The Librarian

The librarian was a yard sale. She smelled like old dried up perfume, the yellow kind that stuck to the openings of glass bottles with metallic labels peeling off. The kind of empty perfume bottle you would find at a thrift store for 25 cents and wonder who donated it and why would anyone want to buy it.

She had a long river of silver hair halfway pulled up, much like a librarian should, and an old purple shirt tucked in so high on her waist, just below her saggy breasts. Her skirt was flowery and swooshed when she walked. Her glasses were large and brown, almost fashionable again, except, they had layers of green grime in the corners. She had turquoise rings on her fingers and different stones on her pinky. Her fingers were rough and ink stained, one of person who has many books in their house with cats, and sits with her legs wide open reading and scribbling notes under a yellow old lamp while a cat meows at her window. She would say something like: “ Oh don’t make such a fuss Gogol, you’ll only make Shosta (short for Shostakovich) annoyed,” and look over the tops of her glasses at a lazy fat tabby lounging on some old magazines licking his thigh. Her hands looked like my hands: a little dirty.

I looked at her, at her crooked teeth while she spoke to me, and imagined her young again. She would be wearing the same exact outfit and it would be 1982. Her firm breasts would be bra-less and her legs would be freshly shaven with toes exposed and one silver toe ring. She would be sitting in the grass with her friends, the same men that are fat and wearing pink polo shirts now, and laughing. Just laughing and laughing and laughing.

As she kept talking to me, I listened with a friendly face, but her hair was swirling up above her head and mixing with the palm trees and her wrinkles smoothed out with every word. But, she found the urge to open up in the quiet library and break the silence rule by talking to me about a pianist and violinist that was half-Japanese. I told her that I also played the piano and violin and was half-Japanese, and she told me that she had ESP sometimes. This exchange was necessary.

Later, I tried to say goodbye to her, but every time I turned down an aisle, she would turn to someone or shelf a book down the next. For some reason I felt embarrassed to go up to her and say goodbye, as if she had just given me a stone confessing her love for me, so I wanted to make it as casual and friendly as possible. I didn’t want to imagine her hands caressing my face. After the third try, I had to give up. She had turned away from me and her bracelets were bangling like crisp words, and, I think, in the back of her mind, under that silver waterfall, she was laying in the grass laughing.