Page 4 of The Librarians

George A. Romero is likely spinning in his grave, but someone who ghosts you and then reappears back on the scene as if nothing happened is called a zombie.

Yet as Astrid’s personal zombie apocalypse looms, she is elated. She always hoped that there was a legitimate reason behind Perry’s abrupt disappearance, that someday he would return to explain everything.

And here he is, looking strong and healthy. Eager. She wishes, all at once, that she hadn’t worn such a hobbitcore outfit today. She actually has an oxblood suit that’s quite sleek. And he—

He walks right past her, as if she were one of the public computer terminals, and heads for Hazel.

Astrid, her hand half-raised in greeting, turns into stone.

“Hi!” says Perry to Hazel.

He sounds breathless.

Astrid understands. She really does. In front of Hazel, she too has a hard time keeping her cool.

“I have an oddish question I hope you can help me with,” Perry continues.

If he enunciated better, he’d sound like a Shakespearean actor, someone who bellows Once more unto the breach, dear friends eight times a week to thunderous applause. But he lacks that perfect elocution because of a speech impediment—and she once found it so very charming.

“I can try,” says Hazel.

“A friend of mine is a movie producer. Occasionally, when he evaluates a script, he wants a little on-the-ground research.”

This is beginning to sound eerily, grotesquely familiar. Is his next sentence going to be about a thriller that takes place in a library?

“The script he’s looking at is a thriller that takes place in a library very much like this one. And he wants to know, realistically, how long a book can sit undisturbed on the library’s shelves. And what library policies or procedures might shorten or elongate that time frame.”

Is this what it feels like to have her eardrums blown out?

“Interesting questions—must be a fun script,” says Hazel. “I’m probably not the best person to answer since I’m new here. But I’m sure my colleagues can help.”

She looks behind herself. “Jonathan, could you come here for a second?”

Astrid thought she’d turned into a pillar of salt. But at that moment she moves fast enough to give Usain Bolt whiplash.

On the day Perry first came into the library—with those same questions—Astrid too asked Jonathan for help. She wasn’t exactly sure how RFID technology worked and wanted Jonathan’s input.

Another librarian might not have remembered Perry, but Jonathan would have taken note of a handsome Brit who respectfully acknowledged his expertise.

And she couldn’t bear it if Jonathan were to see her now.

Not at the moment he realizes, as she did, that Perry is just a younger, posher version of the Fifty Shades dude.

Six and a half months ago

Astrid stares across the parking lot of the library.

With the vine-laden trellises behind her, she can only see cars, asphalt, and the apartment complex beyond. But she knows that less than a mile ahead, the land folds into small canyons thick with yaupon and ash juniper—the first undulations of Texas Hill Country.

As long as it isn’t stuck under a heat dome, Austin, ribboned with greenbelts and rich in reservoir lakes, is a great place for the active lifestyle. Despite having always loved books and libraries, Astrid also adores open air and an unpaved path.

When the very outdoorsy Becky became her roommate, Astrid was delighted. She envisioned them hiking, cycling, and paddleboarding around town. She even imagined road trips to Marfa and Big Bend.

Then Becky showed a normal amount of interest in Astrid and Astrid became Greta Garbo, noted recluse.

Now Becky is moving out. She and her boyfriend might even buy a place together, if they can find one they’ll qualify for. Astrid is happy for Becky. But Becky progressing to the next stage of her life only highlights that Astrid is stuck.

No, worse than stuck. Her life has shrunk year by year.

“Hi, is this seat taken?”

Astrid looks up. It’s the British guy who asked about a movie script’s verisimilitude earlier. And he’s gesturing at the bench on the other side of the picnic table.

“Ah, no,” she said. And then, after a moment, “Feel free.”

He sits down across from her and smiles. “Spring in Texas is less sweltering than I feared—I thought I’d have to stay inside all the time.”

He has a nice smile and bright, even teeth—have Hollywood standards of glamour swept aside the supposed British disdain for orthodontia and cosmetic dentistry?

The smile also brings out attractive wrinkles on the outer corners of his eyes.

Earlier she gauged him to be in his midtwenties, but he must be her age—twenty-nine—or thereabouts.

“April is unpredictable. Last week the temperature went up to”—she calculates in her head—“around thirty-three degrees Celsius.”

“You mean more than ninety Fahrenheit?” He grins again. “In the UK when it’s cold, we use Celsius and say it’s below zero. But when it’s hot, we switch to Fahrenheit, because it’s much more dramatic to shout, ‘Blimey, it went over a hundred!’?”

She chortles, even as the gears in her head smoke from trying to figure out if he’s flirting with her.

It’s not as if patrons never do, but usually she shuts it down right away. In this instance, though, she might not mind. He’s good-looking in a slightly dorky way, which is exactly up her alley. And his gaze feels kind.

“Would you like some cookies?” she asks, pointing to a couple of sealed packets on the perforated picnic table.

He takes one packet. “I’m Perry, by the way.”

“Astrid.”

“That’s an Old Norse name, isn’t it?”

Astrid tenses. People being knowledgeable about Old Norse anything makes her nervous. “Yes.”

She hopes he can hear the disinclination in her voice—she’s not interested in being an accessory to his Viking fascination.

“I spent two semesters in Sweden, first when I was in school, and then again in uni. Do you speak Swedish by any chance?”

A very reasonable question, given that they’d had a fairly lengthy conversation earlier in the day with her speaking in a Swedish accent.

