Chapter One
Austin, Texas
Monday, two days before Halloween
In the fortunate places of the world, libraries are everywhere to be found.
Some are architectural marvels. Some are touchstones of civilization. Some awe by the depth and granularity of their seemingly infinite collections.
But the greater wonder is perhaps not the phenomenal libraries proudly associated with illustrious universities or storied seats of power. The greater wonder lies in the ordinary ones, the ones that in the fortunate places are everywhere to be found.
They exist and serve quietly, standing apart not at all from their unexceptional surroundings. Sometimes they are squeezed into tight corners; sometimes they share walls with grocery stores and sellers of electronic cigarettes. There is rarely anything unique or unforgettable about their collections, humble aggregates of popular novels, standard reference volumes, how-to books, and DVDs for those who don't yet stream all their audiovisual entertainment.
Yet their ubiquity is their most fundamental virtue. Their unremarkable holdings would have dazzled scholars from the Age of Enlightenment. And as much as anything, they represent a community's investment in its members, a commitment to care for and nourish hearts and minds.
Or libraries can be merely another place to work, another place of mundane chores, minor dramas, and mediocre compensation.
I have become a pessimist, thinks Hazel Lee.
Or perhaps she has long been a fatalist in an optimist's athleisure, her acceptance of the inexorable sweep of fate and entropy masked by her willingness to put some effort into the here and now.
Her grandmother wanted her to take a position with the library system and Hazel acquiesced. But she didn't think she would be assigned to this particular branch. Nainai, on the other hand, is delighted. "So close by. And you loved going there when you were a little girl."
One should be wary of revisiting childhood icons. Epics she adored turn out to have undertones-and overtones-of sexism and colonialism. People she loved embody a large spectrum of human frailties. Places that occupied hallowed ground in her heart are demolished or become something else entirely, such as the old noodle shop that is now an establishment called The Furless Kitty, specializing in Brazilian waxing.
The branch library too has changed. The current incarnation is a red-brick building, its aluminum roof covered with solar panels. Two hundred yards away, a highway meets a local thoroughfare, but a shopping center separates and shields the library from the intersection. On the library's large lot, much of which has been left unpaved, mature live oaks flourish and further foster a sense of comfortable seclusion.
Pleasant. Not impressive, but pleasant. And Hazel is satisfied with pleasant. She parks her e-bike on the rack at the front of the library and hooks her helmet to her backpack. Nearer to the entrance stands a stack of a free regional weekly. She remembers the publication from decades ago and is happier than she thought she would be that it still exists.
A hesitant question comes as she browses the latest issue's guidance on the upcoming off-year election. "Hi. Are you Hazel?"
Hazel turns around; a young white woman in her late twenties waves. Other than the red streaks in her sandy hair, she looks a lot like a hobbit: round-faced, with pink cheeks and brown eyes. Hazel can see her dancing, in the exact dusty-rose sweater vest and long corduroy skirt she's wearing, at Bilbo Baggins's eleventy-first birthday party.
In other words, absurdly cute.
She smiles. "Yes, hi, I'm Hazel."
They shake hands. The young woman, who speaks with a Scandinavian accent, introduces herself as Astrid, a librarian at the branch.
"It's great to have you here," says Astrid, looking a little shy. "Let me open the place up and show you around."
The library's two sets of automatic doors slide apart to reveal ten computer terminals set up for the public. To the left of the computer terminals are the stacks. To the right, the circulation area. An L-shaped children's department wraps around the circulation area on the farther side, making the latter feel like a snug island, the warm heart of the library.
Behind the stacks, a long rectangular work gallery unspools with desks, chairs, and plenty of outlets set beneath a bank of wide windows. Outside the windows, thick vines on metal trellises form natural sunscreens.
Beyond the work gallery, invisible from the front entrance, nestles a reading area. There are fewer magazines on the periodicals shelf now-the times have not been kind to print publications-and the spin racks of audio CDs are gone. But DVDs still take up half a wall and the collection of graphic novels has proliferated.
Given that Halloween is right around the corner, there are a fair number of skeletons scattered around the library, mostly on posters that will be taken down on November first. But there is a fully articulated skeleton in the children's area, peering intently into a shelf of image-heavy compendiums on dinosaurs. Not far away, three chubby and friendly-looking ghosts cluster around a Brambly Hedge collection.
