A few minutes before closing, the chimes sounded again. Owen made his way out from amidst the stacks. There was nobody on the adult side of the library. He walked over to the children’s section and saw a man standing with hands behind him, looking up at the mural on the back wall.
“Can I help you?” asked Owen. “We’re about to close for the day.”
The man turned and revealed himself to be Gerry Roan, owner of the Busy Bee and Helen’s father. Owen was staggered. He couldn’t even bring himself to say hello, although he’d known the man since they were both young. Instead, he shook his head as if vehemently denying something.
“I’ve come to see how you were. I heard you’d been put in the hospital,” said Roan.
Owen found his voice. “Gerry, I’m so sorry about Helen.”
“Are you OK?”
His spasm of denial ended and he was able to nod. “Don’t worry about me. Is your wife holding up?”
“No, neither of us is very good. We can’t sleep.”
“I wish I’d been able to do something,” said Owen.
“What can you do?” said Roan. “Life really doesn’t make any sense. We all secretly know that. This guy was a drug maniac or something.”
“Still . . .”
“I’m just glad you were there with her when it happened. She always admired you from the time she was young. I think it was because you had so many books,” he said, and laughed.
Owen didn’t react to the joke. An uncomfortable silence followed, and eventually Gerry Roan walked over to the librarian and hugged him. Without speaking, he left. The sound of his car starting and receding was followed by the peculiar tomb-like silence that settled down around the books at evening. The sunlight through the window then could be its most golden on the field for a brief few minutes. The thought of Roan’s statement that Helen admired him because he had so many books came back to him, and he moved quickly to try to dispel his sorrow. The unfamiliar walk home through the woods spooked him. By the time he came out the other side, along the dirt road, night had fallen.
After dinner, he played the classical station on the radio. It turned out to be a big night for the music of Satie. Owen finished the bourbon and gave vent to all manner of bad notions, gave in to every paranoia, ran through the scene in the Busy Bee a dozen times behind his eyes. When it got late and he kept nodding off, his head banging once or twice against the kitchen table, even as drunk as he was, he knew it was time to surrender. He stumbled into the bedroom, knowing he’d have a rough time of it in the morning. Again, he forgot about the wound in his side, felt a jab as he was getting into bed, and had to switch to the right. He fell asleep almost instantly, but before he did, he managed to push himself onto his back, hoping to regain transit to the night world. His sleep was as dark as death, though. Not a shred of dream nor the fearful paralysis.
He woke but a few minutes later to the sound of the alarm clock. The nausea and headache were nothing compared to the fact that, as he was dressing for work, he remembered that today was going to be a ceremony for Helen. The body was still in the custody of the police for autopsy and would be for a few more days. Helen’s parents didn’t want to wait for the inevitable closure. Her father had mentioned it before leaving the library. “Awfully quick,” Owen had thought, and put it out of his mind. The sudden, returning thought of it froze him where he sat on the edge of his bed, holding a pair of socks. He knew there was no way he could make it through the memorial and the looks and words, no matter how kind the citizens of Westwend. Owen was revealing himself to be more of a coward than even he’d suspected. Still, he dressed in his blue-gray suit and went to work, taking the new, secret route. He prayed no one would see him, and no one did.
His suffering induced by the bourbon subsided around midday. There were patrons at a steady pace, and a pile of kids came in after school to work on projects together. Some of the adults mentioned the robbery to him. The older folks knew better than to blurt it out in conversation but smiled wistfully and patted him on the shoulder as he checked out their books. For the first time in a long time, he left early. It’s not like there was anyone around to evict, but he killed the lights and locked the door twenty minutes before closing.
After making it home without being spotted, Owen grabbed the rolled-up newspaper from where it was shoved into the iron scroll work of the porch banister. He staggered inside and shut and locked the door behind him. He dressed in his shorts and T-shirt. Curling up in a corner of the living room couch, he propped himself with his elbow against the pillowed arm, and turned on the light above his head. The front page of the Westwend Tattler had a large photo of the ceremony for Helen Roan from earlier in the day. Owen skipped it. On page two was his “confession” that he was no hero.
He felt so wronged by that one word—confession—as if he’d been leading the community on, been boasting about how he’d tried to disarm the murderer. He’d never claimed such a thing. All he was really guilty about was not telling everyone he was a straight-up coward, and who would go out of their way to say such a thing? The paper fell from his hands onto the floor. He rolled onto his back and stretched his legs out. His fingers just reached the light switch. In minutes he was mercifully out and lightly snoring.
4
THIS TIME THERE WAS no paralytic prelude; he began to ascend the instant he awoke in his sleep. Up through the attic like last time. Out through the roof on the left side, next to the chimney. And then he swept down as graceful as an angel and touched his feet lightly on the sidewalk. He wasn’t overwhelmed by the sheer strangeness of the experience this time. The first thing he noticed was that it must be much later than when he’d lain upon the couch. The houses were all dark, save for Mrs. Hultz’s. The moon was half of what it had been last he was on the night street. The sky was wondrously clear, with millions of stars.
He slipped weightlessly along the sidewalk, and this time when he got to the corner, he turned away from town and instead toward the park and the pine barrens. Why he was heading in that direction, he had no idea. When he passed the Blims’ house, Hecate was lying on the front lawn, watching the street. Owen was afraid he’d be seen. He noticed that the dog did lift its head and sniff the air, but for once it didn’t bark. A few houses along the way, he spotted a lit window and wondered what was going on behind it at that late hour. He changed course and swerved across the lawn to have a look.
The house was a ranch style with the windows close to the ground. Owen swore he wouldn’t invade other people’s homes in his invisible state. As far as spying on them, though, for some reason, that was another matter. He was infinitely curious about how people lived. In the well-lit room was a boy in red pajamas, somewhere between the ages of eight and ten. He was sitting at a small round table with two chairs. In between those two seats lay a chessboard. Owen watched as the boy made a move, ushering his queen from behind the defense of horses to attack. Then the boy got up, went to the seat opposite, sat and stared at the board, and made a move for that side. He was his own opponent. Familiar, thought the librarian. He’d never seen the boy before, and made a note in his memory to check if he was a patron of the library. He thought it might be worthwhile to get in some newer chess books.