The day is mild; it can’t be more than sixty-eight degrees. Astrid, however, feels as if she’s chosen to sit on this thermoplastic-coated metal bench when it’s one hundred and eight in the shade.

It had happened once before, at a party in grad school.

Someone came up to her and started speaking in Swedish.

She was surrounded by her fellow library science students, her skin on fire with desperation.

Thanks to the two shots of tequila already in her, she ground out, “I prefer to speak English when I’m Stateside. ”

The Swedish student shrugged and walked off. And Astrid has zero recollection of the rest of the night.

But today there’s no one else within hearing range. And the man opposite her…

“Do you live in Austin,” she asks, “or are you passing through?”

“I don’t live here. I’m just here on business—for a short while.”

“I don’t speak Swedish.”

He’s taken aback. “Oh, I apo—”

She holds up her hand—she realizes belatedly that she was still speaking in a Swedish accent. These days, it’s not as easy to switch back. “And I don’t speak Norwegian, Danish, or any other Nordic languages. I don’t speak any language other than English.”

He blinks. Does he hear her new accent? Her real accent, the one she grew up with, as American as Jell-O salad and interstate highways?

“I’m sorry if you wished to practice your Swedish. I’m just an American from flyover country. I’ve some Swedish ancestors, but that’s about it.”

“Oh,” he says.

The hush that follows feels like a thousand paper cuts. She doesn’t know why she told the truth. It doesn’t even feel like she made any major decisions at all. She was just too tired to act out the same old charade for yet another person, a transient who will soon be gone from her life.

Maybe she should have made the effort. The perplexity and reproof she hears in the awkward silence—that’s why she could never own up to her little hoax, isn’t it?

“Actually”—he laughs a little—“I wanted to speak to you not to practice my Swedish but because you have lovely eyes. And you were very patient with all my silly questions earlier.”

It becomes her turn to say “Oh,” unable to follow it up with another word.

“I am, in fact, profoundly relieved that I don’t have to speak Swedish—I’m absolutely rubbish at it.

” He again laughs a little—does he laugh when he’s embarrassed?

—and clears his throat. “I hope it’s not unseemly, but now I want to know why you were maybe pretending to be Swedish.

Can I—ah—um—buy you a drink when you get off work? ”

This feels like a dream sequence from Inception . Are the placid neighborhoods around the library going to rise up and fold in on themselves? “You want to go out with someone like me—someone fucked-up?”

He shrugs. “It’s the twenty-first century. Everybody is fucked-up. Maybe there’s a chance that we’re fucked-up in ways that are mutually comprehensible.”

He fidgets a little as he waits for her response, and the hopefulness in his gaze causes an abrupt swell of tears in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she says thickly.

So this is what gratitude feels like, a fountain bubbling in her heart, iridescent and inexhaustible.

And then, after a long moment, she remembers his question and adds, feeling as shy as an adolescent, “Yes, I can do drinks after work.”

Present day

When Astrid was in high school, she read Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life and thought it achingly beautiful.

During the pandemic, when she streamed Arrival , the movie based on the novella, she was forcefully reminded of the point of the story: that by studying the aliens’ language, the female protagonist begins to see time as they do and chooses to marry her colleague and have a child with him even though she has foreseen that the marriage will fail and that their daughter will die from a rock-climbing accident when she is twenty-five years old.

Astrid often ponders the protagonist’s choice, as she both understands and does not understand it. If she could see the future, she would have made so many decisions differently.

Those right swipes that led to only self-doubt and emptiness? She wouldn’t have installed the app in the first place. The youthful stupidity that had her believe that pretending to be Swedish would be fun and broaden her horizons? Her kingdom for a time machine.

And that extraordinary week with Perry?

“Hi, Astrid.”

She stills—then continues with her book pulling. In a few days, the display of Halloween and Día de los Muertos picture books will be coming down and she will exhibit a new batch of books on Diwali, Bon Om Touk—both of which take place in November this year—and Thanksgiving.

“Hello, Perry,” she says, not looking at him.

“When I spoke to your colleague just now—it wasn’t what you think it is.”

He sounds as sincere as he always did, but the fountain in her heart has tumbled down and become trash-choked, rusty, broken pipes gaping at nothing and no one.

She kneels and finds the two Diwali books on her list. “I’m sure you’re right.”

Silence. And then, into that silence, the arrival of the middle schoolers. They talk at half volume, but they are still chatting and chortling. Several boys settle down at the children’s area’s computer terminals, their backpacks landing on the floor with solid thumps.

Perry lowers his voice. “Can we speak somewhere more private?”

She takes him to the empty meeting room—the last thing she wants is a scene.

“Please, Astrid, believe me, none of this is what you must think,” he repeats as soon as the doors close behind them.

She knows that his voice is not echoing from the blank walls of the meeting room. She also knows that the folded tables and stacked chairs are not revolving dizzily around them. It’s only the sudden eradication of hope, leaving her weakened, unsteady.

“What is it, then, you showing up here and playing the same charade with my beautiful new colleague?”

Perry grimaces. “I’m sorry that I can’t explain anything yet but I want you to know that I hate that I’ve made you unhappy. That was never my intention.”

Astrid bristles. Yes, he’s made her unhappy, but how dare he bring it up as if of course he has that kind of power over her. “Perry, let’s not be dramatic. We had a situation. It was always going to be short-term. I didn’t dwell on it after you left and you don’t need to dwell on it now.”

He has the audacity to look hurt, which only makes her angrier.

“Excuse me. I’m still at work,” she says—and marches out.