An Imperfect Librarian (12 page)

Next, he holds both hands waist height, palms up, in supplication. “Instead of brilliant minds engaged in reading books so thick they need to rest on a table, you'll see light-headed
drones flitting through electronic pages with as much depth as a television commercial.” With both hands raised and his head bowed between them, he adds, for the finale, “Language will be eroded, knowledge will be reduced to bits of information pulsing through wires, contact will be limited to an electronic signal, while the book...” Here, he pauses, raises his chin to gaze out onto an invisible audience then drops his hands to his side, palms facing out. “The book is abandoned, unattended like an ancient relic gathering centuries of dust.”

“Bravo, Henry. See you tomorrow,” I add as the curtain closes on another wasted afternoon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

M
Y ONLY SUIT SHARES CLOSET
space with a mop and broom, four shirts and a variety of cleaning fluids. My Hawaiian shirt has mould growing on the palm trees. There is one advantage to living in the basement: I can call on my landlords for advice at any time. I merely go up the stairs, open the door and yell. “Cyril? Mercedes? Hello. It's me.” Cyril is an electrical inspector. When I first moved in, he gave me a tour of the house to show me the rewiring job. He described the codes, explained the circuit box in detail, opened a few outlets and led me outside to see the connection to the street pole.

“How do I look, Cyril? I'm going out to dinner tonight. The pants stretched since I wore them last. Shirt's a bit wrinkled, isn't it?”

“You're asking the wrong person. Mercedes!” he hollers.

I follow him into the kitchen. He tells me about his plans to start up his own business. “Do-it-yourself appliance repairs. Call Cyril for help repairing your own toasters, washers,
dryers, VCRs. I'll charge by the minute.”

Mercedes appears from upstairs. “Hello stranger. Sit down and have a snack.”

I work my way through a bowl of pea soup and a homemade roll while Cyril pokes at a toaster and Mercedes tidies the kitchen. They're both always busy at something. If Mercedes is forced to sit, she knits. The vacuum gets so much use, I'm surprised it's still running. I butter my roll. Mercedes is wiping out the fridge and Cyril has his nose in the toaster. A spark and smoke shoot out of it. Mercedes shrieks like she's seen a mouse. Cyril laughs. I clean the ashes from the spark off the butter on my roll. Mercedes throws her cloth at him. “Will you take that contraption off the table while Carl is here.”

“Jesus, maid. If you'd stop making me do chores for you night and day, day and night, repair the toaster, finish the clapboard, put out the garbage, shovel the snow, rake the leaves, fix the sink, I'd be out building the shed. In no time, I'd have my own workshop. You wouldn't have to complain anymore. Isn't that right, Carl?”

I don't know anything about electricity between wires or spouses. I eat my roll and say nothing. Mercedes opens the oven then sprays something inside. “I'm leaving that to soak,” she says. “Don't go closing the oven door, either one of you.”

Cyril jabs at the toaster. The kitchen smells of burnt toast, smoke and whatever Mercedes sprayed on the oven. I start on the tea with a date square. They're not coffee drinkers. Mercedes starts on me with her usual questions and comments, punctuated with the name Nancy. I tell them about the highlights of the visit to Cliffhead: the dogs, the hexagons, my boot, the trail, the rowboat, the blister, the fox, the horses, the char, partridgeberry-cognac sauce and, finally, the lights of the city on the drive to town.

Cyril twitches his head to the side like I've seen some men
do since I came to Newfoundland. “Yes, b'y. Give 'er,” he says.

Mercedes thinks my shirt is too wrinkled and my trousers are too big. “You can't go on a date looking like a streel,” she says. “If you were with Nancy, you'd have all your shirts ironed.”

Cyril twitches his head again. I imitate. He laughs. “You'll get it right one of these days. Don't give up.”

