Castles on the Sand

Four

When I return to the library, Siraj doesn't bat an eye. There are only three people browsing the shelves and one on one of the computers. I sit down behind the circulation desk and tuck my purse down by my feet.

“Scan these in?” says Siraj, placing a stack of books by my elbow. He's got the phone pressed to his ear and a distracted look that tells me he's deep in conversation. “Mmm, right,” he says. “Hang on, I'm going to transfer to the phone in the conference room.”

I grab the scanner and run each book under it so that the computer records that they are here in the Pelican Bluffs branch of the library. Three of the books were requested by other borrowers, so I leave each of them a message to let them know that the book is now available to them.

The door opens and in strides Alex Katsumoto, jaw set, hands bunched into fists. He glares around and I fight the urge to duck under the circulation desk for cover. Instead I get to my feet. “Can I help you?”

His gaze jerks over to me and he looks me up and down as if to say, “Why are you talking to me?”

“O-kay.” I sit down again. “If you want help with something, let me know.”

He spies something on the desk that draws him over, like a metal to magnet. I look around to see what it could be. There's the stack of books I've just scanned in, the telephone, The Book of Mormon, and a phone book.

Alex rests his hands on the counter and looks at the phone book, then stares at me as if daring me to hand it over. He doesn't deign to talk and his whole body is tense. If someone came up behind him right now, I have no doubt he'd spin around and punch them, so it's probably not a good idea to give him something as heavy as a phone book, but since I wouldn't be able to defend myself from him if he decided to punch me, phone book or no, I heft the heavy volume onto the counter in front of him and say, “Just leave it there when you're done.”

He continues to stare, as if unsure whether or not he can really have the phone book. Tension stretches so tight the very air rings with it.

“Um.” I cast about and pull the little pass along card out of The Book of Mormon. “Here, you can have this too. See the pretty picture?”

He glances down at it, looks up at me, then with a lightning quick motion, snatches a pair of scissors from the pencil cup and snips the smiling girl's head off. Then he slams the scissors down on the counter hard enough that I wonder if he made a dent.

“Fine,” I say to him. “If you want to be a jerk, go ahead. I was just trying to be funny.” I shove the phone book at him. “And you're welcome.”

He grabs it with one hand, pulls it towards himself and flips it open.

I grab the cart with all the books that need to be reshelved and escape with it across the room. The cart is only a quarter of the way full, but it's the first excuse I can think of to get away.

Reshelving doesn't take as long as I'd hoped, even doing it the hard way, chasing down every slot for each book in the order they sit on the cart, as opposed to finding the books for each section as I work systematically across the library. But when I peer back at the circulation desk, I can see that I've taken long enough. Alex is gone.

“Something wrong?” Siraj asks when I return to my seat. “With Alex, I mean?”

“His mom got picked up by Officer Li.”

“I was afraid of that.” He frowns at the exit where Alex would have left. “I'd have tried to help him but I was busy arguing with a City Councilor about an initiative to keep this library open.”