In the Shadow of a Bookshelf

Miranda sat alone on the couch and flipped through the channels. It was ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. She had already shut the blinds and reheated her coffee twice in the microwave. She needed to clean the microwave, she remembered, then forgot.

Months ago, Miranda would have berated anyone who watched true-life dramas in the middle of the day and especially in the middle of the week. How can they live with themselves? She asked her coworkers who stirred their coffees with plastic spoons. Their shrugs made them seem disinterested, but they leaned in, pressing their bellies against the breakroom table.

“Kleptomania is a disorder,” the psychiatrist told her. 

“I am not disordered,” she said.

“No,” he said, “you have a disorder.”

He mentioned more conditions like salad toppings. Anxiety, depression, bulimia.

Miranda stared at the corner seam on the wall next to the “Happiness is a verb,” poster. She found the poster distasteful and thought, Happiness is not a verb. I don’t have a choice.

When she drove home from the appointment she slowed near the library. She could smell the decay of old book pages. Like fate, a battered sedan pulled out from the stall in front of her, so she parked and went inside.

The metal detector rang as she walked through. “It’s just a pocket knife,” she said.

“You don’t need a pocket knife in the library,” he said.

“Have you been to the Middle Eastern section?” They both laughed and he let her through. 

After the metal detectors, the library opened like a womb. Two kids ran in circles around a crowded table. An old man leaned against the “Our Staff Recommends” shelf, a thick book inches from his face. A young-ish woman, head on her folded arms, sat a few tables down, her knee bobbing like an overworked metronome. Miranda allowed herself a moment of celebration (she had made it through the doors!) before hiding her face beneath a ball cap.

Though the back staircase smelled like urine, Miranda didn’t mind. Being back in the library made her feel seedy, navigating the secret staircase like a curious guest in Gatsby’s mansion. She was sure Gatsby’s mansion didn’t smell like urine or have homeless teens sleeping between the third and fourth landing, though.

At the door to floor five Miranda paused, her hand hovered above the sticky bar. Below her, somewhere, she heard the subtle grunt of sexual pressure.

As she came through the door her eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lighting and her favorite scene. Here were rows of books, rows of books. Stale, stained carpet. Peeling laminate tables. Watermarks like baseball diamonds. She bowed her head in reverence then steered toward the aisle with the last books in the Dewey Decimal System. The forgotten 990s. Books on Pacific Island legends. On Ernest Shackleton’s Arctic sea voyage. And one of her favorites: The Annunaki Connection, which happened to be the first in her stolen collection.

With a bent arm, she stood next to the bookshelf and let her fingers rake over the books as if they were strings on a cello. Index, middle, ring, pinkie, index, middle, ring. Hers was a subtle song of sedition.

“Miranda? Is that you?”

Miranda felt like frozen lightning, all jitter and electric, unable to disappear. But she recognized that voice; but she couldn’t afford to recognize that voice.

Then there were fingers on the edge of her ballcap, peeling away her disguise.

The voice and fingers belonged to Kenny. Miranda liked Kenny. They used to sneak away to the rooftop after closing and created stories about the people whose lives they watched through curtainless windows. 

“Hi Kenny,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

“What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here.”

Miranda shrugged her shoulders, looked at Walking With Ghosts in Papua New Guinea. 

He clipped her shoulder. “You sly devil, I knew you couldn’t stay away.” If she hadn’t been fixated on Rick Antonson’s book, she would have seen him wink. “But you’re not, I mean, you went and saw someone right? We’ve all been worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” she said, consciously lowering her shoulders down her back, trying to look like someone who hadn’t been diagnosed as a nut case. “I’m not a nut case,” she said.

Kenny motioned over to a corner behind the last stack of books with a single forgotten desk. He sat on the edge, which doubled the size of his thighs. 

“So, what have you been up too? Things have been crazy here. Remember Irina? They caught her having sex in one of the meeting rooms, obviously, she was fired. Oh, and that guy who always wears the Panama hat? Yeah, he peed on the third floor. Just right in the middle of the third floor. Pulled down his pants and pissed all over the carpet.”

Libraries are the most absurd places. Disguised as a respite for intellectuals, they’d become a breeding ground for the ignorant. Miranda believed Benjamin Franklin would be bitterly disappointed. 

“What’s new with you? How’s that darling husband of yours? Is he tasty as ever?” Kenny licked his lips.