After my snack, Mercedes irons my shirt and Cyril lends me a belt. One side of the buckle imitates a plug, the other a socket. I don't have far to walk to the restaurant because it's only at the bottom of Cathedral Street.
Watch for the mermaid
, Norah wrote in her email. It would have been hard to miss the statue or sign:
St. John's Mermaid, Bar and Restaurant.
The inside is an imitation of the interior of a seventeenth-century ship. The waiters are dressed as sea captains and pirates. The waitresses' legs are wrapped in sparkling mermaid tails. Norah is ordering a drink as I arrive. She introduces me to a couple she knows from the trail association. There's the usual “Where do you belong? How long you here for?” Then, the mermaid interrupts: “Ready to go to the main deck?” she says.

Norah smiles at me. We follow the mermaid along a corridor bordered by canvas sails. The main deck looks authentic except that it's filled with tables and chairs in addition to barrels, cannons, rigging, ropes and a ship's wheel. Our wooden table has a clear glass-top finish. In the centre there's an oil lamp. We study the menu in a dim light. I settle on Corte-Real's Bacalhau. Norah doesn't like salt-cod dishes so she takes a Captain Eastwood's peppered halibut steak. She orders a bottle of wine that costs more than both our dishes combined.

Elsa rarely drank wine because she was afraid it might interfere with her performance as a runner. Meat interfered with her yoga so we hardly ever ate that at the flat or when we went out. Any form of fast food was out of the question. I
only ever ate hamburgers or French fries when she wasn't around.

“Are you athletic?” I ask Norah when we begin eating.

“Chopping wood, cutting hay, shovelling horse dung or snow, chasing chickens or the dogs, digging in my garden, grooming the trails – I guess you could call that athletic. At Cliffhead, every season has its...”

While we eat, I try to listen to her description of life at Cliffhead. The couple at a nearby table distracts me. I can't see the woman's face but from behind she has the same style blond hair as Elsa.

Norah continues to talk while the mermaid tops up her wine glass. “If they'd stop giving me new courses every semester I'd have time to do the chores and...”

On the far side of the room, people sing happy birthday as a mermaid walks into the room carrying a cake with sparklers on top.

“...he thinks he can make me teach in an area I'm not qualified for. I told him I didn't know anything about Canadian history. It's not my area. ‘We didn't hire you to teach Newfoundland history,' he said. I said, ‘Well you...'”

I remember when Elsa and I blew the last of our English pounds on an expensive restaurant for our final meal before we moved to Norway. We talked about where we'd live and whether, one day, we'd be able to afford a house. Elsa said she'd only buy a house together if we were married.

The couple at the other table hold hands. The mermaid brings their bill. They pay then prepare to leave.

Norah talks while the mermaid takes our plates away. “I've been to the union, the dean, the VP. They were as bad as he was. If they don't give me tenure, I'll...”

The woman at the other table stands then turns around. She doesn't look anything like Elsa. But maybe Elsa is different
now. I haven't seen her since I moved to Newfoundland over seven months ago. I like to remember how she looked when we married. Tatie called her
La Princesse de Carl
. Papa approved highly of our marriage. Elsa was Norwegian. The Normans are a tribe originally from Norway, he told me. I was marrying a descendant of a forceful breed of warriors. Bravo, son! Bravo! he congratulated me.

We don't bother with dessert or coffee. The mermaid brings our bill.

“Ron Hynes and his band are playing at the bar,” Norah says. “He's great to dance to. He wrote ‘Sonny's Dream.' I should have played it for you while you were at my place. That's an excuse for you to come back.” She smiles then lays her hand on the side of my head.

We walk from the restaurant to the bar. Before we're there, it starts to pour. The water brings out a strange smell off my clothes. I remember that I need to find a place to live where my trousers and shirts don't have to share closet space with cleaning fluids.

“Howdy. Five bucks cover,” the woman at the door says.

There are no seats but we find a place to stand not far from the musicians. They're set up on a stage that's barely a foot off the floor. The music starts. I ask Norah if she'd like a drink. She says something but I can't hear her because we're standing near the speakers. I reach my ear closer to her mouth.

“I said I love that song!”

“Would you like to–” I wasn't going to say dance but Norah throws her jacket onto the back of someone's chair, grabs my hand and leads me out onto an empty floor in front of the band. We have plenty of room since no one else is dancing. Norah needs the space for when she twirls with her arms spread out. I try to stay facing her. It's not easy because she turns often. I'm relieved when the song ends.

