Page 23 of The Librarians
Conrad squinted up at the chandelier over the table, as if he weren’t addressing his admirers but some invisible entity. “If you’re at least five-nine, beautiful, stylish, and articulate, you may apply to be my girlfriend. Bonus points if you’re Asian—and mysterious too. And if you satisfy all of the above requirements, I don’t mind if you’re a few years older.”
Thanks to a decades-long influx of techies, Jonathan and Ryan’s highschool had a large plurality of Asian students. One of the women at the booth—Jonathan actually remembered her name, Maggie Liang—shouted, “Omigod, if I was six inches taller, I’d be your perfect woman!”
Her friends shrieked with laughter. “Shut up, Maggie. You’re the least mysterious person ever. We know how many tampons you used last month.”
Jonathan, who had been spying from a nearby table, finally went over and asked, “Is it true, you two aren’t actually together?”
“It’s true,” Ryan answered. “He’s just my roommate and you still have a chance with me.”
He winked at Jonathan, then kicked Conrad in the tread of the latter’s shoe. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Jonathan’s hopes, like Jon Snow stabbed and left to die in the cold, miraculously resurrected.
So yes, he remembers every detail of that exchange. “And?”
“And the next day I asked him about it and he swore he couldn’t have said anything of the sort because he doesn’t date Asians.”
Their fried pickles arrive, piled high on a plate. Jonathan eats a few pieces and screws up his courage. “Ryan, can I ask you a personal question?”
Ryan grins, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Let me guess. Is it about how I became a forensic pathologist?”
No, not really.But if that’s what Ryan considers a personal question then Jonathan had better go along. “Yes, that one.”
“I had a boyfriend in med school. His dad specialized in litigating medical malpractice. One Thanksgiving with the dad was enough to convince me I didn’t want to work on anyone who might sue me.”
“What about the boyfriend? He wasn’t scared?”
“Nope. He’s been doing heart surgeries on babies left and right—which goes to show that I was probably just looking for an excuse not to save lives.” Ryan dunks a slice of fried pickle in the tangy dip. “It worked out okay. I would have been matchmade to death if I were a doctor. But you tell people you do two hundred fifty autopsies a year and they can’t wait to leave you alone.”
Jonathan laughs in spite of himself. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Me neither.” Ryan flashes another smile. “But it is what it is.”
Could it have been like this for them, drinks together after work, making each other laugh, had things been different?
HadJonathanbeen different.
So many times he’d wondered, especially since the reunion, what would have happened if they’d met each other not in high school but later. After he left the navy. After he finally learned not to run away from himself.
Well, you’re sitting on adjacent barstools, aren’t you?
There was no need for a face-to-face meeting—Jonathan could have asked his questions over a phone call. But Ryan agreed to come in person.
Does that mean he isn’t, after all, averse to seeing Jonathan again?
Ryan looks at his watch. “Oh, sorry, gotta run. I have a date tonight. Wish me luck.”
Jonathan’s heart shrinks into an asteroid, a lonely rock lost in the vastness of space.
“Good luck,” he replies mechanically.
Ryan hops off his barstool. “And good luck to your colleague,” he says cheerfully. “Let me know if she needs anything else.”
The intelligence Jonathan gleaned from his old friend at the county examiner’s office does not comfort Astrid. Why did she think that it would? Sometimes there is no good news and the more one knows, the worse the situation becomes.
Jonathan hugs Astrid. “Don’t worry. The whole thing will sort itself out.”
But he doesn’t sound convinced. He sounds hollow—and he looks worn out, as if the news weighs fifty pounds and he has carried it on foot all the way from midtown.
