NIOBE AND I stepped out of the library and into the hall. My mind was still back in the library, being nervous. There was this woman standing there, looking at me, like she expected something from me. And that was making me nervous, too. I said, “Uh, uh, uh,” that was really smooth, then came up with, “I can ring for Rita . . . uh, uh, uh . . . if you want something to drink or eat.”
“Thank you, no,” she said.
Now what? I said, “I can show you around the grounds . . . uh . . . if you haven’t seen them. They’re beautiful.”
“Yes, they are,” she said. “I have seen them.”
Well, that wasn’t a happening thing. “Well then, I could recite you a poem as I sometimes do for Mr. Stowe.”
With that she smiled and laughed and her teeth were white and mostly even, but not entirely, and her laughter was that sound that comes from girls and when it’s sweet, it makes the hearts of males goggle with wonder and when it’s mean, men know they are defenseless except through violence.
“So, uh,” there was that uh again, “I’m David.” I put out my hand for a handshake. Oh God, I thought, she already knows that. But, by reflex, she would take my hand in hers and that was good because I got to touch her.
“Niobe,” she said, and then the laugh again, but not laughing at me, I was grateful for that, just enjoying herself, “but didn’t we know that.”
“Yes,” I said, still holding her hand, and her not withdrawing it, and I was relaxing a little bit and the chaos in my mind was calming down and I could hear the thoughts I was having about her. “But now we know it. . . differently.”
“Oh,” she said, and I felt like now that I could read my mind, she could read it, too. Would she be offended by it? No, she didn’t seem to be, not that she was going along with it or agreeing to anything, but she wasn’t bothered by it.
“And what do you do?” I asked her. I could not, in decency, hold her hand any longer. I let go, reluctantly. But I was pleased to find that she did not whip it away; she let it linger for a heartbeat.
“I’m a statistician,” she said.
“I’m impressed,” I said. God, I like smart women and don’t know how to get along with dumb ones any better than with dull men.
“I have a flare for math,” she said, in a self-deprecating way. “Like Dr. Doolittle can talk to the animals, I can talk to the numbers.”
“Where do you work?” I asked her.
“The Octavian Institute,” she said.
“Ah,” I said, or some such sound, some neutral sound, and she asked if I knew it. “Yes, of course,” I said. It was one of those conservative think tanks funded by the right. “Named for Octavius Caesar, to study how our Pax Americana should function. What is the proper way for us to rule the world.” Then I added, “It’s funded primarily by Alan Carston Stowe, so we have the same employer.”
Then she said, “You’re a librarian,” which was something she already knew, so she was fumbling like I was, which I was very pleased to see.
“Keeper of the flame,” I said. “I wish, sometimes, that I was the fire, but most of the time, it seems, I’m not, so I’m keeper of the flame. It’s a noble profession, in its own modest way.”
“Is that why you do it?”
“I stumbled into it, I guess,” I said. I noticed the wedding ring on her hand and suddenly Charlton Heston appeared to me, not fronting for the NRA, but bearded and wearing sandals, with lightning and wind and holding the twin tablets, and even though that all happened quick as thoughts can go, it was impossible not to notice Commandment X, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” So I asked her, “Where do you live?’
She said, “We have a condo in Bethesda.”
I said, “Oh, we’re not neighbors at all.”
She smiled and almost laughed, and shook her head slightly, no, but the fact that she got it and found it funny was better than a yes with no understanding at all. But, unfortunately, so long as we were on the subject—if only in our minds—she was reading dear old Number VI, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and she made it clear, elliptically clear, but clear nonetheless. She said, “That’s my husband,” referring to the man with military bearing in the next room trying to get me fired, “Jack.”
That’s all we had. As if on cue, the door swung open and my cartoon balloon was punctured as Jack summoned us back.
Mr. Stowe looked sad as if he didn’t want to lose me and was being coerced into it. “David,” he said, a little reticent, which surprised me, since he’d decimated small towns all across America and shut down entire industries. Maybe this was part of the secret of his success, the demeanor of reluctance.
“David,” he said again.
There was a clattering and a to-do in the hall, and the door came open behind us. We all turned, except Alan, who was looking that way. Senator Bransom strode in. “Alan,” he said, with that great, wide, white, capped-tooth smile. It served him well when he was selling cars and it serves him well in Washington. Then he saw Niobe and said, “My dear Niobe, lovely as always, and your husband, the noble colonel.” He came to attention and gave Jack a salute, and then he said to me, “David, what a delight to see you here.” And all of the other three looked positively astounded that the great Bransom knew the lowly librarian.
The inspiration had come from another librarian, Larry Berk, a wonderful man whom God has mistaken for Job. Larry created an artist in residence program at Ulster County Community College in upstate New York. Community colleges are generally regarded as halfway houses for the not quite good enoughs. Nobody has ever run an artist in residence program in a community college.
Berk believed in poetry and the civilizing power of art and he had the imagination to see that artists were hanging about the Hudson Valley as ripe for the picking as apples in October. For little more than adjunct pay—and no benefits—he was able to bring in world-class writers, actors, dancers, and musicians.
Down here, no matter what the D.C. and Virginia chambers of commerce and tourism tell you, we do not have an oversupply of great, but underutilized, artists. What we do have, like Iowa has soybeans, are politicians. Also aides, consultants, administrators, facilitators, lobbyists, regulators, counselors, bureaucrats, cabinet officers, chiefs of staff, and endless staffers. I started a politician in residence program.
Senator Robert Bransom was my third politician in residence. He was, and is, pro-gun, anti-abortion, for making money, against snail darters, for the death penalty, against environmental regulations, he used to be against deficit spending, but now that deficits come from President Scott he thinks deficits are just dandy; he was, and is, for any war, anywhere, any time and if it takes nukes to win it, that’s fine, too, provided they’re ours.
He could quote Plato in support of his belief that wealth and property need to have more clout than the rabble so as to protect the state. He believed that the Founding Fathers believed that, too, and had put buffers in place to protect the nation from excessive democracy. They were that only white males with property could vote, that senators were to be elected by state legislatures, and that the president and vice president should be elected by electors. The first two have disappeared and the third remains only as a vestigial technicality. We needed, he believed, a new buffer to replace them. It was, therefore, a good thing that political campaigns cost millions of dollars, because it kept the riffraff out.
He was Alan Stowe’s kind of guy.
It was my program and I wanted it to be a success, so I recruited every conservative group on campus and every gun-loving, homophobic, sexaphobic, America-firster in the community, and got them to turn up for his reception and then for his lectures. I got some liberals, too, so that there would be “lively discourses.” Bransom was thrilled and decided that when he had lived longer than Strom Thurmond and served in the Senate longer, too, he would retire to a position of academic dignity just like the one he experienced here. He made me call him Bob and thought I was the best thing to come down the pike since bundling campaign contributions.
And here Bob Bransom was, all smiles, gleaming veneers and shining caps a little farther back in his mouth, and he put his left arm around me and took my right hand in his right hand, calloused from shaking a million other palms, and said, “What are you doing here, Dave?”
“Moonlighting,” I said, “as Mr. Stowe’s librarian.”
“Well, good for Mr. Stowe,” he said, and turned to my employer to add, “You have a good man here. None better.”
Jack tried very hard to keep his expression cool and unperturbed, but he looked at me with that look that President Scott has when some country whose ass we’ve already thoroughly kicked doesn’t stay quite as kicked as it ought to and some GIs are shot and a pipeline is bombed.
I, too, tried very hard to keep my face expressionless. I didn’t want my relief to show them how much I now wanted this job.
Niobe looked to her husband and then to me, and finally, to herself, mirrored in my eyes.