The Book of Speculation: A Novel

Sliding into my chair usually feels like coming home, but today it’s troubled. I set the book on my desk and stare at it. I should start on grant applications, or the never-ending stream of purchasing requisitions that inevitably get denied. After a few attempts at a statement of need for an update to our electronic catalogs and reading lists, I find myself gazing at the reference stacks. The Grainger feels like mildew and has a mood of disrepair.

The library’s mainstay is the whaling history archive. Though Napawset never saw much in the way of actual whaling, Philip Grainger, the library’s founder, was a man obsessed. Upon his death he willed his entire collection of documents on whaling and Long Island to the library. Shipping records, art, nautical charts, market prices for whale oil and soaps, manifests—some sixty years of collecting housed in two large windowless rooms on the second floor. It’s Janice’s pet project and the source of our funding, though most of us wouldn’t mind seeing it go.

Over by an ancient microfiche machine, Alice McAvoy restocks shelves. There’s something hypnotic about her thick red braid. Not quite red—strawberry blond. I watch it sway, timing my breath to her hair. I can almost hear the gentle swish, almost disappear into the sound.

Alice turns toward the scratching rustle of a tweed suit headed in my direction. Janice Kupferman on the move.

“Simon? May I see you in my office for a minute?” Janice asks.

“Absolutely.”

Janice’s office is low ceilinged and fits her fireplug build, which leaves me distinctly out of place. Sitting in her office chair requires me to eat my knees.

“Sorry,” she says, seeing my predicament. “There’s never any money for furniture.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

“Yes, I suppose you would be.” A tired smile rounds the just-forming jowls that indicate passage through middle age. “How long have you worked here? Ten years, at least.”

“Could be. I’ve lost track.”

She sits across from me, putting three feet of wood-grain laminate desk between us. “I hate this,” she says. Each word is punctuated with a head shake that makes her earrings jiggle—dolphins, hung by their tails, peeping under a precise brown bob. “I really hate this.”

I’d sink into the chair but it’s too cramped. I know what’s coming. “Budget?”

“The town cut us this year. Badly. I’ll try and fight them as much as I can, but—”

“Blood from a stone?”

At her nod, any hope of a bonus to fix the bulkhead dries up.

“There must be something, a grant somewhere we haven’t gotten.”

“I’ll keep trying, but the realities are what they are.” She doesn’t need to say it. Recessions don’t breed interest in whaling history. “I don’t want to, but I may have to let someone go. It isn’t personal; I’m having this talk with everyone, but provided the town doesn’t budge, someone has to go.”

Someone. It’s no accident that she mentioned the years I’ve been here. Alice is the only one close to me as far as seniority and I have three years on her. Alice also does programming. Programming can’t be replaced by an updated electronic catalog. “I understand.”

“I’ll do everything I can, Simon. Nothing is set, but it felt wrong not to let everyone know what’s going on.”

“Absolutely,” I say. When I started at Grainger I thought Janice was priggish, but after years of watching her I know that the day I met her she was already beaten by cuts, grant denials, and begging. If she let two girls in circulation go she might save me or Alice, but the resigned look, even the way she stretches across the desk as if to reassure me, say that she won’t fire two people to save one. Bulkheads, terracing, foundation repair, roof work. None of it will be possible. I need another way.

“I’ll try,” she says when I get up to leave. “Would you send Alice in?”

“Sure. You’ll get the money, Janice. You always do.” It’s hollow. We both know it.

I don’t need to tell Alice a thing. Janice’s office walls aren’t thick, and everything she heard is written on her face.

“I’m sure it’s me,” she says.

I force a smile. “I’m sure it’s nobody.” Janice’s door closes with a heavy click.

Two women sit by the front windows, knitting. The tapping of their needles echoes through the stacks. Reference is still quiet. I am once more alone at my desk. I put in calls to Springhead and Moreland Libraries to see if cuts are hitting them as hard. They are, which is daunting. I call over to Liz Reed at North Isle. “Tell me something good, Liz.”

“How good?”

“Discretionary dollars, or new pay lines.”

“Don’t talk like that, Simon. I’m a married woman.” Though I chuckle, she knows it’s serious. “Job hunting?”

“Not yet. There might still be a spontaneous nationwide interest in regional whaling history.”

She doesn’t laugh. “I can send you a link to a listserv site that might help. Just remember, we’re not librarians; we’re information professionals. You can use me as a reference.”