Chapter 5 - The Gift

Jeremy's usual method of dealing with hangovers was to avoid them by sleeping in the next day after a drunk. It didn't always work. This particular morning, even a throbbing headache and mouth full of cotton couldn't bring down his mood. He was going to see Liliana tonight!

He decided that he wanted to give her something. Just a little something to let her know how special she was to him. It wasn't that he lacked the knowledge of social skills that would allow him to realize how inappropriate it was for him to be buying her gifts in this early stage in their relationship -- if you could even call whatever it was they had a "relationship." He was even aware that it bordered on the kind of too intense behavior that would scare many girls away. But he sensed somehow that Liliana was different from other girls, and that whether or not she appreciated the present, it wouldn't scare her away.

He had no idea what to get her. What do you get someone for your third -- really, the second -- date? Or was it the first? Could you really call either of their previous encounters a date? If he was picking her up at her home, he'd take her flowers, but he still didn't even know where she lived. If he took her flowers, she'd have to carry them around wherever they went, which wouldn't make much sense. Same with, say, a bottle of wine or a nick-nack memento of some kind.

The obvious thing to buy would be some kind of jewelry. A necklace, a bracelet, a ring. No, not a ring. Definitely not a ring -- that might send a message that would scare off even Liliana, and besides it was a message he wasn't sure he wanted to send. He hardly even knew this girl, for goodness sake. She still hadn't told him her last name -- and how weird is that? He distinctly remembered introducing himself as Jeremy Morrison when they met, and she had said her name after his. So why had she just said "Liliana?" Something weird about that.

Oh, but everybody had their own little eccentricities after all. It wasn't like she was dangerous or something. He chuckled. Weird but wonderful. Well, most people thought he was a bit weird himself.

He saw a beautiful necklace in a jewelry store that he was sure would look stunning on Liliana, but it was $1200, which was far beyond the means of a lowly library assitant.

He was on his second go-around through the mall, thinking of giving up on finding something and just browsing around one of those shops filled with all sorts of odd things with no particular rhyme or reason, except in this case they were all "exotic" in one way or another. Sort of like a miniature Pier 1.

They had a necklace made of silver, with a moonstone in the center of a complicated celtic design with crescent moons worked into it. It was more than $50, but as soon as he saw it he knew it was exactly the right choice.

* * *

She was sitting there on the rock, just as she had been the night before. He sighed as he approached her. He noticed that she seemed to be wearing the same black dress. He hadn't thought anything of it last night, but wearing the same dress two nights in a row, all three times he'd seen her, did seem a bit odd. He shook the thought out of his head. He'd already established for himself that she was unusual, and he'd determined that it was part of her appeal. He wasn't going to let the stuffy follow-the-rules side of himself to kick up a fuss about it now.

"Is it eight o'clock?" she asked him.

He looked at his watch, "Well, technically not yet. Seven fity-eight. Another two minutes."

"Then we must wait. Perhaps you should walk around the lake while I wait here for you."

Okay, that was definitely odd. Jeremy started to protest, then shrugged his shoulders and set off along the sidewalk that ran around the pond -- hardly a lake. Yes, she was definitely different, Jeremy said to himself. But she was so beautiful. And her lips were so soft and firm and yielding and demanding and her breasts --

He mentally slapped his own hand. Down boy. There will be time for that later. Or there won't. It's up to her. Keep your cool, don't press. Don't be too eager. Too desperate.

He knew all these things, but he also knew that it was easy to say them to himself but hard to do. The fact is that when he was with a girl he was too eager, precisely because he was desperate. And he ended up ruining everything, with the girl furious, or in tears, or worst of all laughing at him.

But with Liliana everything was different. He didn't think about himself when he was with her, even about what he wanted to do with her. He was content to just be with her, and see how things flowed together.

He glanced at his watch again on the other side of the pond, trying to gauge his walking pace so that he'd end up coming up to her just as the digital numbers turned from 7:59 to 8:00. As it was, he was pretty close.

"Is it eight o'clock then, Jeremy Morrison?"

"It is."

"Then I am yours for the evening."

Jeremy's heart jumped. "You did not hear what you think you just heard," he told himself silently. "So," he said aloud, "what would you like to do?"

