"At least a week passed before we
had our first lunch together.
He asked me to join him.
We walked half a block, bought sandwiches from a truck,
and headed toward a little park.
When the children in the playground saw us coming,
they started screaming, "Astronauts!"
We always got a kick out of that.
The wooden bench we sat on had been chewed by pit bulls.
The owners trained them to do it to strengthen their jaws.
Next to the jungle gym, the plastic swings
were so knawed they looked melted.
When we bit into our sandwiches, shredded lettuce
fell onto the ground tangled with cigarette butts.
Marco stood and tried to touch his toes.
He stretched his arms and grunted.
All that work in the damp library tightened his joints.
I wonder, he asked, if you wouldn't mind rubbing my knee
a little.
I'd give it a try, I told him.
Not everyone would, he said.
If it helps, I said.
I kind of of kneeled down and tried
to get a decent hold through the slippery Tyvek,
using both hands.
Marco picked up his sandwich, closed his eyes.
He obviously shaved, but there were always
these long whiskers along his throat, ones he missed.
I rubbed his knee.
The sun stayed where it was, straight overhead, stuck there.
You're probably wondering what I'm going to do for you,
Marco said.
I told him, not really.
My knees, they felt fine.
I live in a row house, Marco said.
So I share walls with my neighbors.
Thin walls.
A couple lived there.
And he'd hear their arguments, threats, recriminations,
then the usual coming to terms.
Marco would turn up his radio or go out walking around
his neighborhood.
Italians, he said, almost spitting.
I thought you were Italian, I said.
I am, he said.
There was an Indian spice shop near that park,
so it all smelled a little foreign.
The air was thick.
Marco picked his teeth with his fingernails, and spoke.
Pay attention, he said.
This won't turn out any way you expect.
I told them I had no expectations.
Sometimes on the mornings after the arguments,
Marco would run into the man from next door.
You're lucky, the man would say.
You were safe, a wall between you and her.
Pray for me these nights.
He and Marco would laugh together.
What happened to him, I said, guessing ahead.
I just stopped hearing him through the wall, Marco said.
Stopped seeing him in the front yard.
He was gone.
And that was your opening, I said.
Don't tell me.
She's incredibly beautiful.
Yes, Marco said, but that's not the point.
We took our time in the basement of the library,
though we weren't being paid by the hour.
It wasn't that I got a lot of thinking done, exactly.
It was almost a different plane of some sort,
listening to my own breathing, a kind of meditation.
Sometimes I even thought of the people who would follow,
who would be able to read the books because I'd saved them.
Sometimes people came down the stairs, descended by mistake,
and I'd catch glimpses, twice distorted
by my face shield and the clear plastic barriers.
The people seemed to have no feet to move fluidly,
as if they're growing their way smoothly upward
again, beyond my sight.
Sometimes, on my break, I'd climb those stairs.
I'd hold the door slightly open, my ventilator around my neck,
and the cool air on my sweaty face.
I spied into the library and it was quiet up there,
just like it was supposed to be.
A green and yellow parakeet hung on to its perch
inside a bamboo cage.
I heard the sound of pages turning.
If I held the door open a little further,
and I could see the desk where the librarian sat.
She was about my age with dark black skin, gold eyeglasses.
Her hair was braided close to her head
in curving lines, the loose ends like ropes with bare shoulders.
Her fingers were thin, her smile wide,
as she answered someone's question.
Whenever I turned away from her and began
to descend into the basement, it was as if my body grew heavier
with every step.
I wanted her to know there were real people underneath her,
that I was beneath her every day.
I wanted to tell her I'd wiped mold from musical scores
and hummed the melody, that I'd read
a Russian story about grown men swimming in the rain, another
where people could see into the future
and still couldn't change it.
If I could tell that librarian a long story,
it would be this one.
And I would tell her only a little at a time,
the way Marco told me, until she had
to know what would happen next.
Until she couldn't stand it.
Marco never used the woman's real name,
since he said I was his friend.
And he was afraid I'd try to track her down
once I'd heard it all, that I'd only get myself in trouble.
Louisa, that's the name he chose for her.
Their house shared a porch, so all Louisa had to do
was reach over the railing to ring Marco's doorbell.
She wanted to ask him a favor.
Groceries.
She had the list in her hand, and he took it
when she held it out.
It's my eyes, Louisa said.
I can't see a thing.
She told him that the doctors had
found nothing wrong physically, but that didn't help her.
Marco looked at her eyes and she didn't seem to see him.
Her eyebrows had always been tweezed into a narrow arch.
Now they were returning, thickening.
She stood there barefoot on the concrete porch,
the toenails of her left foot painted red.
All the words on the list in Marco's hand
tilted, and some stretched off the edge of the paper,
cut short.
Others were written right on top of each other.
He struggled to untangle it.
When he returned from the store, he
offered to put the things away for her,
and she said she could do it.
Stay, she told him.
You can talk to me while I do.
She held the door open and then led him,
moving deftly around the furniture,
hitting the light switch exactly and just for him.
Later, he tried this in his own house, his eyes closed.
He bruised his shins and tore his fingernails.
He cursed and stumbled and wondered
if she heard him, if she'd guess what he was doing.
In the kitchen, she reached and found the knobs
on the cupboards.
Inside, they were carefully organized,
all the cans lined up.
I've got it all figured out, she said.
I miss being able to read, but that's about it.
I was halfway through a book when this happened.
Marco asked if it happened all at once.
And she told him she had one day where everything went dim.
That gave her a chance to prepare.
And then the next day, that was it.
Is it just pitch black, he said, or is it nothing at all?
He wasn't sure what he meant by that, exactly.
He couldn't stop watching her hands.
Somewhere in between, she said.
He stayed until all the groceries were put away,
and then said he'd be happy to help her again.
I remember what you look like, Louisa said.
But do you mind?
She reached out, and slowly her soft fingertips
moved down his face.
Yes, I said, when he told me that.
I knew this was going somewhere.
You know nothing, Marco said.
I learned not to say things like that, eventually.
It only made him stop talking.
It was as if I'd sullied the way it had been between them.
If I asked, he'd say to wait, be patient.
He could only tell the little at a time.
Otherwise, it made him too sad.
The conversation at lunch would turn to other things.
We'd walk to the park, stripping off our latex gloves,
the sweat between our fingers going cool,
the zippers of our suits pulled down
and their white arms dragging behind us.
The weather turned hot and dark, overcast.
Trains came and went, slowly sat on the tracks
behind the playground.
We watched the dogs betting on which owners would pick up
after theirs and which would pretend oblivion.
Down there, they had dogs of all shapes,
with their tails lopped off, their ears pinned up.
Marco knew the names of all the breeds and what they were for.
He'd have his arm across the back,
with the bandaged fingers drumming next to my shoulder.
I didn't mind.
Once, we saw a guy crash his bicycle into a parked car
as he tried to look behind him to check
the ass on a girl he'd passed.
Marco had a good laugh out of that.
A little shift like that would bring him around again.
All right, he'd say, turning to me.
Where did I leave off?
The next time Louisa rang his doorbell,
she was holding a book in her hand.
She asked him what he was doing.
When he said, nothing, she asked if he
wouldn't mind reading to her."