"Del Tyler is that you?"
I stopped fast enough to trip up the guy behind me on the sidewalk. He mumbled under his breath and walked around me as I searched the crowd for the owner of that voice. Then I saw her, she looked even more beautiful than the last time I had seen her. It was late summer and still warm enough for the shorts and blouse combination she was wearing. She wore her blond almost platinum hair in a thick braid that ran half way down her back and looked more like she was headed to the beach instead of class.
"Leah Kavala. When did you enroll here?"
"I'm here to get my MFA in photography. I started a week ago."
She brushed a wisp of bang out of her face. Leah was tall for a woman coming in around five ten or eleven and statuesque, not mannish at all. Her family came from the upper peninsula of Michigan and her Finnish roots could be seen in her white blond poker straight hair and pale complexion. Slap a winged silver helmet on her and silver breast plate, and she was the ideal Valkyrie.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, "the last I heard you were at some college in the east."
"I graduated and enrolled here to get my PhD in Library Science. I've got my course work completed and I'm conducting research and gathering materials for my dissertation."
"Wow, you're doing better than me. I'm starting my masters," she replied looking a little rueful, "things didn't go the way I wanted."
I left that statement hanging in the air. There wasn't time for more than a quick hello nor was the diag during class change the place for an intimate conversation.
I looked at the time on my phone.
"I've got to be going or I'll be late for my job."
"Give me your phone," she demanded.
I handed it to her and she punched her phone number in.
"Call me, I'd love to get together and catch up.
I gave her a hug and sprinted across the diag. Another woman was waiting for me. Her name was Karen Willowby and her mission was to get me in trouble with my faculty advisor. She worked at the front desk of the university library where she could watch my comings and goings. If I was even thirty seconds late, she would let my advisor know. I made it through the door with seconds to spare and waved at the scowling face. When I was dating her, I thought she looked cute with her up turned nose and round face, now that she was trying to end my career before I even had one, she was looking more and more ugly. What she didn't realize was that she was destroying her own career. Everyone in the Library Science section avoided her. She had overplayed her hand and had spread such vile nasty rumors about me that people were afraid to get close to her fearing she might turn on them too. I'm sure she blamed her lack of friends on me too.
She also had the worst job in the library because no one else among the faculty or management wanted to work with her. I'm sure she thought that I was at fault for that too.
My first job as a library professional is working in the Rare Books section of the university. I know what you're thinking. No, I'm not the guy in the white gloves checking in and out rare books for qualified researchers. That would be way too cool, nor am I the guy that hunts down rare books to add to the collection. That would be way too Indiana Jones. I'm the troll in the basement who restores books that have begun to fall apart. I don't even work with the super rare books, those get sent to specialists. I'm the guy who restores the 'sort of' rare books. Right now I'm working on a Michigan Territory Gazetteer from 1828. I made the mistake of pointing out to the Head Librarian, my faculty advisor, that I was handy with tools during my interview, and here I am for the foreseeable future binding old books having apprenticed under the old codger who had retired once I was in place.
That's the bad news, the good news is that I have a full time job with time off for classes and seminars that pays well above what the university pays us grad school grunts. I can afford stuff and I get a discount on my tuition. The pay is good enough that I've been cautioned to never tell anyone how much I make, and I'm good enough that other universities have tried to poach me.
I do like trimming, and applying gold leaf to the edge of the pages. Working with hide glue and needle and thread assembling pages is fun, too, but I'm working on a PhD in Library Science specializing in electronic data retrieval. I should be managing the electronic library of the future that the university is building and refining its architecture, not reattaching the frontispiece to a nineteenth century missal.
I opened the door to my workroom, flipped on the switch and gazed at my kingdom. The royal blue block walls blended seamlessly with the gray tile floor. Overhead, naked pipes were painted white to blend with the rest of the ceiling. It was the kind of place where if I died, it would take weeks for anyone to find me, even longer if Karen Willowby was tasked with finding me.
On that cheery note, I set to work. Repairing books is fussy business. Things proceed at a stately pace, and there is no way to speed it up. As a result, I have plenty of time to drink coffee and think while I stitch together pages and wait of glue to set.
The subject for today was Leah Kavala. I knew her from high school where she was the most beautiful girl in my class of four hundred. Her charm cast a spell on everyone from fellow students to faculty to administration. She wore her long platinum hair pulled back with a clasp, and in my fantasies, that clasp was the last thing I removed from her firm, ripe body before sweeping her into my arms and carrying her to my bed.
When she wore her hair down, the way her ears parted her hair gave her an elfin look that totally went with her lithe figure on her tall frame. My fevered brain had spun fantasy after fantasy about meeting her in the woods, perhaps by a still pond. She had the pale, porcelain skin of someone who avoided the sun. It gave her an ethereal beauty, and I fell for her with a thud that must have registered on the seismographs in the Geology department. In fact, there must have been multiple thuds since every male within two miles fell for her as hard as I had. Alas, she was high school royalty and I was a bottom feeder, too poor to own a car, and too geeky to fit in even when I did own one my senior year.
I don't want you to think I lurched through the halls of high school looking like Quasimodo being shunned by most and pitied by a few. I had my admirers, and I enjoyed female companionship. I even went to both Homecoming and Prom with dates I wasn't even related to.
Leah and I had our moments, they weren't romantic moments though. I was her lab partner in Chemistry, and saved her grade point average. She had no feel for atoms, ions and covalent bonds, but through diligent study with me, and my assistance on her lab reports, she managed to pull an A. She didn't forget me after Chemistry class was done, she continued to smile at me and wave to me in the hall, and I was happy with the crumbs of appreciation she threw my way. My love for her was the courtly love of Arthurian romances, and that was enough then. Now she was at the university, and I wasn't feeling courtly.
The can of hide glue had heated up, I brushed a thin coat of glue down the inside spine of the book cover I was restoring, then reattached the leather cover to the thick acid free leaf in the face of the book and repeated the process on the back before setting the book to cure in a book press. Keeping the glue off my hands was the hard part, it's hot and it sets quickly. I wore an apron to protect my clothes. I was also supposed to wear gloves, but half of the time glue covered paper ended up sticking to gloves rather than to the book. If I didn't get the glue off your hands right away, I would wear it for a while.
The head librarian knocked on the door.
"Can I come in?" his voice a rich baritone.
I waved him in as I daubed an alcohol laden rag at the glue on my hands.
The head librarian stood in the center of the room well away from any equipment to assure himself that nothing got on his suit. Whatever you think a head librarian should look like was what he wasn't. There wasn't a bookish look about him, he didn't wear glasses, and I never once heard him tell a single person to quiet down. He looked more like a mid-level executive for a large corporation. The amazing thing was that he was friendly and approachable.
He handed me a key.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's the key to my private entrance into the library off my office," he gave me a knowing smile, "I'm tired of Miss Karen Willowby giving me a daily update of when you arrive at the library. The door is unalarmed, so don't abuse it."
"Yes, sir."
