Ms. Bookbinder Has Serials For Breakfast

Circulation Desk

 Chapter one

     "May I help you?"
     The question was posed by no less a personage than Ms. Theodora Augusta Bookbinder, head librarian of the Rutherford B. Hayes Public Branch Library, and carried the unsaid implication that if she could not help you, it was certainly no fault of her own or of the library system itself. She gazed with professional detachment at something that had approached the circulation desk; a disorganized and frowzy something covered up in layers of clothing that obscured almost entirely whatever lay beneath. She had watched as the unkempt creature entered the front doorway in a manner that suggested neither confidence nor stealth, as it wavered hesitatingly at the outdated architectural features of the vestibule, as it paused doubtfully in front of the community bulletin board, and as it finally wended its way up to the circulation desk where it stood as if in uncertain thought. Ms. Bookbinder assumed...correctly, as always... that beneath all the shawls and whatnot was concealed a more or less human form.

     "Um...Hi? ...uh..." said a timid voice from somewhere within, "I...I'm Nora?"
     Ms. Bookbinder smiled a brittle smile. "Are we stating that our name is Nora, or are we questioning the very fact?" she asked.

     This specific usage of "we" is always onerous to those of a weak constitution. The many layers of clothing shrank in existential confusion.
     "I...uh...um..."

     No answer forthcoming, the guardian of the circulation desk tilted forward with raised eyebrows, her face animated as if talking to a particularly backwards child, and asked with slow yet precise enunciation, "Are we lost? Or, perhaps, we are somehow impaired?"
     These two questions added considerable philosophical implication to the first, and the manner in which all three were asked would have unsettled even the most resilient of the Stoics. The unfortunate pile of laundry tottered unsteadily at the magnitude of it all.

     "I...well...I...I seem to be lost MOST of the time," it confessed, "but..."
     The phone rang, and the head librarian held up an index finger to signify a pause in the interrogation while she picked up the handset.
     "Rutherford B. Hayes Public Branch Libr..." Ms. Bookbinder began but was interrupted (somewhat rudely, she thought) by a voice she recognized.

     "Theodora? This is Mavis over at City Hall. Did the girl get there, or did she get lost on the way? I meant to call earlier and give you a thumbs up, but things around here are way crazier than usual."

     Mavis and Theodora had been classmates in college where familiarity and good natured rivalry matured over the years into a friendship that conferred upon both parties not only the boon of frequent conversational luncheons, but also that rarest of commodities, a touchstone upon which each could rely for truth and support. That Mavis addressed the indomitable Ms. Bookbinder by her first name was remarkable only in the fact that the rest of the civilized world would never think to do so, due to the imperious and slightly menacing Bookbinder facade. But Mavis marched to the beat of a different drummer and rarely stood upon convention. She was just as likely to get the attention of high City Hall functionaries with a "Hey, You!" as to greet them with an irreverent, "Hiya, Pops!" regardless if they were male or female or somewhere in between. Also included in Mavis's rather extensive case file was a maddening urge to be helpful, or as her friend often put it, "meddlesome".

     "The girl?"
     "That I sent over. Did she get there?"

     Ms. Bookbinder sensed a disturbance in Her Daily Order: The Classification And Categorization Thereof, Of All That Is Good And Holy Within The Municipal Library System. She stood up slowly from her chair at the circulation desk.

     "I am looking right now at a nondescript assemblage of scarves and sweaters and, unless I'm mistaken, a throw rug or two, that just wandered in and is now standing across the circulation desk from me. It may or may not go by the name of Nora."