Finding My Yellow Stars

In the aftermath of a hurricane I think the loneliest place to be is inside a library, not the emptiest, the loneliest. Before disaster struck I’d usually count on one hand all the students inside. Soon the many charging stations led to a great migration. Herds arrived to recharge their phones and other devices so they could read and also study, yay! No, they hadn’t been studying or reading.

There were no group studies, no reading groups or reading buddies, not even a stray stumbling into my dimension. It was a younger crowd. They played games on their phones and computers, took selfies, posted them on…wherever, watched videos and disturbed a dying breed sharing the same space I referred to as ‘The last of us’. That’s a different kind of loneliness.

Before the storm I didn’t mind the emptiness of the library. After it, I adjusted to what I called overcrowded-loneliness. All the time I spent in emptiness books on the shelves were less dusty, the last of us made sure of that.

Still, I learned something. Being a social media influencer is a thing. I learned the more you post the more popular you get and the more money you make, many times adding nothing to your intellect at the end of it.

In situations like these you can lose yourself in thought searching for something familiar. That’s what I happened to be doing when a noble man finally walked in. I thought at first that he might be one of them, and doubted whether or not we’d have anything in common.

However, the longer I scrutinized him the more I discerned about him. Everything pointed to him being one of the last of us and it excited me. He had a binder of books under his arm and wore glasses. His eyebrows were very straight and appeared to merge with his glasses at the top. He had a well groomed, swashbuckling moustache, light brown hair which he combed backwards, and very hairy arms visible due to the fact that he folded the sleeves of his shirt so he wouldn’t get them soiled on dirty tables or counter tops.

 He was a teacher, surely he was. He also had an uneasy awareness of some of the people surrounding us, and while he briskly traversed the isles of meaningless, disruptive chatter, he stopped abruptly at my table. I pushed the book I’d been reading to the side and skipped across into the other chair so he could sit beside me, assuming that’s what he wanted. Instead he turned his head towards me, and very formally he asked, “Good evening, may I sit with you?”

My eyes bulged. I quickly straightened my face, transitioning back into a smile before answering, “Be my guest,”

 Nobody asks anymore which is why I assumed he stopped to sit with me, and while I expected him to take the seat I vacated first, he sat across from me so we could see each other.

In such a short space of time so many things about him lifted my spirits. People who still carried book binders rather than I Pads and carried book markers instead of ear Pods were the weirdoes in the world. It felt like Christmas.

 “My name is Benjamin,” he said, but didn’t extend his arm for a hand shake. He placed the book binder on the table, folded his arms across it, leaned forward with a smile, and peered at me over the top of his glasses like a teacher would.

I smiled back, “I’m Ava, nice to meet you Benjamin.”

Benjamin had a blended Middle-Eastern accent. He quickly glanced at the book I pushed across the table, and then back at me, and to my absolute splendor he asked, “What are we reading today?”

I flipped the book around so he could see the title and cover. “It’s called ‘Finding My Yellow Stars’. I’m about three quarters the way through it.  I’m not sure you’d like it though, you don’t look like the romance type.”

“Try me.” he replied.

I needed to impress the teacher with my summary, to show him why he found me inside of a library. The wording had to be just right, intelligent-sounding, and I did the best I could, “‘Finding My Yellow Stars’ is about a girl named Freda and a boy named Benjamin,” I said, here I paused.

Our eyes met again briefly. He quickly broke the stare to gaze out the window, and so I continued, “Over time their friendship grew, and they became best friends in Pre-World War II Germany at the age of nine. Benjamin regularly crossed fields of rapeseed in bloom to meet Freda in the forest across it in secret,”

   The Benjamin inside the library continued staring out the window. His mind wandered through fields of yellow rapeseed, they were just outside. He yearned for more, I could tell.

Unaware of my extended pause to admire this about him, his words, ‘Go on,’ jolted me, and so I continued.

 “Yes, so Benjamin always bundled some of the rapeseed blooms to present to Freda whenever they met in the forest. She called those little bouquets of rapeseed her little yellow stars, like the one he had on his shirt. Sadly, circumstances separated them. I’m at the point where she is searching for him as a teenager. They are supposed to find each other again, and I hear their reunion is truly a fairy tale, so I’m anxious to get to the finish line,”

“Hmmm, sounds nice, but if you’re almost at the end we can’t start over. What if I find something else to read alongside you, and when you’re finished, then can we swap? ” he asked.

He picked up the book, and the scenery on the cover design also captivated him. I wondered, could it be the way the other Benjamin held Freda’s hand, or how their glow of happiness radiated through the thin line of birch to touch endless fields of yellow rapeseed behind them. Whatever it was he yearned for it.

