A Great Day for the Deadly(56)

“There he is again,” Shelley was saying. “I’m telling you, I’m not crazy. There’s something going on.”

“What could be going on?” Cory asked her. “Sam Harrigan and the old maid librarian?”

“Glinda Daniels is a very attractive woman. And she’s hardly an old maid yet. She’s only about forty.”

“She’s fat.”

“She’s not fat.” Shelley sounded exasperated. “For God’s sake, Cory, not everybody has to have anorexia nervosa to look good.”

“I’m not talking about anorexia nervosa,” Cory said stubbornly. “I’m talking about Glinda Daniels.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Shelley said.

“Sam Harrigan and the old maid librarian,” Cory said again. “It’s gross. I mean, it pains me just to think about it.”

It was very hard to move the ladder without making any noise, but Glinda did it, millimeter by millimeter, pulling it across the carpet. From the corner of her eye, she could see Sam on the other side of the room, disentangling himself from the old lady. In the back of her mind, she could hear the voice of Donna Leary, a girl she had known in high school and considered to be her friend. “I like Glinda a lot but I wouldn’t want to be that intellectual. Boys don’t like you and it makes you fat.” Fat. Fat, fat, fat. Glinda got the ladder out of the children’s section and began to fold it up. It made a clatter as its parts came together.

“Cory?” she said, much too loudly for a library. “This ladder has to go back in the storeroom.”

Then she walked into her office and shut the door.

“Fat,” she said to herself.

She looked through the window wall at Sam, still caught by the old lady, being polite and impatient at the same time. She had noticed his ability to do that and marveled at it, but now she didn’t want to notice anything about him at all. She didn’t want to notice anything about anybody. She picked up a stack of clippings from Librarian’s Day magazine, all on things to do for children that would encourage them to read. Glinda knew it was very, very important to encourage children to read. She took the clippings and dumped them in the wastepaper basket. Then she thought about setting fire to them. She might have done it except for the window wall. She was afraid people on the other side of it would see the flames and panic. Instead, she took her thin file of newspaper clippings on the progress of the state library budget in Albany and ripped it in two.

She had just started turning her computer-printed annual report into confetti when Sam opened the door, looked at the mess she was making on the floor, and said, “Didn’t quite meet your standards, did it?”

“Go to Hell,” Glinda told him.

“Right,” Sam said. Then he shut the door behind him.

Glinda had finished with the report and gone on to her four-color copies of the last ALA convention booklet. She had six of those in the office, because she had been president of the New York State chapter last year and her picture was on page thirty-six. The annual report would be replaceable by merely pushing the right buttons and running a copy off the printer, but these wouldn’t be replaceable at all. They never ran enough of them for people who wanted extras and nobody would be willing to give up what they had. Glinda ripped them in half and then in quarters and dumped them on the floor with the rest of the mess.

Sam Harrigan cleared his throat. “Glinda?”

“What?” Glinda said.

“Is it my fault? Have I given you reason to be angry with me?”

“No.”

“Fine. That’s a relief. Do you want to tell me who has got you angry with him? Or it?”

“No.”

“Would you like me to find you something else to tear up?”

Glinda had finished with the booklets. She picked up the latest copy of the Library Journal and started thinking about fire again. Ripping things up was fine but fire would be perfect.

“Do you know what?” she said. “When I went to college—I went to Bryn Mawr—when I went to college, I studied archaeology. Do you know why?”

“It interested you?”

“I wanted to go to Egypt,” Glinda said. “I’ve still never been to Egypt. Later on I went to graduate school and got a degree in French. I’ve never been to France. I’ve never been anywhere but one school or another and Maryville, New York, and let me tell you, I’m sick of it. I am sick of the library, I am sick of my house, I am sick of my life, and most of all, Mr. Harrigan, I am sick of myself. I have half a mind to chuck my job right here, check into someplace like the Golden Door, lose twenty pounds and start living.”