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Helena’s fingers click an arpeggio of keystrokes.
“Done,” she says. She slides her seat back and bounces to her feet. “That’s it. Did you check each room, Esther?”
“Oh, yes, yes. Lights are all off.” I put on my coat. “Helena, I wanted to ask you something.”
She picks up the phone. “Hold on. I have to make a call.”
She turns in her seat, her back to me, and whispers into the phone, one hand covering her mouth. I know what she is doing. She is calling her lover, like she does every night before she leaves work. She turns back to me, smiling, giggling, and even winking as if she just heard a joke. She must have gotten through the details and now can act as if she actually is speaking to someone with a positive influence. The waves of my own guilt hit me as I have neglected Gene in the same way.
Coughing, straightening her posture, cancelling her grin, she says, “I’ll see you soon,” and hangs up. She waits there for a few seconds, staring at the phone. If it were me, I would be thinking of time—time, in regards to how long this could go on before I am caught. I step forward to say something to her, anything to take her out of her trance.
Helena stands. “Ready?” she says. “Were you going to ask me something?” Helena struggles getting into her coat. “C’mon, I have to go. My son is waiting for me to pick him at school.”
“That was your son?”
“Yes. I mean, no. That was Kevin. He can't pick him up. He’s working late. He asked me to get Jason.” She rubs the spot on her neck.
“Are you going to miss working here?” I should’ve asked her if her affair is worth it. I’m sure, from the way she looks when she comes back from lunch, she thinks it is. I know if I come right out and accuse her of cheating, she will, undoubtedly, tell me to mind my own business. Hey, I would do the same thing if she began to meddle. I need an opportunity to slip in a brief moment of enlightenment. It must resonate along the lines of normal conversation, and yet, somehow relate to her affair. It won't work any other way. Only a single word will do. A key word.
She pans the area. Her eyes go from her chair and desk to the staircase. “I guess,” she says, “it’s just a job. What are your plans?”
“Well,” I say, “I figure I’ll just retire for good.” I think of mentioning my sickness. I decide against it. “And you, dear?”
Helena hesitates before finally saying, “I don’t know, I really don’t.” Her tone worries me. It’s a whisper of distance and despair. Surely, she is thinking of her affair, her marriage, her son. There is a truth to her words.
Helena takes me by the arm. We walk towards the lobby. Helena smiles at the oil painting of Paris, France and a bronze sculpture of a famous Trojan warrior. They, the books, the paintings and the entire artwork that is the Public Library, seem to cry with me as we pass them all for the last time. I wish I could stay Mr. Aligheri, I wish I could Mrs. Woolf.
We reach the lobby and look through the revolving doors. A newspaper drifts by, swirling itself in warped circles a few times before flying away. The backwards spelling of the—“Sorry, we’re closed”—sign I taped to the window catches my eye. Damn those crooked politicians. Damn them all. I don’t know every detail about why they are closing the library. Something, I gather, about bonds, maybe, or a dirty loan. I don’t know. I never asked. I just accept it.
We step through the revolving door. No wind today. The smell of rain is in the air. Dusk is approaching. You have to love it: afternoon traffic, beeping horns, pedestrians crossing outside of the crosswalk. I watch Helena lock the door and not give even a glance back at the library. She walks me to the bus stop. I ready my goodbye with a smile.
“Do you mind if I ask you another question?” I say to Helena. “It’s somewhat personal.”
Helena gives me an expression I can only define as suspicious. She fluffs her collar and rubs the red mark on her neck.
“Do you believe?”
Her eyes dart to things in back of me, maybe that passing car or a gnat that just zoomed by my ear.
“I assume you mean God, or Jesus.” A slight tilt of her head lets me know she thinks I may have concern with the acceptance of her answer. “When someone says the word believe to me,” she says, “I prepare myself for friction.”
“I mean something. Do you ever get that feeling? I can't explain it. My husband used to speak on this all the time.”
“The religious type?”
“No. No. Not religious. He was a deep thinker, though. Just that type of personality, I guess. I read the Epics for fun. He would read about The First Mover, Reasons for Causality, Nietzsche, and Thomas Aquinas. He was obsessed with it. I suppose some of it may have rubbed off on me.”
“Why do you ask, Esther?” Helena buttons her coat. “Is the library closing making you question your faith?”
I step towards her. “Faithful?” I say, pointing to my ear. “I didn’t hear you, Helena. Is that what you just said to me? Faithful? That’s a horse of a different color. Isn’t it?”
“No,” Helena says. “I mean, yes.” She takes a step back. Her eyes scatter over me, around me. I can see panic in her face. There is a sudden shock to my words that I hoped would have come.
“I thought if you have an opinion on the subject,” I say, “then you could help me. What’s the point of it all, Helena?”—I raise my arms as high as I can, which isn't much, signaling to the never-ending sky—“Of life.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I have to go pick up Jason. I don’t know the answer. Help others, I guess?” She rubs the mark on her neck again, looking to her feet. She leaves.
I see Helena get into her car. As she speeds off, I think she turns her head my way, but I'm not sure.
“Excuse me,” a man’s voice says.
I turn to see a man with a beard and a teen with a backpack standing idle. The boy has a book in his hands. I assume they are father and son. They practically have the same face. I see lots of that at the home. Sons and daughters come in to visit their parents, and I know right from seeing their faces, their eyes and their bridges of their noses who they are related to. Like Jenna on the fifth floor, her daughter came in to give her some homemade cookies the other day, and let me tell you, when I seen her, I just knew that was Jenna’s daughter. I mean, they had the same cheekbones and light green eyes.
There I go again...
“Do you work here?” the father says to me.
I smile and say, “I did. The library is closed now.”
“Oh, no,” the father says and looks to his son. “My son forgot to bring back a book.”
The boy lifts the book. Its cover is a map of the lands to the left of the Aegean Sea.
“It’s okay,” I say to the boy. “It isn't the last library in the world.” I look to the boy and then to the father, who, at this moment, I can tell must feel guilty that his son has never returned his book. “Keep it,” I say to the boy.
My bus approaches, stopping in front of me with a loud burst of its hydraulics. The driver helps me up the stairs and into my seat.
“How are you today?” I say to the driver.
“Oh, you know, just another day.” the driver says before banging his knee on the steering column. “Merda,” he says, rubbing his leg.
“Fanculo,” I say back.
We laugh.
“I didn’t know you were Italian,” I say. “Do you know how to speak it?”
“Not really.” He continues to rub his knee. “I only know the swear words.”
I look to the vacant library. Its revolving doors, locked. It’s interior lights, off. I will never step foot in there again. The bus exhales another gasp and begins to roll forward. I told that boy it isn't the last library in the world, and it isn't, not for him. It is for me, though. I must begin a new chapter in my life, one that starts with this bus ride back to my apartment. I wonder if Helena will think about the road she is traveling on. The bus stops at a red light. A vague splinter
of daylight brightens the buttons on my coat. I think of Gene and fold my hands on my lap. Red turns to green. My bus turns the corner.