I grunt. “Not exactly.”
“I didn’t think so,” she says, but not unkindly.
We stare at each other as I consider her offer. This is the moment I dreamed of so often in my childhood. A doctor saying there was a treatment—at least a chance at one anyway—instead of looking at me like they wanted to slice me up and put me in a petri dish for further study to assuage their selfish curiosity. So then, why am I not thrilled? Beside myself with excitement? Why does the heartbeat thudding in my ears feel more like fear than elation? “Thank you, Dr. Zhang,” I say, looking her squarely in the eyes. “But I believe I’m going to need to think about it.”
AT THE LIBRARY that afternoon, while I’m sorting returns, my body feels numb, like it’s just going through the motions. I wonder if this is a symptom of shock. I can’t believe there’s a treatment—an honest-to-god treatment—that might help me. I feel a buzz in my stomach just thinking of it—a hint of excitement blossoming.
But it’s overshadowed by a stronger emotion—fear, which seems to have morphed from just run-of-the-mill anxiety in Dr. Zhang’s office to downright terror. And I have to ask myself the question I’ve been dancing around since I left the doctor’s office: do I really want to be cured? Sure, I used to dream of it as a child, what it would be like to be normal, to be hugged, to play on the playground with others at recess. But what do children know? Maybe sitting on the sidelines kept me from breaking my neck on the monkey bars. Maybe this allergy has actually spared me this whole time. Maybe it’s the thing—the only thing—that’s kept me from getting hurt.
I stop sorting when I come to a book that’s obviously been dropped in a bathtub. Its pages are swollen and rippled, and to add insult to injury, the cover is punctured with teeth marks. I can’t believe someone just dropped it in the return box without saying anything. I look around for Louise to show her and ask what I should do about it, but she’s nowhere to be seen. When my gaze passes over the children’s section, Roger looks up and makes eye contact.
“Where’s Louise?” I mouth, and he extends the index finger on his raised hand toward the stacks—specifically, a row behind the computer carrels. I look in that direction but don’t see her. The computer seats themselves are nearly empty, save for Michael, the pillow golfer, who’s always there (I thought Louise was exaggerating, but he really does come every day), and an older woman with thick glasses and a thicker turkey jowl sitting just inches from her screen.
I walk toward the stack Roger pointed at, and when I turn the corner, Louise is there, bent at the waist, her head poked in the shelf between two rows of books. “Louise?” I say. She jerks and smacks her head on the ceiling of the shelf. “Ouch,” she says, and then, still bent over, cuts her eyes toward me, putting her pointer finger to her lips. She motions me over with the same hand. I move toward her.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“Look,” she mouths, pointing to the space on the shelf between the books. I bend over and peer through it, taking in the back of the older woman’s head at the computer carrel. Up close, her hair is thin, large swaths of her scalp apparent through the wisps of dull white locks, which have carefully been curled and teased in what I imagine was an attempt to create a fuller appearance.
I look back at Louise, not understanding.
“Look at her screen,” she whispers, emphasizing her words by stabbing her finger back at the hole on each syllable.
I turn back and shift my head so that I can see past the woman’s bouffant.
“Oh!” The exclamation inadvertently escapes my lips when I realize what I’m seeing is a close-up of a naked male. Specifically, his pelvic region.
Louise’s pursed lips are set in a self-satisfied I-told-you-so line. “It’s porn, right?” she whispers.
“How should I know?” I whisper back. My gaze returns to the screen, like it’s a gruesome car wreck and I’m unable to resist staring. I tilt my head for a better angle. “I don’t know,” I say. “Are those labels? It looks kind of clinical.”
“Well. It’s against the rules, anyway. We can’t have private parts up on the computers. What if a child walks by?”
I see her point. “I’ve got a book I need you to look at,” I whisper. “Totally damaged.”
She waves me away. “I’ll look at it when I get back to the desk.”
I stand there a minute longer, something else niggling me. “Listen, remember what you said a while back? About the city council cutting funding?”
“What about it?” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen.
I swallow and then get straight to the point. “Am I going to get fired?”
She turns to look at me, her eyes glistening with sympathy. “The truth?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably,” she says, scrunching her nose in apology. “Last one hired, first one fired and all that. Honestly, I was surprised Maryann hired you. That position has been open for four months. I figured we couldn’t afford to fill it. And if they cut funding again, we definitely can’t afford it.”
I pause, taking this in—why did they hire me? It’s not like I was overwhelmingly qualified.
“What can we do? What can I do? I can’t lose this job,” I say, trying to keep my voice still hushed to match hers.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Figure out a way to fill this place wall-to-wall with bodies every day? Prove to Frank Stafford that this library is wanted—is needed—by the people of Lincoln.”
“But it is! Every town needs a library.”
“Well we know that. But our circulation numbers tell a different story,” she whispers. And then adds an octave lower: “Although I doubt he even knows how to read them, to tell you the truth.”
I ignore that and mull over the two most important bits she’s said: we need more books being checked out, and we need more bodies coming in. I’m glad that I had the forward thinking to invite Aja to come to the library every day. But he’s just one body. How am I going to get more?
The door opens and we both turn to look. A man shuffles in. A Tuesday regular, Louise calls him the TP Thief, as she once caught him trying to steal toilet paper out of the men’s room. She thinks he’s homeless—and from the looks of his dirty threadbare coat and the god-awful stench emanating off it, I think she’s right. He heads straight for the bathroom.
Right behind him is Aja. He takes a few steps forward and stands on the brown runner at the entryway, as if he’s waiting for an invitation to come in farther. A sort of silent acknowledgment passes between us, and then he breaks the gaze, lopes off toward a computer carrel on the other side of the aisle I’m standing in, and dumps his book bag to the ground beside an empty seat.
“Anyway, look, you have to go tell her,” Louise says, still whispering.
“Tell who what?”
“This lady,” she says, nodding through the stacks. “She can’t be looking at that stuff.”
“Why me?” I squeak, failing to moderate my voice.