An Imperfect Librarian (25 page)

“Is that supposed to make it better?”

“For now it might, yes.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

T
HERE
'
S A PERSISTENT DRONE OF
rumour sounding throughout the library and on campus in general. The lunchroom is much noisier than usual.

“It's not the cameras that caught her, you know,” the woman says. “It's Francis Hickey.”

“He's some good lookin',” the woman next to her adds.

“Too good for me. Never go out with a guy who looks better than you–”

I push my chair in. It squeaks and interrupts the conversation.

“No worries about that happening around here,” the woman says as I'm leaving the room.

VOCM, CBC,
The Campus Voice, The Telegram
...even the national
Globe
is reporting on the story. Francis poses with a smile. The captions reads:
Special Collections Expert Francis Hickey
. Norah's photo doesn't appear in the papers but her name is on everyone's tongue. I can't stop the newspapers or the rumours. I've sent her emails and a letter through regular snail
mail. I've left telephone messages. If I tried any harder to contact her, I'd be guilty of harassment. For every email or letter I've written, there've been ten times as many drafts. I substitute words, add, delete, edit, explain, deconstruct, reconstruct. Every page ends up in the trash. The posting to the online discussion is my last resort:

To:
king_e.group.nl.ca

From:
[email protected]

Date:
March 02, 2001

Subject:
Help Norah Myrick

Visit ratemyprofessors.com to voice your support for

Dr. Norah Myrick, Assistant Professor, History

Department, King E. University. Norah needs your

help now!

Within a week, there are forty-six postings. My favourite is,
Come back Professor Myrick, we loves ya!!

Every time the phone rings, I answer hoping it will be her. But it never is.

“Hi. Edie here. How are you?”

“OK.”

“You sound sluggish. Is everything all right?”

“I'm fine, Edith. What can I do for you?”

“You're in a hurry again. I can tell. I was calling to invite you for supper.”

“Not tonight, thanks.”

“I didn't mean tonight. I've got toastmasters. I meant sometime on the weekend. Friday or Saturday. Curling with the girls is off for this weekend. I was going to invite another couple. Do you know Betty and Mike?”

“No.”

“They're a lovely couple, about our age–”

“I meant, no I can't come for supper.”

“Why not? It'll be a lovely evening. We'll play charades. Betty is excellent. She–”

“I have to go now, Edith.”

“Carl, are you there? Don't hang up. I also called to see if you'd heard the news.”

I don't have a TV, the car radio is broken and I'm thinking I might get rid of my phone as well.

“It's about Norah Myrick.”

“What about Norah?”

“I thought you'd know by now. You two were a number this summer, weren't you? Are you still with her?”

“What about Norah?”

“She was picked up for failing the breathalyser a few years ago. Did you know that? There's nothing worse than being involved with–”

“What about Norah?”

“Everybody's heard by now. You should get yourself a TV or a radio.”

“What about Norah?”

“She's missing. There's a search party out around the Cape Spear area where she lives. If you ask me, I'd say she's hiding out somewhere. Would you like to come for–”

I haven't driven over the road to Cliffhead in months. The mounds of snow are piled high. In open areas, drifts are blowing over the tops of the orange snow fences. Except for a few skidoos, SUVs and a couple of pickup trucks, I'm the only one on the road. The truck in front of me is moving so slowly you'd think it was carrying a load of gravel, not a load of firewood. They should give out tickets to people who drive at that speed. When we arrive at the hill, the driver shifts gears and the truck goes even more slowly. As soon as I get a clear stretch of road, I push the gas pedal to the floor to pass him. The
driver makes one of those friendly twitches of the head as if to say give 'er. I speed on past, though not for long. He slows down to stare while I'm pulled over on the side of the road. The policeman saunters up cautiously to my car and taps on the window. “Driver's license, please.”

“Do you think we could do this quickly? I'm in a hurry.”

“You've had enough doing things in a hurry for one day. I had you clocked at thirty kilometres over the speed limit.”

“I'm on my way to join the search party for Norah Myrick at Cliffhead.”

“You're not from here, are you?” he says.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“If you were from here, you'd know you should hand over your license, say thank you, officer, and hope that I don't take you into headquarters.”

“I can't go to headquarters. I have to join the party. She's missing. You must have heard about it. You're a police officer.”

“Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Brunette. Your party will have to wait. Stay there while I go to the car and plug this information into the database.”

“You don't need to check with it in the database. I have an accent and drove over the speed limit. That doesn't mean I'm a criminal.”

“Calm down there, mister. This is a routine check.”

Sixteen and a half minutes. I could have been to Cliffhead in that time. “I guess your computer was slow today.”

He doesn't react. He simply pauses and glares at me. “In the future, watch your driving, and your attitude, Mr. Brunette,” he says. He saunters back to his car. I shove the speeding ticket in the glove compartment. He tailgates me until I turn off onto Norah's private road. Henry told me I should get winter tires. They wouldn't have been any use on this road. The only
thing that would get through is a snowmobile or a plough. When I can't go forward anymore, I put the car in reverse. The tires spin. The back of the car starts to slide towards the ditch on the side of the road.

I turn off the engine, search for my phone then realize I left it in the office. The windshield fogs up. I open the window. A cold draft of air blows inside. I open the door and step out in my office shoes, without mitts or a scarf. I've done the walk many times alone or with her in fifteen minutes. Now, it takes twice as long and that much more energy. I run to keep warm. I hop over drifts. If she's there, I'll go inside and warm up by the woodstove.

