“I checked my messages right before the library opened,” she said.
“So where the hell is Miriam?” Max was nearly shouting. “She was supposed to work the first reference-desk shift today.” He gesticulated toward the desk, to make sure Liesl could see that there was no one there. “I had planned work to do this morning. I can’t just rearrange my whole day on a whim because the acting director forgets to tell me about a sick call.”
“Did she leave a message on the reference-desk phone?” Liesl asked.
“No, Liesl. And she didn’t send a telegram or a carrier pigeon either.”
“Perhaps she’s just late,” said Liesl. “I’ll call her.”
“I’ve already called her,” said Max. “Home and mobile. No answer.”
“Did she mention yesterday that she wasn’t planning to be in today?” said Liesl, inwardly scrambling together the blurry jigsaw image of Miriam, eyes wide, brushing past Garber and begging for attention at the new-faculty reception. But that couldn’t have been about something so mundane as a vacation day.
“Why would she mention it?” Max flung himself into the chair behind the reference desk. “Why would she warn me that she’s planning to ruin my morning?”
“What I’m saying is that she’s probably not sick at all,” Liesl said.
“She just decided not to show up to work?”
“Or she asked Christopher for a vacation day. And he didn’t get a chance to pass the message along.” There was a creeping ache, just strong enough to make Liesl bite her own tongue, that she never had found Miriam to speak with her as she’d promised.
“And she wouldn’t have checked the desk schedule,” Max said, following Liesl’s line of reasoning, “if she thought she had the day off.”
Max was interrupted from his pout by the ding signaling the arrival of the elevator. Max and Liesl both swung their heads toward the door. It was not Miriam.
“President Garber,” Liesl said. “What a surprise.”
Max adjusted his slumped posture in the chair, and then he changed his mind and stood up. Garber nodded at him, then turned his full attention to Liesl. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?” he asked.
“Of course I do.”
“Good. Let’s go to your office.” He turned to Max. “Nice to see you as always, Max.”
“Do you mind,” Liesl said to Max, “covering for the first hour until I can figure something out?”
“You know I’m always happy to help,” said Max.
“Is there some other problem I should know about?” asked Garber.
She considered deflecting by asking about the rehabilitation of his calf strain but decided it would be impossible to feign genuine interest. “No. A staff member, Miriam, is unexpectedly away.” She followed Garber into Christopher’s office and closed the door. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Good,” he said. “Listen, I’ve just come from seeing Chris.”
He placed his bicycle helmet on the chair that Liesl had pulled out for him and stayed standing. As he spoke, he performed some sort of stretch focused on the lower portion of his legs.
“I met Marie there this morning,” said Garber. “I was hoping to have a chance to speak with Chris.”
Liesl, who had taken a seat behind Christopher’s desk, slowly stood up. “Is he awake? That’s brilliant. I had no idea.”
“No. What a pity.”
“Oh,” said Liesl. “Then why did you think you’d have a chance to speak with him?”
“An awful lot of time has passed.”
“He had a stroke.” She walked back around the desk and tried to decide what to do with her hands. “That can be a slow recovery.”
“It can,” said Garber. “But not what I expected from Chris. The plan was for him to be back at work in a month.”
“Whose plan?” said Liesl. “You can hardly plan for something like a medical emergency. We can only be patient.”
“I’ll make sure to get that embroidered on a throw pillow.”
“I’m not sure what to say.”
“That was rude of me. This situation with my injury is bringing out the worst in me.”
Liesl thought the situation was bringing out his authentic self, not his worst one, but she didn’t say so.
“You came to see me this morning, President Garber,” said Liesl, kneading her temples. She was suddenly exhausted. “Tell me how I can help you.”
Garber put the bicycle helmet on the floor and sat, which made Liesl feel as though she had to sit too.
“The Plantin,” he said. “Tell me where we are.”
“We’re looking. Systematically searching the stacks.”
He nodded as if she’d just told him something new. “You had mentioned that was the plan,” Garber said. “What have you found so far?”
The dust in the room looked like snowfall in the morning sun. It was distracting. “We thought the Plantin might have been misshelved when we were trying to clean this office.”
“If that’s something that can happen, then it sounds like a good lead to pursue.”
“It’s one possibility. We haven’t found anything yet. I think enough time has passed that we should start to explore other possibilities.” When she said it, her fatigue grew deeper. She knew how the conversation would end.
“Of course. I agree. You should explore every possible inroad.”
“Including the police,” Liesl looked at the dust, not at Garber. “Including the possibility that the book was stolen.”
“Not this again,” Garber said.
“President Garber.” Liesl tried to sit on the edge of the desk. “Do you really not think a theft is a possibility?”
He leaned over. She thought he was going to put his head in his hands, but he stretched out and touched his toes. “I never said I didn’t think it could be a thief. I said it was up to us to solve this internally.” He gave a quiet grunt as he leaned into the stretch. “We are trying to raise a billion dollars for this university.”
“I’m aware. The library is a big part of the effort.”
The sun had moved behind a cloud, and the dust had disappeared from view.
“It is my full-time job,” Garber said. “And no one will ever give us another penny if they learn we can’t be trusted with their money.”
He picked up the helmet.
“I didn’t ask for this job,” Liesl said.
That was true. But she’d taken it hungrily when offered. She’d sat in the chair and marked up auction catalogs and fantasized about gold calligraphy on blue vellum arriving to join the library’s collection because she had willed it to be so. She hadn’t come right out and asked, true.
“But you accepted it,” said Garber. “And now you’re bound by its expectations.”
Liesl turned away from him and his helmet, back to the window and the slowly falling dust, biting her tongue to fight tears. Expectations. Liesl didn’t want to hear about expectations. But then it figured that President Garber would assume she wouldn’t understand what was required of the big job, just as he assumed that she only ever wanted to work in the background of the big job.
“I’m trying my best.”
“Chris has been the figurehead of this library for decades.” Garber put the helmet on and clipped it under his chin. “We owe this to him. To protect his library while he recuperates. You owe this to him.”
“Christopher and I always worked as a team.”
“Of course you did.”
“President Garber,” she said, walking with him toward the door. “I’ve done much more than just work with books in the years that I’ve been here. I hope you know that.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you to fill in for Chris if I didn’t.”
To fill in. Garber knew Liesl as the one who could be trusted to sign invoices or arrange caterers, but invoice signers and caterer wranglers had no business in the business of leadership. She heard it all in the words fill in.
“I’m sorry to get emotional. I really am trying my best.”
“You already said that,” said Garber. “You were Chris’s right hand. Everyone knows that.”
“I’m sorry to have kept you. I’ll keep you posted on news about the Plantin.”
“And I with news about Chris’s health,” Garber said. “We’ll be in touch.”