He shot up, “Which isle do you recommend?” he asked.

I pointed to my left, “Romance of course,”, and he darted off.

He came back with a shorter book than mine entitled ‘Across Temptation’. Previously that one didn’t interest me at all.

 Strangely ‘Across Temptation’ sounded more interesting with Benjamin’s blended accent reading the description. Maybe it was the word ‘across’ like the way he sat across from me, that got me interested.

In the book a very rich man named Carlos pretended to be homeless so he could film the responses of complete strangers to his requests for food or money, posting the encounters on social media. (It’s the social media part that got to me). All this until a woman he saw across the street, Adrianna, turned out to be the one he falls in love with when she passes all his tests. He delves so far into the deception that as time passes it gets harder and harder to tell her the truth.

Benjamin spoke and read fluently, turning the tables on me when I caught myself gazing out the window.  I’d be asking too much if I expected him to read the entire book to me on our first encounter. As tempting as it was, I continued reading my selection, and he began his own romantic adventure.

  We sat quietly across from each other reading. Every now and again we glanced up at each other and he’d ask, ‘How’s it going?’ to which I’d reply, ‘Wonderful,’

Close to the end of my reading, feelings got the best of me. I wiped my tears away. They came back and I wiped them again and again until Benjamin put his book down and put his hand on top of mine. His eyes were wet with tears, “Ava, wait for me,” he said.

I assured him I was ok, and still he insisted, “Don’t read on, please, stop their and come back tomorrow. I’ll pause too,” at that moment we both recognized something in the library had changed. It got quiet.

We garnered many spectators who suddenly pretended to be immersed in social media activity. I caught Benjamin blushing. I think I also did, but it wasn’t the flirtatious kind. Our audience made us uncomfortable with all their whispers and sneers.

 Benjamin and I seemed to be old cattle beast grazing next to an overpopulated barn. “Too bad,” I thought, since Benjamin and I were truly standing out. On the other side, in the animal barracks, they were eating anything fed to them, be it a page from an actual book.

Benjamin rolled his eyes, and his soothing voice pulled me away from their taunts, “It’s late. My classes end early tomorrow. If you’d like we can pick this up tomorrow around the same time,” he said, refusing to give them the attention they craved.

He pulled his books back under his arm. We stood, embraced and I asked him where his classes were and what he taught.

To my astonishment Professor Benjamin Liebmann taught computer engineering at the University of South Carolina. I started off in a soft, low voice, “I’m looking forward to tomorrow Professor Liebmann,” his name I said in a crescendo in the crowded room so that even the farthest walls could hear it. Our observers found that hilarious, and the professor quickened his steps to get out, as if he still had other commitments.

 I entered the library the following evening delighted to find Professor Liebmann already comfortably seated in our little nook, facing the entrance so he could see me walking in. It warmed my heart to see him again, and in no time I understood why he came early to scout the entrance.

A bouquet of mini yellow carnations beside him on the table caught my eye. At first I didn’t know how to react. In my periphery I appreciated that there were considerably less people inside. As a result I didn’t experience the same embarrassment I did before. Busy linesmen across town restored energy to most of the grid in the capital. I discerned this through the emptying of library halls again. I didn’t mind at all.

Benjamin gave me my carnations and said, “Good evening Ava. These are for you. I hope you like them,” and then he asked, “I’m ready for a new adventure, are you?”

We swapped books. He marked his with a laminated book marker. Mine was also marked from our first reading, and now we had an opportunity to finish both stories together.

I guessed Professor Liebmann’s age to be around thirty nine. He struck me as someone who would think of a more generous guess of forty as insulting, ergo I didn’t ask. At the moment he was the nine year old boy on the cover, and I…well…that depended, was he pretending to be one of us?

We were reading again. In no time we neared the markers and paused for conversation. Benjamin didn’t have his book binder with him, and with half an hour remaining before the library closed I wanted to learn more about him and the courses he taught.

To my horror I learned that some of the folks in the library with me days prior were students of his. His characterization of them was blunt and casual.

I thought he was joking when he said, ‘A few of them are smarter than us,’ which I found precariously delusional coming from a university professor. I laughed, and laughed some more until his prolonged seriousness about the matter prompted a confounded reply from me, “You can’t be serious Benjamin!”

 “Call me Ben, and I’m dead serious. In my faculty we call them cyborgs and they’re smarter than us,” he said. Leaning in closer he whispered, “One of them has an alias I recently discovered on the FBI wanted list! Now I don’t know if that means anything and I don’t think I want to know. They come to class; I teach and grade them like everyone else.”

