King of Darkness, Lola Podesta-Stephens

In late October, the public library hired a new librarian, and I remember the first time I saw him. I was sitting at one of the peeling pressboard tables in the history section, the one next to the shelves of Civil War books. It was the one table where I could charge my computer while I worked. I remember the day because it had snowed that morning, not a completely unusual occurrence for the Midwest in autumn, but the snowfall meant I couldn’t bike to the library. The batteries in my bike lights had died a few months earlier, and, during the summer, it had been bright enough during most of the hours I would ride, such that I could get away with putting off replacing the lights. As the days shortened, the absence of light became a fixture, and I learned to live without the lights. I would bike home in the evenings, one earbud in, the other hanging limp so I could hear cars on the left side. As I pedaled, it would thrum against my inner thigh, and, when I stopped, I could feel the bass vibrating against my skin through my jeans. I could bike at night, the dark hanging so close to the ground, interrupted only rarely by the consuming brightness of LED headlights or, rarer, by flickering streetlights. I knew those roads. I knew how to stick to the curb when I would get careless and when I couldn’t. Biking at night, with its sickening rhythm of dark and light, was one thing; biking on icy, wet roads was another. A day like that snowy one, with the sun just starting to think about rising behind clouds bloated with ice crystals, was when the universe invited cyclists to become roadkill. So, I walked that morning when I first noticed the new librarian, which was something I wasn’t in the habit of doing.

The snow had started falling early, and when I descended the metal steps from my second-story apartment, there was already a thin sheen of snow on the sidewalk. Even by seven-thirty that morning, the streets were still nearly empty, and few had stepped before me on the fresh snow. Flakes were still falling, slowly, lazily, melting to cold drops as they hit my cheeks. I was wearing two sweatshirts, as I always did when it got this cold. I pulled up the hood of the one closer to my body. My hair was longer than I usually liked it to be, as I had gone too long without getting it cut. The strands of my hair, still wet from the shower, were brushing the sides of my chin. I hadn’t shaved either, and I ran my blunted nails over the short hairs on the side of my jaw. I reached behind myself and pulled the thermos of black coffee from the pocket of my backpack as I walked. It was comforting to feel the heat from the coffee on the bare flesh of my fingertips. I was wearing the black gloves I had cut the fingers off of with kitchen scissors after the knit started to perforate where my nails rubbed, and I could feel the cold through my boots and my wool socks, the kind of frigid sting that’s indistinguishable from wetness. There would be no way of telling if the snow had soaked through the leather and was softening the skin of my feet into putty as I walked until l stopped and checked. That soggy uncertainty was the worst sort of leap of faith.

When I had only gotten a few minutes away from home, I heard a keening screech, like a baby crying, and, under the sound, something deeper, like growling maybe. The noise was close, so I yanked my earbuds out of my ears and came to a stop, listening. The sound continued, getting quieter but not any further away. Its source seemed to be coming from the alley on my left. Almost as soon as it had started, there was a yelp, and then the noise was gone. Walking quickly, I turned down the alley that dead-ended fast with nothing but dumpsters and closed windows. Nothing was there, except a ragged rabbit’s paw that had been attached to the animal and now soaking in a small pool of blood. I walked the rest of the way to the library, another forty minutes, in silence: headphones stuffed in my pocket, listening to the sounds of the slowly waking city. Eventually, the library surfaced ahead of me. A big grey building, just enough architectural flourishes for it to be impressive, but still clearly built with low cost at the front of the urban planners’ minds. These sorts of public works projects were always brought to their knees under their slim budgets; however, libraries can handle budget cuts because their mirrors of books stacked tightly on shelves lent themselves to reverence. After all, there’s not that much space between library reading rooms and cathedral naves.

