I took my time heading to the side door, passing the circulation desk and front door on my way back there. I’m glad that I did because as I passed the front door, I heard a tapping on the door and looked up to see Mr. Callahan standing sad and confused, with his hands cupped around his eyes and fixed against the glass.
I walked up to the door and pushed it open. It was an automatic door turned off for the holiday, so it gave great resistance, but I got it open just enough to let Mr. Callahan in. He grabbed my arm with his shaking, tissue paper–like hands and thanked me.
“No problem, Mr. Callahan,” I said. “I’m going to take off in about ten minutes and the library is closed, but is there something you wanted?”
“It’s closed?” he asked, confused. “What on earth for?”
“Martin Luther King Day!” I answered.
“And you still let me in? I am a lucky man, Elsie.”
I smiled. “Can I help you get anything?”
“I won’t be but just a minute, now that I know you’re in a hurry. Can I have a few minutes in the Young Adult section?”
“The Young Adult section?” It wasn’t my business why, but this was out of character for Mr. Callahan. The fiction section, sure, new releases, definitely. World Wars, Natural Disasters, Sociology. All of these were places where you could find Mr. Callahan, but Young Adult was never his style.
“My grandson and his daughter are coming this week and I want to have something to read with her. She’s getting too old to find me particularly entertaining, but I thought if I got a really good yarn to her liking, I could convince her to spend a few minutes with me.”
“Great-granddaughter? Wow.”
“I’m old, Elsie. I’m an old man.”
I laughed instead of agreeing with him. “Well, be my guest. It’s over to the left, behind the periodicals.”
“I’ll only be a minute!” he said as he headed back there, slow like a turtle but also just as steady.
I headed to the side door to find Ben wondering what the hell I’d been doing.
“I’ve been here for two minutes and twenty-seven seconds, Elsie!” he joked as he stepped in.
“Sorry, Mr. Callahan came to the front door and I had to let him in.”
“Mr. Callahan is here?” Ben’s face lit up. He had never met Mr. Callahan but had heard me talk about him, about how I found his devotion to his wife to be one of the more romantic real-life sentiments I had ever witnessed. Ben always said when he was ninety, he’d treat me the same way. I had only known Ben for about three weeks, so while it was a sweet thing to say, it was also foolhardy and arrogant. It was na?ve and intoxicating. “Can I meet him?”
“Sure,” I said. “Come help me put a few last books in order and we can go find him.” Ben came with me to finish up, contributing in no way to my reordering of the books. He hung back and read the spines as I told him all about finding Buddhism: Plain and Simple stuck up in a nook of the ceiling.
“How did you get it down?” he said, only half listening to me. His attention seemed focused on the stacks.
“I didn’t,” I told him. “It’s right there.” I pointed above us to the thin, white book stuck precariously between the metal grid and the popcorn panel. He walked toward me, standing right over me. Our bodies were so close that his shirt was touching mine. The skin on his arm just barely touched mine. I could smell his deodorant and his shampoo, smells that had become sensual to me because of how often I smelled them in sensual situations. His neck was craned upward, checking out the book in the ceiling.
“Those tricky bastards,” Ben marveled, then he turned back to face me. He could now appreciate how close we were. He looked at me and then looked around us.
“Where’s Mr. Callahan?” he asked. He asked it in a way that clearly let me know he was asking something else entirely.
I blushed. “He’s a few walls over,” I said.
“Seems pretty private back here,” he said. He didn’t move toward me to grab me. He didn’t need to.
I giggled, girlishly. “It is,” I said. “But it would be—”
“Right,” he said. “That would be . . . ”