It seemed like Ben had some riveting stories of his own to share. Before he could delve further into this one the librarian, Ms Peterkin, cleared her throat. It’s a queue I understood well, and curiously so did Ben. I grabbed my bag, books and bouquet, exiting the library with him. This time he offered to walk me home and I gladly accepted.

During this time I had the conversation I yearned for so long, learning there were many more people like me who, due to circumstances, weren’t finding each other anymore. It still bothers me how Ben and I could’ve been so close to each other and not meet before.

  I arose early Saturday morning and rushed to the library, assuming he’d be there waiting. I entered, heading and looking in one direction only, sat and waited an hour. Ben didn’t come. I stayed until closing time, refusing to open any book until he joined me. When I heard the queue from Ms Peterkin again my heart sank into my stomach. Did I get it wrong? Maybe he was not one of us after all.

Juggling with disquieting thoughts of asking one of the few remaining cyborgs for him, I again hurried home dejected. For the first time I experienced real-life emptiness and loneliness at the same time. It’s an awful feeling.

Professor Liebmann didn’t strike me as a stray. Deep in my heart I believed he was one of the last of us. Yes, he came to the Lexington County library to join his students, only he settled for a breath of fresh air by the window while sitting across from me. We were magnets, undeniably.

Maybe he lagged well behind on the curriculum. I accepted this, and with energy restored, I was certain I wouldn’t see him again. In a sense I took comfort in that our encounter, although brief, spurred something in him to someday find this magical world again, if he belonged there.

The library usually opened in the afternoon on Sundays. Unable to resist, I spent the entire day searching for Ben the only way I could without having to ask any dreaded cyborgs. I visited local flower shops trying to find the person who sold him the carnations he bought me, hoping someone there would recognize him via description and point me in the right direction to some of his other favorite places. I found the flower shop. The store keeper only remembered him as a first time buyer.

Monday evening after work I dragged myself to the library, only to have my eyes pop out of my head in full view of a few strays and cyborgs as well as Ms Peterkin and of course, my missing Professor Benjamin Liebmann. Another fresh bouquet of carnations lay neatly on the table beside him, I cried. Same as when I cried reading about Benjamin and Freda, I cried. Ben raced to my side with flowers in hand, himself drying his own tears. His lips were spreading, and he pulled me into his chest, “I didn’t see you yesterday. I thought I lost you. Don’t do this again,” he said frantically.

The stars aligned for us, and did in a truly magical way. I stepped back in shock, saying, “Ben, I came on Saturday and you weren’t here either. I thought I’d lost you then!”

“No, no no—Saturday for you is Shabbat for me Ava. I’m sorry, oh dear! I should have told you!”

When he first bought me flowers I knew he identified with the boy in the book but, how could I miss the rest of the scenery? The library was pre-World War II Germany, the flower shop, the fields of rapeseed. A few chapters down, the tables around us became the barracks. Benjamin, wide-eyed and taken away into our mesmerizing world, our world, was one of the last of us!

“Please, we can finish these another time. Have dinner with me,” he said.

 I said yes without hesitation, and we ate dinner nearby. After we ate I asked him, “You’ve read ‘Finding My Yellow Stars’ before, haven’t you?”

He smiled and said, “Guilty as charged, yes. In yonder years I visited several libraries to get away from work. Time passed and I got tired of my own company.”

 We talked for hours, and then he walked me home. On subsequent days we had dinner again until this became our routine. We grew closer, rubbing shoulders until we held hands.

Soon we were walking arm in arm until one night we shared something even more special and palpable, warm, and unforgettable, of the enduring kind. It’s the kind of kiss that swoons and you know instantly that you’ve found your heart and soul.

Two years have passed. Now-a-days the mood inside the library is changing. Ben and I have our own reading group. It’s growing. Two lucky cyborgs have strayed, following their professor into our realm. They also help me with the media-stuff. I’m warming up to it.

If our numbers swell to eight we’ll split into two groups.

Here’s something Ben and I fundamentally agree on: in the age of cyborgs, public libraries should be filled with people. They aren’t simply places for us to charge devices when power goes out. They are places where we once charged our intellect, fed our fantasies, and forged new and lasting friendships and relationships the old fashioned way.

When he comes home Ben still brings me flowers, of various kinds. Whether they are yellow carnations, yellow lilies, sunflowers or yellow roses depends on the time of year. At home we are always in each other’s arms finishing the same book together. We take turns narrating or sometimes we just listen to audiobooks. I had it all wrong believing romance wasn’t his thing, and he had it all right, thinking little yellow stars were mine.