Astrid has Hazel deposit her personal items in the librarians' office, sandwiched between the circulation area and the drive-through pickup at the very back. She helps Hazel turn on the public terminals and the checkout stations' computers, then introduces Hazel to Sophie, a striking Black woman in a perfectly fitted hunter green suit and sky-high heels, and a tall, bearded white man named Jonathan-Sophie is the branch administrator, Jonathan their program director.
She also presents two other librarians, but Inez and Raj protest that they are only clerks, not real librarians. Hazel takes that to mean that they, like her, do not have an advanced degree in library and information science. Not everyone at an attorneys' office is a lawyer and not everyone on a flight crew is a pilot-Hazel, no information specialist, will shoulder relatively humble duties.
"To the public we are all librarians," insists Astrid. "And you're one of us now, Hazel. You're going to love it here."
Before Hazel left Nainai's house this morning, the venerable old lady said, "Go on. Start a new life for yourself."
Except Hazel does not want a new life. She would simply like to have her old life back, that untroublesome existence she hadn't appreciated enough when she still drifted along its placid currents.
She smiles at everyone. "Thank you. I'm delighted to be here."
Astrid has done a lot of fantasy casting over the years, putting faces-mostly those of well-known actors-onto characters from her favorite books. Hazel, she is sure, would have been perfectly cast as a woman with whom a chance encounter alters the course of a protagonist’s life.
Or at least costs them sleep and focus for a good long while.
She is beautiful-perfect forehead, wide-set eyes, complexion as smooth as fondant on a wedding cake. Yet it isn't her loveliness that instantly fascinates Astrid.
Near the university campus where Astrid spent her undergraduate years, there was a lake that teemed with expensive properties along its shores. One was finished right as Astrid began her freshman year.
The house stood empty for a few weeks, then one day, curtains appeared. A few days after that, some downstairs curtains were pulled back to reveal a spotless living room, a baby grand piano set against a far window, a blue settee to the side.
Those downstairs curtains never closed again. No matter what season of the year or day of the week Astrid walked, biked, or rollerbladed by, the curtains were always open, the settee plush and inviting, the piano placed just so to silhouette against the lake beyond the house.
Never in her four years there had Astrid seen a single person inside, a car in the driveway, or a stray toy on the lawn. The house seemed to exist in its own separate reality, so much so that it was always a shock-and a profound thrill-when a fully lit Christmas tree appeared next to the piano each December.
Hazel, like that house, also seems to exist on her own plane.
Her attire is simple, a black blouse over a pair of black trousers, but they drape beautifully over her tall, elegant frame. When she speaks, though her accent is North American enough, Astrid hears echoes of distant lands, a life lived globally. (And her instinct is proven correct within the hour, when Hazel tells Inez that she's spent most of her life in Singapore and moved back to the US only recently.)
For someone who should exude glamour, though, Hazel manages to be marvelously low-key. Shortly after she meets the morning crew of librarians, it's as if she's always been there. She moves about at an unhurried pace, yet when Astrid looks in on her around lunchtime, she finds that Hazel has culled all reserved titles that have not been picked up on time, pulled all the new requested transfers, and restocked two entire rolling carts of sorted returned items.
And then sauntered out of the library.
Astrid retreats into the Den of Calories, the affectionate term for the staff breakroom. Jonathan is there, munching on a bag of Indonesian cassava chips. When people think of librarians, they don't immediately conjure a six-foot-four, blond, blue-eyed former college football player. Jonathan is all that and more and he is a great librarian.
"Why, hello, Divinely Beautiful," he says, holding out his bag of chips. "Want some?"
The name Astrid means "divinely beautiful."
"Yes to chips, always." She reaches into the bag and grabs one. "Unfortunately, I've only ever looked like a younger version of Mrs. Weasley-like when she's had two kids, rather than seven."
Her Swedish genes have not endowed her with either height or svelteness, and the pale hair she was born with turned brown sometime in her teens, a common enough occurrence for those of Scandinavian heritage.