She's not there. The entrance is smothered in snow. There are no footprints. I check around the barn. The padlock is tight on the door. There's no sign of any cars. I call the dogs. Three crows sitting on a wire watch me. I follow my prints back to the car, climb inside and turn the heater on high. It makes a squeaking sound then farts a burning rubber smell. I climb out, slam the door shut, leave it unlocked and hope someone steals it.

Once I reach the main road, I stick out my thumb. The police car that stopped me earlier drives past. I turn to face the opposite direction then raise my collar up over my neck. His car disappears over a hill. I should have flagged him down. There's no crime in being stuck in the snow with or without an accent. As I'm waving to the police car that's already too far away, a horn blows behind me. I turn around to face a rust-trimmed pickup truck pulled over on the side of the road. The passenger door squeaks open. A voice shouts, “Where ya headin'?”

I step inside. “Any place where it's warm or to a garage. Whatever is nearest.”

The truck may be old but the heat works fine. Ambrose introduces himself. “Where ya from?” he says.

“From town,” I tell him.

“Yeah? Which part?”

“The university library.”

“I know someone from the library. What's her name again? Peddigrew?”

Ambrose drops me off at the nearest garage with tow-truck service. He drives kilometres out of his way, offers me his gloves, then asks if there's anything else he can do for me. If Edith had been there, she would have said, “God luv 'im.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

H
ENRY SHOWS UP FIVE MINUTES
early but not in the office. He's on the other side of the window, sitting in Norah's carrel, waving to me. I stand near the glass and shake my head. He turns his back to me, bows his head then swivels round and holds up a piece of paper. I can't read what he's written. I shake my head. He lays the paper on the carrel, forms circles with his thumbs and forefingers in front of his eyes to mimic the binoculars. I take them from on top of the filing cabinet, and focus on his sign:
Coffee ready?

I drop the binoculars in the trash bin, sit at my desk then return to writing my report:
Advanced Analysis Of User Searching: Systems Design Implications.
There's a knock at the door. “Go away!” The knocking persists. I open but only two-words' worth: “I'm busy.”

“Since when did you become busy?” Henry asks.

“Since I stopped listening to your advice.”

“If you're too busy, then I won't tell you about the filing cabinets.”

“Tell me what?”

“Are you busy or not busy?”

I move my arm out of the way. He saunters in and over to the coffee stand.

“What about the cabinets?”

He raises a hand minus the thumb. “There were four. Police property for now. As far as the Crimson Hexagon goes, there was
nada
in there, nothing belonging to the library or to Special Collections. Between the time you were inside and the police were in there, Francis must have gutted it. Her own collection of books looks legitimate. Wish I could say the same about the materials they found in the basement of her house. They were specialized cabinets designed to preserve and protect old, rare, expensive documents. Fireproof, waterproof, everything except police proof.”

“What do the cabinets matter if they weren't supposed to find them in the first place? You promised me the plan wouldn't involve her.”

He shakes his head at me and laughs. “I never uttered any such promise. I don't control Francis' behaviour.”

“Just tell me what's going on.”

He looks down into the Room while he talks. “Your lass, Norah Myrick, your Cliffhead queen, had everything catalogued: description of each page, how the pages were related, approximate dates, authors, location–”

“It belonged to her father, to William Myrick.”

“According to what I've handled so far, it belongs to the archives or Special Collections.”

“You said yourself that most of the library's materials deserved to be cared for by someone who'd appreciate them. You were sympathetic to Blumberg. What about Norah?”

“Sympathy is not the issue. She'll spend enough time behind bars to read every book in the prison library twice. You shouldn't have been shagging her in the first place if she's Francis' lover. I warned you not to become involved with her.”

“Stop calling them lovers.”

He walks away from me towards the coffee stand. “What would you prefer?” he asks. “Partners in fornication or Romeo and Juliet? You wouldn't be in this mess if you'd listened to me.”

“What will it take for you to admit you're wrong – to say, ‘Sorry, Carl, I made a mistake, I misled you,' to say, ‘I shouldn't have asked you to watch her with the binoculars, I shouldn't have suggested spying on her with the cook?' And let's not forget the ‘Go inside that Crimson Hexagon, Carl.'”

He returns to the window. “You're a free man. You had a choice to do what you wanted. I was only highlighting the range of possibilities because you couldn't imagine them for yourself.”

“
Basta
!”

“Look,” he says. “The Room is waking up.”

“You know something else I've had enough of?”

“I'd say biscuits and coffee. You should learn to share.”

“Enough listening to you accusing me of being hypnotized by the computer screen when you're hypnotized by what you see through my office window. Enough serving you coffee and cookies, cleaning up your mess. No more advice, no more making my life any more complicated than–”

“Blaming again. You're the one who loves to keep tally. How many times is it that you've blamed me? If you gave me a biscuit for each one, I'd leave here satiated for a change.”

“I'm not giving you any more cookies. There's enough crumbs under your chair to feed you for a week.”

“I knew you were a cheap fellow but I never imagined you'd
resort to feeding me biscuits from the floor.”

“They're not biscuits! How often do I need to explain the difference?”

“How often? Do you want an exact number or merely an estimation?”

“I'm struggling to have a serious conversation yet you sabotage it every time.”

“There's your other problem. You're too serious,” he says.

“I have more important things to do than waste my time on conversations that go round in circles. Didn't you say you were leaving?”

“More important things to do, have you?” he says. “Like chasing after women who are unavailable?”

“I refuse to continue this conversation. I refuse to allow you to play the psychologist. I told you that before. I simply want to be left alone.”

“You said, ‘I told you that before' already.”

“There you go again. Why do you have to twist and torque my meaning?”

“You can't use it as a verb.”

“Will you stop handling my papers, jabbing at my computer keyboard. What can't you use as a verb?”