Ms. Bookbinder Has Serials For Breakfast

Lunch With Mavis Continues

Chapter 5

     The bistro buzzed with quiet conversations and the sounds of activity off in the kitchen.
     "Look," said Mavis, "you've got your own way of doing things, and you're pretty defensive when it comes to doing things the right way, or at least what you consider the right way. Especially when it comes to the library. Me, I'm more of a free-for-all-libertine-type."
     "Really? I hadn't noticed."

     "...And I'll admit that sometimes your correctness and sense of propriety can be a royal pain in the tuchus. But you're not mean, Theodora. You're not cruel or vindictive or plain ol' nasty. If anything, there's a streak of...well, I don't want to say 'righteousness' because that's pompous as all git out and makes you sound like some goody two shoes...but there's a streak of virtue in you that I think is sometimes hidden to others. Maybe even to yourself."
     Mavis paused to look at her friend critically, then continued.

     "But there's more to this than you're letting on, I can tell. Come on, Theodora, out with it! Is it the library board? The latest budget cuts? Things at City Hall are worse now than I've ever seen, and some of the stuff I overhear at council meetings would't bear repeating outside of a funny farm! I wouldn't blame you at all if you were starting to feel uneasy about the whole dang situation. I know I am!"

     "Well, that's certainly part of it," admitted Ms. Bookbinder. "Budgetary constraints especially. The imbalanced, sputtering machine that is City Hall has always been what it has been; namely a bureaucratic nightmare, and as such, its inefficiencies have become an eternal and endless background noise to which I am sadly accustomed. And that noise IS getting louder. But no, this is still about Nora. You didn't let me continue after we had established the fact that I may be an unintentional bully because of my daunting and formidable exterior."
     "I don't think those were my exact words," protested Mavis. Ms. Bookbinder waved her off with an impatient gesture and frown that, Mavis thought with a chuckle, proved her point exactly. 

     "Naturally, one has to consider the girl's appearance," stated Ms. Bookbinder, warming to the theme.
     "Naturally," agreed Mavis, sipping wine and pretending to be serious.
     "One would assume that the girl can see reasonably enough through that tangle of hair obscuring her brow, the multiple scarves, the superfluous layers of gray clothing..."
     "One would," concurred Mavis.
     "...and yet, has she not collided with every single one of the eight cast iron columns on the first floor of the library, situated just within the vestibule, in the rotunda, and supporting the second floor?"
     "Every single column?" asked Mavis.
     "Every single column!"
     "Has she not?"
     "She has!"
     "She has!" cried Mavis, raising her glass in a toast and taking a generous swig.
     "Is she a somnambulist, sleepwalking through life, perhaps masking psychological and physiological trauma by shutting down both emotionally and physically, or is she simply a nitwit unaware of her surroundings?"
     "Is she?" asked Mavis rhetorically.
     "I don't know!" 
     "She doesn't know!" repeated Mavis heartily with another toast.
     "And, most importantly, is my good friend in danger of finding herself under the table as a pitiful reminder of the moral imperative to eat something before filling up on wine? A sad cautionary tale of and for the ages, as it were?"
     "Is she?" asked Mavis with a barely suppressed snort.
     "She is," said Ms. Bookbinder in a flat tone, taking a bread basket offered by the passing waiter. She unwrapped the cloth cover, and placed the basket within Mavis's ready reach.

     "Nora's last collision with the columns happened just yesterday," continued Ms. Bookbinder, as the steaming rolls in the basket were torn asunder, buttered, and dispatched with great rapidity. "She was carrying a stack of books to the children's section when the forces of physics prevailed. An object in motion encountered an object at rest. Gravity occurred, and the girl ended up on the floor, half propped up by the circulation desk. I was working the desk at the time, so I picked up a few of the books that had been strewn in my direction, and after ascertaining that she was conscious and unhurt and that the books themselves had suffered no damage, I bent down to give them to her."
     Ms. Bookbinder paused for emphasis.