Jonathan recoils in mock horror. "How dare you! I'll have you know Molly Prewett Weasley is and has always been an absolute babe."
Astrid laughs and thanks him. They chat another minute while Astrid's lunch heats up in the microwave oven. Then Jonathan cleans up after himself and goes back to work, leaving Astrid to slurp down her chicken chow mein by herself.
When she first arrived at the library, she ached for Jonathan to become her long-awaited gay best friend. But while Jonathan has always been kind and helpful, a special bond has not blossomed between them.
The gay men of the world are too busy with their own lives to revolve around her, and the hetero ones have no use for her if she isn't willing to immediately proceed to the "chill" part of Netflix and chill.
And the one exception, a man she met at this very library, crushed her as if he were a junkyard compactor and she a 1982 Datsun.
One does not become a librarian dreaming of luxury and acclaim. Astrid wants to be useful and she wants to achieve quiet contentment. But quiet contentment is beginning to feel like the hardest boss level in the game of life.
At least the noodles from Trader Joe's, a store famously geared toward the "overeducated and underpaid," of which librarians form exhibit A, are chewy and flavorful.
Astrid wonders what Hazel is having for lunch. Something low-key molecular, she hopes.
Hazel returns from lunch in perfect time to sit down for her first desk session, an hour at the checkout station facing the public.
Not every librarian enjoys dealing with patrons. Astrid does. Other than an occasional best-forgotten battle with the toilet-what exactly is the correct way of retrieving a loaded diaper that has been knocked inside?-she likes the "public" aspect of working at a public library.
Patrons don't need to tell her why they need to use the library's terminals, but their tales of visiting grandchildren accidentally destroying the CPU with a water-soaker rivet her. She has good conversations every November with those who need to prepare a Thanksgiving feast that accommodates every dietary restriction under the sun. And she loves helping people find correct tax forms and fill out employment applications.
Obviously, iffier members of the public show up too. But early afternoon on a Monday, with kids still in school, isn't a heavily trafficked time slot.
Hazel, who, like all new hires, has received training at the central library downtown, checks out books like a pro and processes two new library card applications without a hitch. She even fields an I-don't-know-the-author's-name-or-the-title-but-can-you-help-me-find-this-book inquiry with panache. Astrid, the list Hazel generated in hand, takes the patron to the stacks and the older gentleman exclaims with excitement at the second book she pulls out-precisely the one he's been looking for.
Her delight in Hazel's excellence is polluted by a bit of melancholy: At the rate Hazel is going, she won't need any help from Astrid. But when Astrid returns to the circulation desk, she finally has a chance to be useful.
A youngish South Asian couple want to know about Game Night, taking place the next evening, and Hazel, new to the branch library herself, puzzles over the flyer the couple hand her.
"Oh, I can answer your question," Astrid says eagerly. "The library will provide all the board games; you only need to bring yourselves. Because it's so close to Halloween, the inaugural Game Night will be murder-mystery themed. We'll have Halloween decorations and snacks, and you can even come in Halloween costume, if you'd like."
The wife, whose lavender headscarf matches the embroidery on her cream tunic, does look tempted. But she frowns a little. "Do we need to sign up and commit?"
"Oh, no, not at all," Astrid reassures her. "You can sign up via the library's website, if you'd like, but you don't need to. Just show up tomorrow evening. And you don't have to dress up either-only if you feel like it."
The couple promise they will think seriously about attending and disappear beyond the stacks in the direction of the work gallery.
"Can I come too?" asks Hazel. "I like board games."
She smiles a little, as if to herself. And Astrid feels as electrified as when a Christmas tree appeared in the house by the lake, tinseled and festooned, lights gently twinkling.
To Astrid, tabletop gaming is like gardening: something she might look into later in life. But if Hazel will host board game nights, then Astrid doesn't mind taking it up right away.
"Of course you can come. You'll be most welcome!"
"Does the library have that many murder-mystery games?" asks Hazel.
The central library downtown has a decent collection of tabletop games, but their little branch does not have that nice touch yet. Astrid is about to explain that the difficulty they're having with Game Night is not the number of games required but a lack of interest on the part of the patrons when a man north of seventy makes a beeline for Hazel.
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