“We haven’t seen each other much. He’s been working a ton, which means he’s tired all the time. Disinterested.” She looked up at Kenny who was looking intently back at her. “And I’ve been busy too,” she added quickly.

He unfolded his hands. “Pray tell.” 

“Nothing of importance,” she said, a twitch at her lip. “Anyway, how are things with you? Tell me everything.”

Kenny was known for his diatribes. Once he started talking it took a herculean effort to get him to stop. Miranda listened, watched the creases at his eyes shorten and then lengthen, rubberband like. She laughed at his jokes which were actually funny. He leaned into her when he spoke, his shoulders squared. His hands were involved in their own conversation.

“So I called the landlord and had them evicted,” he slapped the meat of his thigh and offered a moderately restrained howl.

“You tell the juiciest stories,” Miranda said, though she hadn’t been paying attention. “I better get going.”

Kenny stood up and wrapped his arms around her low back. He felt sturdy. When he pulled away he said, “Now do I need to check your bag for stolen books?” and winked, which Miranda knew was supposed to be a joke, so she laughed, but she didn’t think it was funny, because she did, in fact, have a book in her bag.

“I’ll see you,” Miranda said. In the stairwell, she deactivated the magnet.

Seeing Kenny at the library felt like a distant memory, hazy, like an illusion from a life she hadn’t lived. Now, sitting in front of the TV and feeling somewhat distanced from herself, she tried to imagine herself as a guest on Second Chances. Would a kleptomaniac librarian make for good TV? She thought maybe. They could bring on her boss and ask why she believed Miranda should be sent to a mental institution or "some other place for crazy people."

Keys scraped against the lock, but Ben never came home before six. Miranda tried lifting herself from the crevice of the couch but felt like a sea creature washed up on land, unable to find purchase.

Their eyes met as the door opened. Ben dropped his briefcase and loosened his tie. It was true, Ben was out of her league. He rose just inches above her, but his face, she always thought, resembled Joseph Gordon Leavitt's. Whenever she walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his belly and sang Here Comes Your Man, he’d throw his head back and laugh.

At least, he used to.

“Oh, hi,” she said.

“Don’t feel well.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ben turned down the hallway and Miranda heard him sigh, then the small whine of the bedsprings as he unloaded his weight.

Miranda counted to twenty, then returned her full attention to the television.

“It isn’t that I don’t love you,” the man said, leaning back into the overstuffed chair. “It’s that I don’t trust you.” The woman dabbed at her eyes with tissue wrapped around her ungodly long fingernails.

She went on defense. “I’ve never given you a reason not to trust me! What have I done?” No longer in tears, she manifested rage. “Tell me! What have I done?”

Then on the screen behind them, the host blew up an image of the woman acting as a contortionist around another man’s body from three months prior.

A collective gasp rippled through the live audience. The camera panned and focused on a pair of women whispering in disbelief.

Three months ago Miranda had stolen her one-hundredth-book. 

“Do you believe in second chances?” She called out to Ben.

Not even a murmur. “Ben?” He groaned.

She picked up her phone and opened a new message to Kenny. They hadn’t spoken since she’d run into him at the library months ago.

“I know this is random,” she typed, “but do you believe in second chances?”

Now the man and the woman were crying on screen, their fingers inches apart on separate chairs. She was drunk, she was sorry, she made a mistake, nothing happened, she swore nothing happened. That’s all it took. Yes, he forgave her, yes he believed her, yes he could trust her. Everyone in the audience clapped, some stood in applause.

Three bubbles popped up on her screen, then disappeared.

That night in bed, Ben lay on his back and read the last few pages of Guns, Germs, and Steal. Miranda was fidgety, trying to catch his attention.

“Did you hear what I asked you earlier?”

He sighed and slowly raised his eyes from the page. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you answer?”

He looked at the clock next to the bed and shut his book. “Because I knew it would turn into an argument.”

“So you don’t,” she said.

“This is what I mean,” he said.

Miranda thought about the couple on television, the power of their forgiveness. “I’m sorry, I made a mistake, nothing happened, maybe I was drunk.”

Ben said, “It’s fine,” then turned off the light and fell asleep.

Miranda rolled over in bed and saw her phone light up on the bedside table. She pulled it close to her face and opened the message. It was from Kenny.

“Oh honey,” it read, “if second chances didn’t exist I wouldn’t be who I am today.”

Then, “You’ll get through this.”