“Let's have a hand for the first dancers of the evening.”

Norah claps while I take off my jacket. She grabs hold of my hand again. The band starts another song. In no time, the dancers have gone from two to twenty. Someone moves a table to make more dancing space. A dancer bumps against me from behind and pushes me into Norah. She rests her hands on my shoulders. I lay my hands on her waist. When the music stops, she lets go.

“I'll get you a drink–” I'm about to say of
water
but the man on stage with the cowboy hat and guitar interrupts.

“We're gonna give our dancers a chance to slow down, maybe do some huggin'. Don't get carried away.” The audience laughs. “In a world of romance don't miss out on the chance to be dancin' the ‘St. John's Waltz,'” he sings. The audience applauds.

The music starts and more bodies squeeze onto the dance floor. “You lead,” she says.

I take hold of her outstretched arm then reach my hand around her back to draw her close to me. I move with the flow of all the other bodies. I close my eyes while the man with the cowboy hat sings about seagulls dreaming seagulls' dreams. The song ends. We clap and the music starts again. I stay with her on the dance floor until she tells me she needs to pee.

“If you go to the bar, I'll have a double Morgan and coke, single ice,” she says. It takes me two songs to get served. When I come back, I see she's found another partner. I leave her drink on the edge of the speakers near where she's dancing. Now and then, her arms fly up in the air and sway. The band plays another song, then another.

“Time for a break,” the cowboy finally says. The audience groans. “Right after this song.” People applaud. “We had a request from...” He pauses while he talks to someone on the dance floor. “We're gonna play a request from Norah. This is ‘Atlantic Blue.' If you can't be with the one you love then you
know what you gotta do.”

Norah waves for me to join her. I squeeze a path through the dancers. “Where've you been?” she says. She rests her head against my chest and hugs her arms around my waist again.

“Are you OK?” I ask.

She doesn't say anything but she holds me tighter. I reach my arms down over her back. Her shirt feels damp. The dance floor is so crowded we can barely move. The cowboy closes his eyes while he picks his guitar and sings about haunted dreams, whispered names and vacant hearts. She doesn't move except to follow my steps. When the song ends, she raises her head off my chest and stares up at me. “Can we go?” she says.

I wipe a strand of hair out of her eyes. “You can't drive.”

She kisses my neck. “Take me home? Stay with me?”

I pull her close and bend down to kiss her head.

That night, after a calm ride under a clearing sky and waxing moon, I visit her shower for the second time. We blanket our bodies in soap then waltz in the shower. From the bathroom, we head to the top floor of her house where the six sides meet and where the heat from the woodstove hides from the drafts.

She's already downstairs when I wake in the morning. She serves me homemade bread with local butter and her marshberry jam. After breakfast, we go to the cove below her house where we throw sticks into the waves. The dogs fight with each other to retrieve them. We compete to see who can skim rocks the farthest. She drops two miniature beach rocks into my pocket. “Hold onto these. When you put your hands in your pocket, rub them between your fingers, close your eyes then imagine you're here in the cove, at Cliffhead, with me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

W
HAT HAVE YOU GOT TO
be so happy about?” Henry says.

“Must be the weather.”

“Are you mad? The rain is coming down horizontal. What were you doing this weekend?”

“Same old thing.”

“Not out at Blackhead with that Reading Room woman, were you? I hope not.”

“It's Cliffhead and her name is Norah Myrick.”

“I called you but there was no answer,” he says. “I wanted to know if you'd chauffeur me around while I scouted for space to rent for my bookstore.”

“You can't retire for another four years. Why are you looking for space now?”

“There's no harm in being prepared. Who knows? I might open it before I retire. There's a space on Duckworth Street that would serve the purpose. Fabulous view of The Narrows. I might put a coffee shop in the back after a few years. l'll have the
finest bookstore in eastern Canada, maybe anywhere in the country. Why settle for anything less than the best, right, Carl?”

“I have just the title.”

“Allow me to guess,” he says. “Bits and Bytes Books?”