Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, and novels. His short stories have been accepted more than 500 times by journals, magazines, and anthologies including Inside the Bell Jar,The Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated three times for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

At The Library

“Hey, did you see that?”

“What are you talking about?” Santos mumbles.

“That flash from the apartment across the alley.”

“Girl, how could I see it with my head, you know . . .”

I snicker. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t stop.”

I’ve seen the flash before, from a window with partially closed curtains, on the fourth floor, same level as mine. It looks like morning sunlight reflecting off binoculars. Someone is spying on us doing it in my kitchen. I think about climbing down from the counter and closing the curtains. But somehow the naughtiness of it mixes with the sex and excites me even more. We keep at it, the sweat pouring off us in the Philadelphia July scorcher.

Santos holds out longer than I. My apartment echoes with my cries followed by his final grunts, head resting on my chest, both of us breathing hard. Santos has been one of my best lovers. Afterward we stand, hold each other and kiss. He tastes salty. I’m sure I do too. He runs his hands over my slippery body. Someone is moaning; it turns out to be me.

“I’ve got to take a shower before work. Do you want to join me?” I ask.

Santos grins. “Nah, I’ve just got off shift. Got to get home, feed the cats, sleep. How about going out for dinner tonight, then maybe a club?”

“Sounds great. But can you drop me at the library before you go home? I’ll be quick in the shower.”

“Sure, Mad, sure.”

Tepid water washes the pungent odor from my body. It’s the last thing I want to smell like in the library. My supervisor might raise an eyebrow and send me home after mentally branding me a whore – that is if she even knows what sex smells like. Yes, Santos is good for me. I like his brown skin next to my colorless body; the thought gives me goose flesh. But there’s a lot more to my life than him. I’m just not sure I’ll find it at the library.

Santos drops me off at the curb and I hurry toward the imposing blocky building with its arches and columns. I check in with three minutes to spare, deposit my lunch in the employee lounge’s fridge and take up my station behind the front desk. I’ve drawn that rotation for the week. The waxed floors glisten in the heat, the sound of an old man’s leather shoes clacking against the tiles. The morning passes without incident. I eat lunch in the lounge. Larry asks me out for the umpteenth time. I tell him no, talk with him, let him down easy.

In the doldrums of the afternoon, when snores from the homeless rumble in back passages, a . . . a person hobbles across the open floor. I think it’s a woman but I can’t be sure. She wears a hoodie, mask and sunglasses and walks with a crooked gait. There are bulges on her body where there shouldn’t be. Gloves cover her hands. Halfway across the main room she leans against our display of new arrivals, shaking.

“Laura, will you watch things,” I tell our intern and head out across the hushed expanse. The woman is clinging to the bookcase, head bowed, breathing hard.

“Are you all right? Can I help you?”

Raising her head, she removes her sunglasses and stares at me.  “It’s . . . it’s you!”

Her voice sounds feminine but I can’t be sure. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve­–”

“We haven’t. But I live in an apartment across the alley from you.”

I step back and glare. “You’re not the one who’s been . . .”

She bows her head, “Yes, I’m sorry. But you should really close your curtains. You two are so . . . so beautiful and amorous together.” 

Her breath catches and she begins to slump down.

“Here, let me help you to a chair. Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, just weak. Don’t get out much.”

I reach for one of her arms to steady her but she shakes me off and offers the other. Slowly we move toward the closest reading area. I get her situated in a chair at a table. She leans forward and rests her head on crossed arms. Her breathing slows.

“Do you need help?  Should I call someone for you?”

She shakes her head. “My caretaker will be here in an hour. Her name’s Cynthia but I call her Cyn. She likes that. I think she thinks about sin a lot. But in reality, she walks the virtuous straight and narrow.”

I chuckle. “I know the feeling. My name is Madelyn, but my friends call me Mad.”

“Are you?”

I stare at her and smile. “Sometimes I’m not sure. Besides, sanity is relative and highly overrated.”

“Don’t I know it. My name is Joanne, but my brother and Cyn call me Jo, like in that old Jimi Hendrix song.” She sings “Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand,” her soft voice low and wandering off key.

“You don’t have a gun with you, do you?” I ask half joking, but only half.

“No, my Glock is locked up back at the apartment. Kensington can be dangerous, you know.”

She straightens up, groaning. For a second the hoodie slips from her head, exposing some of the ugliest deformities I’ve ever seen. She quickly covers herself but knows that I’ve probably seen part of her secret.

“I’m sorry. I know I’m grotesque.”

“What . . . what happened?”