I shrugged off my damp layers, feeling a flush of heat as I adjusted to the temperature of the library and tucked my finger into the neck of my Henley, pulling the shirt away from my body and blowing a breath of air down my front. Situated, I took my computer out of my bag to open the project on which I was freelancing: just like yesterday, just like tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I liked the pattern I’d fallen into—bringing myself to the library to work, where there was climate control and I could bring my own lunch and not have to worry about having to buy an overpriced coffee I’d probably forget to drink anyway as the ticket to earn my right to exist here. After I had been working for a few hours, I noticed him, the new librarian. There I was, looking up from my code for the first time in a while, trying to ease the eye strain. Certainly, I knew immediately that he was new, looking so assured, and I was convinced that I was the only one who could tell that he was new. (Our little secret.) I only knew because of how much time I spent in that library. I knew the faces of most of the librarians and a number of their names, as well as recognizing the volunteers and some of the regulars, too.  This new librarian was tan with his brown skin looking sun-warmed, like it would be hot to the touch. His bronze set him apart from the rest of us who were already pale from the lack of sun, and I wondered where he came from, this tall figure, all legs and arms, but graceful. His dark hair fell just past his eyebrow, with the curve of the strands reaching toward his blue eyes. He slouched over the cart of books he was re-shelving, crossing something out in pen, and the way his spine curved would have been painful if I’d tried to replicate it, yet he looked so at ease with his movements, having an air of practice to them, smooth and polished. Additionally, he was wearing a pair of dark-wash jeans with thick cuffs and a thin long-sleeve shirt that hung off his body almost incidentally.

Slowly, as if he knew what he’d find, he looked up, meeting my eyes. Nothing else about him moved, just his gaze. His mouth stayed slightly parted, pen poised in his hand, weight on his left forearm. His eyebrows and heavy lashes cast a shadow over his hooded eyes. Again, they were blue, the way grey animals or wet rocks can seem blue in the right light. Suddenly, I looked away out of reflex. Just as quickly, I returned my gaze, but he was back to focusing on his paper, the corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk. For the next several minutes, I kept stealing glances up from my work, but he didn’t meet my eyes again, and then, on my final glance, he was gone, moving on to other shelves, so I ate my peanut butter sandwich at the table, staring into space. As usual, I leaned back in my seat, rocking the balanced chair with my foot hooked around the leg of the table in front of me: a bad habit I couldn’t grow out of. 

At four, as the rest of the day seemed to pass rather blandly, my focus waned, and I packed up to leave. While I stepped closer to the exit, to the check-out desk, I could see it was the new librarian behind the counter. He looked bored, flipping through a worn paperback, slumped back in his chair, the pinnacle of casualness. Almost without thinking, I grabbed a book off a display and walked up to the desk, putting it down on the counter. The librarian started to sit up before he took his eyes off the page of his own book, meeting mine. Then, his eyes looked bluer, less like wet stone and more like lapis. “Library card?” he asked, keeping his finger between the pages of his book. I fumbled getting my wallet out of my pocket and again getting my library card from the back of my wallet before he scanned the card and leaned back, looking at me. The moment stretched on in silence. “Sorry,” he said, “the system needs a second to wake up.” His voice was deep, and he spoke assuredly. I nodded, and he didn’t look away. Looking at him was a challenge, one I shrank from, averting my eyes to my boots. “Cormac McCarthy, huh?” he asked, pulling me from my thoughts. He had pulled the book I’d picked closer to himself. I noticed the author’s name on the cover for the first time, under the title, Child of God. “He’s a real…. king of darkness,” the librarian continued. “I haven’t read any of his stuff,” I said, “until now.” The librarian nodded, looking back at the book on the counter. “What are you reading?” I asked. He met my eyes again and lifted the book still on his finger, saying, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” pausing before continuing, “It’s a poem—technically.” The computer chirped, and the librarian turned to it, scanning my book. He slid the book and my library card back to me, across the counter. “You’re all set.” He leaned back again, lifting his arms above his head in a stretch. My eyes jumped down to his waist as his movement caused his keys to shift and clink together.  There, clipped to his belt loop, resided several silver keys, a bottle opener, and a white rabbit’s foot.