Black Hat Guy

The guy in the black hat pushed through the front door like a gust of angry wind, grunting under his breath as he went. He was hunched over himself the way he always was, his shoulders curved, his eyes pinned to the ground. He stormed past the circulation desk without looking up, past the row of public computer stations and the entire wall of New Fiction, his head shaking side to side the whole way. I was new at the library—it was Monday of my second week—but Black Hat Guy moved through the space like it was his own living room. It was clear he had been coming here for a while.

I heard the words tyrant and coffee shop and sludge as I kept my eyes down and nested the Daily News sections back inside themselves. The only coffee shop in town was the Bean Pot. It had free Wi-Fi and served really thick hot chocolate with free whipped cream topping, which made it a popular after-school hangout. I never went there. I had no relationship with the word popular at all, unless you put the words not even remotely in front of it.

From the way Black Hat Guy was ranting under his breath, it sounded like the Bean Pot wasn’t a great match for him either. At least he didn’t have to worry about tyrants or sludge at the library. He could sit here all day if he wanted to.

I knew it was between 4:00 and 4:12 p.m. without even looking at the clock, because that’s when Black Hat Guy came to the library every day.

Every. Day.

I also figured Black Hat Guy must have some kind of medical condition that left him immune to outdoor temperatures, because it was a sweaty eighty-eight-degree day, but you’d never know it from the black sweatshirt, jeans, and winter knit hat he was wearing. And had worn every day of the summer so far.

Every. Day.

I tucked the Sports section inside the Arts section, even though it was supposed to go the other way around. It was pretty much the only power I had as the library’s one volunteer—to order the newspaper sections to my liking, or to choose which books to face out on a shelf. Art trumped sports, and a biography of my favorite painter, Georgia O’Keeffe, trumped any book on boxing champions and always would.

Black Hat Guy huffed his way over to the chair by the window.

He always went to the same chair.

Always.

It was the one upholstered in an ivory-colored fabric, with literary quotes printed in black cursive all over it. At least, I thought they were all literary. Some I knew for sure, like To be or not to be and Call me Ishmael and Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” Pretty much everyone knew those even if they didn’t know who wrote them or what books they were from. Then there were other quotes that sounded familiar, but I wasn’t sure if they were just familiar because I had read them on the chair a dozen times already or because I actually knew them from life, like Tread softly because you tread on my dreams and What is essential is invisible to the eye. There were others still that could have been completely made up, for all I knew, like Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

That’s a famous quote? Really?

Famous for making zero sense, maybe.

Black Hat Guy pulled a charger from his pocket and plugged one end into an outlet under the window, the plate loose and jiggling side to side as he pushed the plug in. Then he sank into his chair, pulled his hat lower onto his brow, retracted his head into his sweatshirt collar, which made him look like a grumpy old turtle, and promptly went to sleep.

It was amazing. Never in a million years could I walk into a public place in a foul mood, have a seat, and completely zonk out to Snoozeville in a matter of two minutes flat, but Black Hat Guy could. And did.

At least he didn’t snore.