“I have Elephant Man’s disease. You’ve seen the movie, right?”

I nod. The silence builds between us. I imagine her sitting in her stifling apartment with all her coverings removed, staring out her window while cleaning her Glock, watching Santos and me go at it.

Footsteps, whispers, book pages turning, newspapers rattling, coughs, sneezes, nose blowings, throat clearings, mothers shushing children seem to fill what had been near silence.

“So . . . Joanne, why are you here? How can I help?”

Her eyes look strange; one is a slightly different color than the other. “I came for the poetry. I was sick during poetry month and couldn’t make it here. I haven’t seen what’s new.”

“We don’t get many requests for poetry, except from students who have an assignment.”

Jo chuckles. “I know. My own little book has been out for four years, one-sixth of my life, and I haven’t sold squat.”

“So you’re a . . . a poet?”

Another chuckle. “Yes, what else am I going to do? And what about you? How come someone so gorgeous ends up wearing a cardigan, pins her beautiful red hair back and talks with the likes of me?”

“I earned a degree in History. That and five bucks might buy you coffee and a scone at Starbucks. I also studied library science. So here I am.”

“But you handle the world’s greatest literature every day, works that document our history, dreams, flights of fantasy. Does any of it rub off?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re sitting on a powder keg of knowledge and experience. Has it changed you?”

“No, not really. I have a boyfriend, I go out, I conduct Internet searches for library patrons or track down obscure volumes. But I’m just sort of floating above all this.”

“Yeah, floating. I like that.”

Jo pushes herself up from the table and I escort her to the elevator and up to the third level. We come to a single bookshelf, the library’s selection of local and regional poets’ work. Jo scans the collection and pulls a thin volume from the shelf and hands it over.

“This is me.” She ducks her head, wobbling on her feet.

We find a vacant table and I sit and read her poems, amazed at the images and insights that pour from such a deformed person’s mind. Yet, why should I be amazed? Creativity and imagination may not be fettered by how someone looks. Coldness sweeps over me, like a spring fog off the New England coast. I’m beautiful and educated yet seemingly clueless while Jo is repulsive yet insightful and full of wonder.

The sunlight through the upstairs windows grows long on the polished floor. Finally Jo asks: “What . . . what do you think of my poems?”

“This is good shit,” I murmur, surprised by the language I use.

“Thanks,” Joanne says and sighs. “But you know, I think I’d give it up if I could have just one boyfriend that treated me like yours does.” 

I laugh nervously and paused to think about what I would be willing to change in my seemingly directionless life. “And I’d give up Santos if I could write poetry like this.”

I continue to read Jo’s poems. My supervisor, Rebecca, finds us holed up at our table where Jo rambles on about where she gets the inspiration for her writing. 

Rebecca frowns and folds her arms across her chest. “Madelyn, we need you back at the desk. Have you finished helping this . . . this person?”

Jo pushes herself up and stands swaying. She removes her hood and mask.

A crooked smile splits her distorted face. “Yes, Madelyn has been most helpful and you have a wonderful collection of contemporary poetry.”

Rebecca gasps. Her face turns red and she flees.

Jo giggles. “Works every time. But I’m sorry you had to see . . .”

I suck in a deep breath. “Don’t worry about me. I have a great uncle who was accidently napalmed in Vietnam. But compared to you, he’s a paragon of health. Jesus, what the fuck am I saying . . . I’m sorry.” I think the shock of seeing more of her made me say stupid, insensitive things. Or maybe that’s who I am.

“‘Paragon of health,’” Jo says and replaces her hood and mask. “I like that phrase, the sound of that word, par-a-gon. Might use it in a poem.” She removes a small notebook and pencil from her hoodie’s pouch and scribbles in it. 

We take the elevator to the ground floor and I deposit Jo in a chair near the front doors.

“You write wonderful poems. When you write some more, bring them here. I’d like to read them and we can talk.”

The lines around Jo’s eyes compress but the mask hides her smile. “I’d like that . . . and Mad, keep your curtains open in the morning.”

“I will.”

I return to the front counter. Business picks up and I only catch a glimpse of a tall black woman with a big caboose escorting Jo out the front door. I wave at them but I don’t think they notice. Jo looks frail, moving down the steps toward the street. I wonder how old she really is, somewhere between 18 and 80. That evening as I wait for Santos to arrive for our dinner date, I stare out the kitchen window at the flickering glow coming from behind the curtains of what I think is Joanne’s apartment. I think back on our conversation that afternoon and scribble phrases from it on the grocery list magneted to my refrigerator. It looks suspiciously like . . . like poetry.