The library was technically closed for Martin Luther King Day, but I agreed to work. We’d had a group of people, most likely high school students or fancy little rebels, come in and place the entire World Religions section out of order over the weekend. They threw books on the floor, they hid them in other sections, under tables. They rearranged the titles in no discernible order.
My boss, Lyle, was convinced that this was some sort of terrorist act, meant to make us here at the Los Angeles library really think about the role of religion in modern government. I was more of the mind that the act was harmless tomfoolery; the World Religions section was the nearest to the back wall, the furthest from view. I’d caught a number of couples making out in the library in my few years there, and they had all been in the World Religions section.
No one else was working that day, but Lyle told me that if I chose to come in and re-sort the World Religions section, he’d give me a day off some other time. This seemed like great currency to me, and since Ben was going to have to work that day anyway, I came in. I tend to like alphabetizing, which I realize makes absolutely no sense, but it’s true nonetheless. I like things that have a right and a wrong answer, things that can be done perfectly. They don’t often come up in the humanities. They are normally relegated to the sciences. So I’ve always liked the alphabet and the Dewey decimal system for being objective standards in a subjective world.
Cell phone reception is terrible at the library, and since it was empty, I had a spookily quiet day, a day spent almost entirely in my own mind.
Around three, as I found myself pretty much done piecing together the World Religions section like some three-dimensional puzzle, I heard the phone ring. I had been ignoring the phone the few times it rang that day, but for some reason, I forgot all that and ran to answer it.
I don’t typically answer the phone at work, I’m often with people or filing or working on larger projects for the library, so when I answered this time, I realized it completely slipped my mind what I was supposed to say.
“Hello?” I said. “Uh. Los Angeles Fairfax Library. Oh, ah. Los Angeles Public Library, Reference Branch. Fairfax Branch, Reference Desk.”
By the end of it, I’d remembered there was no need for me to answer the phone in the first place, making this that much more of a needless embarrassment.
That’s when I heard laughing on the other end of the phone.
“Ben?”
“Uh, uh, Fairfax. Reference. Uh,” he said, still laughing at me. “You are the cutest person that ever lived.”
I started to laugh too, relieved that I had embarrassed myself only in front of Ben, but also embarrassed to have embarrassed myself in front of Ben. “What are you doing? I thought you were working today.”
“I was. Working today. But Greg decided to let us all go home a half hour ago.”
“Oh! That’s great. You should come meet me here. I should be done in about twenty minutes or so. Oh!” I said, and I was overcome with a great idea. “We can go to a happy hour!” I never got out of work in time to go to a happy hour, but the idea had always intrigued me.
Ben laughed. “That sounds great. That’s kind of why I’m calling. I’m outside.”
“What?”
“Well, not outside exactly. I’m down the street. I had to walk until I could get service.”
“Oh!” I was thrilled to know that I’d be seeing Ben any minute and drinking two-dollar drafts within the half hour. “Come down to the side door. I’ll open it.”
“Great!” he said. “I’ll be there in five.”