NIP in Bloom (2/14/09 Saturday)

As my interpretive powers have been stunned by the magnitude of The Admittance, the best I can do is recount my day.

I lingered in bed only a few minutes after the alarm and lingered on the toilet longer than usual and necessary, unblinking, muttering, "What am I going to do?" I showered but didn't shave. Shaving's become an occasional thing--only once this week. Ate my granola and drank some of my coffee in front of the penultimate episode of The Prisoner, then finished the coffee staring out the window. Got up suddenly in the middle of that revery to retrieve a ring, a spoon ring I bought as a teenager in the seventies. I'd last worn it the day I met Julie at Stir Crazy. I'd been wearing it a couple months to that point. I couldn't take it off quickly enough when I got home. I slipped in onto my left middle finger, the only one on which it would fit. I somehow managed to leave on time--7:45 to get to the library by 8:30. I actually did make it on time, though my legs felt heavy after sixty miles already this week. Traffic was very light, and the lights were efficient. I was off the handlebars for most of the last half mile. Julie would not be there till 9:30; still, I looked for her car.

I changed. Last night I changed my mind on what I'd wear today. Halfway through the day I realized I was wearing what I wore to the coffee shop--and red on Valentines's Day--and the ring. I managed to finger-comb my hair into decent shape.

Till ten I'd be backup. From the bookbin I pulled only four books--the 24/7 must have behaved overnight--and they turned out to have been due three years and three months before. Discarded two of them for being hoplessly obsolete. When I knew Julie had arrived I contrived to be out of the workroom when she reached her desk by taking the branch mail to the back to pack, but my timing was perfectly awful: The hall was blocked by Julie's approach. With a small dramatic flourish, she made way for me, but the hall might as well have been the eye of a needle. With my cart of books I banged nearly everything in sight--carts, walls, my own feet--trying to make more room for myself to get past her. A swift glance, a muttered thanks and my back was all I gave her as I passed. When I returned to the backup station she was gone from the workroom. I took my glasses off in case she returned.

The next hour I deleted holds while she was on the desk. Safe though it seemed, I still put in the earbuds and put on Singles Going Steady. I was only a few songs in when Julie came back, looking for a hold. She leaned over my desk to look at what I'd pulled from the holds shelf out front. She wore mascara and her hair was up off her neck. I had just deleted the hold she was looking for, and she took it. I came out to the desk next hour glad to see her busy with a patron. I relieved Bethany instead, pulled the chair from the desk, sat, and looked at the thick twist of hair high up Julie's neck. I watched her go when Megan relieved her.

It was a long hour, but not the longest of the three I spent out there. Most of that hour my glasses were off. I brooded on The Admittance and the apparently absolute impossibility of its resolution. Despite only the rare blink, a slow gathering of tears maintained the moisture in my eyes. I discreetly dabbed them once or twice. The second hour, I was nearly catatonic, but my last hour on the desk was a constant irritation of patrons. I left there to be Julie's backup for my last hour of the day. She was out there solo since Judy left early because of pain from a fall yesterday. Julie called me out, I dealt with a patron and left, walking behind Julie toward the door. "Thank you, Dion," she said after I'd passed. I turned my head but not my body to say, "You're welcome" to a profile and a cocked ear. I thought of the other day's "Hello, by the way."

At five o'clock I was changing for the bike before Julie was off the desk. I wanted to see her again but could think of no excuse to go back to the workroom. I pulled my jacket from the hanger, which tangled with the adjacent one. I couldn't shake them apart so I hurled them both against the wall. One of them broke into three pieces. I didn't feel a whole lot better, and I didn't want to go home to the responsibility of the kids, whom I couldn't even tell about my day. That's why I stayed up three hours past their bedtime to write this.