactly. That was how Holly would have put it. The
other woman was actually sobbing and shrieking, her mascara running everywhere and tissues
overflowing from the pockets of her jeans and her cardigan. Holly pushed her way in and shut
the door before any of the neighbors heard, guided the other to the couch and sat down, still in
her coat and scarf and gloves.
“Mandy, what’s wrong? What happened?”
Through her tears and gritted teeth, Mandy was muttering some deprecating comments
and obscene words and curling her hands into fists. The only things Holly really caught were “I
hate him” and a long string of violent acts Mandy would like to commit unto this hated and
currently anonymous he.
“Mandy, Mandy, calm down.” Holly hugged her and shhed and retrieved more tissues
until the anger subsided long enough for Mandy to be coherent.
Taking a deep breath, Mandy spilled out the story at such a pace that Holly could barely
separate the words from one another. “He came here today and I was so excited to play my new
piece for him but he was uninterested, you know he was always uninterested, that bastard, and he
just did not want to hear about my day or anything and finally I called him on it and he said he
was leaving me, oh you were right about him, Holly, he’s leaving me for that harlot upstairs in
672.” She got the numbers out just before the tidal wave she’d been holding up, like an Atlas of
emotion, crashed down on her and she commenced sobbing again.
“Oh, Mandy. I’m sorry. Oh dear.” Holly patted Mandy’s back and looked around the
dim apartment. “So did you fight?”
“Yes.”
“Did he get violent?”
“No. You weren’t right about that part.”
“Well, that’s good.” She combed Mandy’s bangs out of her face. “Did you get violent?”
Mandy shook her head and blew her nose.
“Are you sure?”
Before collapsing into hysterics Mandy nodded.
“Then why, my dear, is there a broken vase on the piano?”