Saints Preserve Us

I had to hang my head out the window on the way home from the Last Public Place In America to see if it was a full moon. We had some doozies today, God love 'em.

My first call of the day was from a dear woman who rang us up at the stroke of 9:00. She quite eagerly introduced herself with that squeak that octogenarians get when they are really excited, "Good Morning! This is Mrs. John Doe and I have a question!! I would like to know... I would like to know... Oh dear me. What did I want to ask? Oh! No... 'twasn't that." I tried my best to oil the hinges; I asked if it was something she'd read in the paper, seen on TV, a book she wanted to read, was it a phone number? Nothing rang a bell. She finally gave up, poor thing, and said she'd call back when she remembered. You've gotta love the optimism.

Later a guy called on behalf of an incarcerated young woman who had 14 books which were quite past due - to the tune of hundreds of dollars. He wasn't asking that she be forgiven the debt, he was just letting us know she wasn't going to be getting out until January 2007 and we didn't need to send any more invoices to her. I told him if he just brought the books back, we'd call it even. He then explained therein lay the problem - the books are gone. Apparently what happened was she had a creep boyfriend who was a burglar and he piled his loot up in her apartment, so she was sent up the river for 2nd degree burglary and possession of stolen property. On top of that , the apartment complex emptied her place after non-payment of rent and locked all her belongings up in storage. Then the boyfriend somehow got in and took her purse and the books. At first, I thought, "Yeah, right. you said the stuff was all locked up." But then I think, oh yeah - burglar. The gentleman I talked to informed me that he was her guardian angel. I said "Oh, is that like a program to help incarcerated people?" "No", he said. "I am an angel." "OK," I said. "Not with wings or anything," he tells me, "that's all just a myth; God uses real people." See, that's funny because I know the Pope's astronomer recently suggested that angels were actually aliens. I didn't bring that up. The thing is, though, I actually believe him. The story of what happened, I mean. I've seen so many times here what happens when people make a couple of wrong turns here and there and before you know it their lives are a train wreck. After I hung up I pulled up the record and sure enough, all 14 books were on witchcraft and the occult. I have never understood why the 130s are the most stolen books.

On the next shift I was downstairs and I kept hearing this shouting between a man and one of my co-workers upstairs. And I can't hear it perfectly, but I know I'm hearing 'murder' and 'kill her' and lots of other unpleasant things. So I move to a place I can hear better and I realize it's a guy who's nearly stone deaf trying to communicate to a Lipstick Librarian that he's looking for a newspaper article about a friend of his he heard had killed a woman. The funny thing was she kept asking him to spell the last name of the perp and he kept avoiding it. She would ask and he would answer a non-sequiter like, "Oh yeah, I've known him since 6th grade." LL has a stubborn streak and she dug her heels in; he was going to spell that name or die trying. He never did. I finally called up there and told Purple Bunny to ask LL to quit flirting with that guy and give him the damn article. Library hijinks!

Then I had this guy call who kept repeating everything I said. I was getting really annoyed with him, but he was awfully respectful and well-mannered. He finally told me he was blind and he was taping the info I gave him so he could have the Library for the Blind record the books for him. These were books about a particularly brutal sex crime. I don't envy the reader at the Library for the Blind. In addition to all that, though, the guy was apparently a little paranoid and he wanted to make sure that they didn't end up at the circ desk because the man who works there has a grudge against him and won't let him have the books. I finally determine he thinks he called our nearest sibling to the south. He is blind after all. I didn't explore the nature of his discontent, though, I'd had enough.

My last one was another sad one. The woman calling must have had that larynx surgery or had been smoking five packs a day since birth; or both. It was painful to listen to her. Her circumstance was that her book was stolen from her berth at the local rescue mission. She was desperate to get back in to use the library, but now she wouldn't be able to because she didn't have the $14 to get back in good graces. I told her there really wasn't anything I couldn't do since the managers had gone home, but tomorrow's a new day and all that. She lost it after that. She told me she didn't want to be at the mission; she had a job and a house and her husband got sick and before she knew it she was at the shelter. I pulled up her record while she was talking and the book was an inspirational paperback about getting your life back together. Shit. I mean consider the irony. She just needed an ear and, you know, that I could do. And tomorrow when she comes in, if it doesn't work out for her, I'll pay for the book myself. I mean, there but for the grace of God, right?