Page 2 of The Librarians
She smiles at everyone. “Thank you. I’m delighted to be here.”
Astrid has done a lot of fantasy casting over the years, putting faces—mostly those of well-known actors—onto characters from her favorite books. Hazel, she is sure, would have been perfectly cast as a woman with whom a chance encounter alters the course of a protagonist’s life.
Or at least costs them sleep and focus for a good long while.
She is beautiful—perfect forehead, wide-set eyes, complexion as smooth as fondant on a wedding cake. Yet it isn’t her loveliness that instantly fascinates Astrid.
Near the university campus where Astrid spent her undergraduate years, there was a lake that teemed with expensive properties along its shores. One was finished right as Astrid began her freshman year.
The house stood empty for a few weeks, then one day, curtains appeared. A few days after that, some downstairs curtains were pulled back to reveal a spotless living room, a baby grand piano set against a far window, a blue settee to the side.
Those downstairs curtains never closed again. No matter what season of the year or day of the week Astrid walked, biked, or rollerbladed by, the curtains were always open, the settee plush and inviting, the piano placed just so to silhouette against the lake beyond the house.
Never in her four years there had Astrid seen a single person inside, a carin the driveway, or a stray toy on the lawn. The house seemed to exist in its own separate reality, so much so that it was always a shock—and a profound thrill—when a fully lit Christmas tree appeared next to the piano each December.
Hazel, like that house, also seems to exist on her own plane.
Her attire is simple, a black blouse over a pair of black trousers, but they drape beautifully over her tall, elegant frame. When she speaks, though her accent is North American enough, Astrid hears echoes of distant lands, a life lived globally. (And her instinct is proven correct within the hour, when Hazel tells Inez that she’s spent most of her life in Singapore and moved back to the US only recently.)
For someone who should exude glamour, though, Hazel manages to be marvelously low-key. Shortly after she meets the morning crew of librarians, it’s as if she’s always been there. She moves about at an unhurried pace, yet when Astrid looks in on her around lunchtime, she finds that Hazel has culled all reserved titles that have not been picked up on time, pulled all the new requested transfers, and restocked two entire rolling carts of sorted returned items.
And then sauntered out of the library.
Astrid retreats into the Den of Calories, the affectionate term for the staff breakroom. Jonathan is there, munching on a bag of Indonesian cassava chips. When people think of librarians, they don’t immediately conjure a six-foot-four, blond, blue-eyed former college football player. Jonathan is all that and more and he is a great librarian.
“Why, hello, Divinely Beautiful,” he says, holding out his bag of chips. “Want some?”
The name Astrid means “divinely beautiful.”
“Yes to chips, always.” She reaches into the bag and grabs one. “Unfortunately, I’ve only ever looked like a younger version of Mrs. Weasley—like when she’s had two kids, rather than seven.”
Her Swedish genes have not endowed her with either height or svelteness, and the pale hair she was born with turned brown sometime in her teens, a common enough occurrence for those of Scandinavian heritage.
Jonathan recoils in mock horror. “How dare you! I’ll have you know Molly Prewett Weasley is and has always been an absolute babe.”
Astrid laughs and thanks him. They chat another minute while Astrid’s lunch heats up in the microwave oven. Then Jonathan cleans up after himself and goes back to work, leaving Astrid to slurp down her chicken chow mein by herself.
When she first arrived at the library, she ached for Jonathan to become her long-awaited gay best friend. But while Jonathan has always been kind and helpful, a special bond has not blossomed between them.
The gay men of the world are too busy with their own lives to revolve around her, and the hetero ones have no use for her if she isn’t willing to immediately proceed to the “chill” part of Netflix and chill.
And the one exception, a man she met at this very library, crushed her as if he were a junkyard compactor and she a 1982 Datsun.
One does not become a librarian dreaming of luxury and acclaim. Astrid wants to be useful and she wants to achieve quiet contentment. But quiet contentment is beginning to feel like the hardest boss level in the game of life.
At least the noodles from Trader Joe’s, a store famously geared toward the “overeducated and underpaid,” of which librarians form exhibit A, are chewy and flavorful.
Astrid wonders what Hazel is having for lunch. Something low-key molecular, she hopes.
Hazel returns from lunch in perfect time to sit down for her first desk session, an hour at the checkout station facing the public.
Not every librarian enjoys dealing with patrons. Astrid does. Other than an occasional best-forgotten battle with the toilet—what exactlyisthe correct way of retrieving a loaded diaper that has been knocked inside?—she likes the “public” aspect of working at a public library.
Patrons don’t need to tell her why they need to use the library’s terminals, but their tales of visiting grandchildren accidentally destroying the CPU with a water-soaker rivet her. She has good conversations every November with those who need to prepare a Thanksgiving feast that accommodates every dietary restriction under the sun. And she loves helping people find correct tax forms and fill out employment applications.
Obviously, iffier members of the public show up too. But early afternoon on a Monday, with kids still in school, isn’t a heavily trafficked time slot.
Hazel, who, like all new hires, has received training at the central library downtown, checks out books like a pro and processes two new library card applications without a hitch. She even fields an I-don’t-know-the-author’s-name-or-the-title-but-can-you-help-me-find-this-book inquiry with panache. Astrid, the list Hazel generated in hand, takes the patron to the stacks and the older gentleman exclaims with excitement at the second book she pulls out—precisely the one he’s been looking for.
