Where We Used to Keep the Old Magazines

There’s a man sitting in the spot where we used to keep the old magazines.

He’s there a quarter to closing with his tie folded neatly on top of a too-tall table that we keep meaning to throw out. His glasses are thick, but they seem to offset his thinning hair. Every article of clothing seems to have been pulled from a mannequin in an academic consignment shop. The rolled-up sleeves indicate that he was planning to go into the deep for the long haul. A stack of Atlantic Monthly’s is nearly as high as he is, and we’re not sure where he got them since we don’t keep the old magazines there anymore.

We tell him that the library is closing shortly, and ask him to please return the magazines to wherever it is he found them. He nods at us, but doesn’t make eye contact. A fly buzzes around the light over his head, and we remind ourselves that we need to invest in one of those electric shockers that both attracts the fly and zaps it instantly. Our Director’s mother was a Buddhist and some of it seems to have rubbed off, which is why he keeps “forgetting” to add the swatter to the supply order. We tell ourselves that the fly will die eventually, but it’s been a month. Either this is the world’s oldest fly or there are more than we know about, and they’re taking turns bothering us as we shelve.

That night, after we’ve closed down the building, we forget to check the place where we used to keep the old magazines, but it’s only accessible via a stairway that the staff has deemed haunted. There’s no basis for this. In fact, there’s no reason to believe any part of the building is haunted, but it is true that multiple patrons have complained that upon entering that stairwell, the air is thick with a Floridian humidity, and they can sometimes hear the sound of a young woman clearing her throat. For that reason, the place where we used to keep the old magazines is never part of a security check at the end of the night.

But then again, who would want to stay trapped in a library overnight, let alone in the east corner, where there used to be magazines to read, and now there are not.

In their place, there are two computer terminals, one with a keyboard that’s missing the “Backspace” key and another that shuts down every few minutes no matter how many times the tech troubleshooter takes a look at it. There are no windows and only one door leading in and out of that corner, and on the walls, there are tan outlines of where the shelves used to be that housed the old magazines.

Once the lights are off, all that glows are the emergency exit signs. Even the fly retires to wherever flies retire to, and the humming you hear comes from the batteries that power up the terminals all over the building and the sound of the ceiling fan that won’t shut off for some reason.

The man who was in the spot where we used to keep the old magazines is sitting on the floor going through another pile. He had returned the magazines, as he was asked to do, because his mother brought him up to follow instructions given to him by librarians, but the instructions said nothing about going and getting another pile to look through, and so that’s what he did.

The edges of the Vanity Fair he has in his hand are torn, and he doesn’t know why. There’s no note in the copy that indicates why it’s damaged, and if it were a book, we might have tracked down the culprit with the careless fingers, but we never do that much work when it comes to periodicals, because, after all, they’re not books. In a library, the distinction between all things goes as follows--

“Book” or “Not a Book”

When he finds the article he was looking for, he takes out a small notepad, and begins copying it word-for-word. It’ll take him most of the night, since all articles in Vanity Fair are rather long, and this particular article features a great deal of detail, which we’ve never found to be all that interesting. Though we love literature, we find indulgence as it pertains to descriptive narrative to be a written sin.

Who cares what a man in a library looks like? We’d like to know why he’s there. We’d like to know why some man that we asked to finish up and head home is, instead, sitting in a part of our library we do not enjoy visiting.

Why do you think we cleared out the old magazines from that part of the building? It was a chore that came at no small amount of labor, but we simply hated spending any time in that claustrophobic cubicle.

Some might wish to know what about this article the man finds so fascinating. Some might wonder why he seemed to be looking for it in the first place. We have no such curiosity. When we wonder about things, we go and research and find the answers to our question and that’s that. This man cannot be researched. He has no answers to any of our questions. Tomorrow, when Erasmus Pokzi, the morning guard, opens up the building, the man will walk right past him, as though he had every night to be in the library after hours.

Erasmus will assume that the man is somebody working on the building, since we’re always having one thing or another looked at. It is an old edifice, after all, and maintenance is a constant way of life. That’s to say nothing of book repair and air conditioner dilemmas.

The man has beautiful penmanship. We know this.

With his little notepad in tow, he goes back to his house in the better part of town, and shows what he’s written to his wife, as if it proves something that she was dubious about.

She hadn’t noticed that he was gone all night, but even if she had, it’s a toss-up whether or not she would have contacted the authorities or gone to look for him.

This was her husband. He got things into his head and until they were out, his behavior would be inexplicable and uninteresting.

He begins to read to her at the breakfast table from his little notepad, but she stops him with a firm hand in the air; nails newly done the day before at the salon she dreads going to, because parking is such a fiasco every time.

“You know very well,” she says to the man, “That I do not enjoy being read to.”

Frankly, we don’t blame her.

We prefer to do the reading for ourselves.