She smiled, "Did you not hear? Whatever's in your heart, whatever entertainment suits your needs, I shall beside you walk, and share with you whatever schemes or plans you may have made with full gladness and vow to make no complaint, come what may."
Jeremy stared at her, slack-jawed. Why was she talking like some character out of a Shakespeare play?

She frowned. "Have I said amiss? What troubles thee?"

Jeremy shook his head. "Did you just say 'thee'?"

She looked down, abashed. "I'm sorry. I know 'tis not proper in this time. I mistook myself." She looked back up, staring deep into his eyes with anguish so real it stabbed his heart. "What troubles you, Jeremy Morrison? Have I done wrong? Am I not pleasing to you?"

"No! I mean, yes! Of course you're pleasing to me, I just . . . I don't understand what's going on. Why are you talking like this?"

"Does how I talk matter so much, Jeremy Morrison?"

"Please, just call me Jeremy. And no, I guess it doesn't, it's just . . . it'll take a little getting used to, I suppose."

She sighed. "I meant for this night to be joyful, for both of us but especially for you, but I see that my ignorance has caused a rift between us, so early on in this evening that was meant to be a happy time for both of us. Is there ought I can do to make amends?"

He took her hands, shook his head. "I'm sorry. You've done nothing wrong. I just don't know anyone who . . . where are you from, anyway."

A sly smile stole over her face. "Ah, that's a tale who's time has not yet come, I think. Let's just say that I now live close enough to this very spot that we have found each other, and not worry overmuch about what came before. Agreed?"

Jeremy nodded. "All right. I just . . . " he shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Can I at least know your last name?"

A look of panic flied across her face so quickly Jeremy wasn't sure afterward that he hadn't imagined it, except for the fact that he'd have no reason to imagine such a thing. "I . . . don't . . . " she looked off into the distance, bit her lower lip, then redirected her gaze to him. "Can you call me Liliana Dougal? That at least is not false."

"You mean that's your name?"

She looked at him pleadingly. "Why must you ask so many questions," she whispered. "Please. Can you not accept that I am yours?" She reached for him suddenly and kissed him, a deep hungry kiss that scattered his thoughts to the wind and left him breathless for more.

"If you promise to ask no questions of me, of my past or race or place or name, if you accept me as I am, asking nothing beyond what's given you, I promise you a night such as you have never had, fulfilling all your dreams and fantasies. Will you make that bargain with me, Jeremy Morrison?"

"Yes," breathed Jeremy. "Oh, yes. I'll make that bargain."

They sealed it with a kiss. A kiss that went on for a long time. When Jeremy finally came up for air, he said, "You are the most amazing woman I have ever known."

She smiled her enigmatic smile. "Perhaps," was all she said.

"Well, would you like to go to dinner?"

"Whatever you desire, I desire."

She couldn't possibly know what he desired, Jeremy thought, and yet she'd been pretty plain about it. He was actually tempted, after so many years of so many fruitless attempts, to take her back to his apartment then and there and have his way with her.

Of course, he might find that that kind of unseemly eagerness turned her off and she might call the whole thing off. But even if she was sincere in her desire to, well, fulfill his desires, he wanted it to be right. He wanted it to be a joy for both of them, not just some desperate fumbling in the dark.

"I brought my car," he said, leading her away from the stone archway. She stopped.

"You live close enough to this place that you walk here, yes?"

"Sure. But tonight I drove so that we'd have a way to go -- "

She took her hands in hers, and beseeched him with her eyes. "I cannot sit in your iron chariot. Please don't ask me why, or why I call it what I call it rather than what you are used to. Just accept that I cannot. Can you arrange your desires within that necessity, or will that spoil our evening?"

Jeremy stroked his chin, thinking. "You know, for someone who wants to do my bidding you're being awfully difficult." In answer to her stricken look, he grinned. "Don't worry about it, you're worth it. Yeah, it shouldn't be a problem. I mean, we can't go to a movie or anything, but there are restaurants all up and down Grand just south of the park, so eating shouldn't be a problem. After that, well . . . "

She put her hand on his lips. "After that, you will take me home to your abode and do with me as you have always wished to do with every woman you have ever taken on a . . . you call it a date, yes?"

Jeremy nodded, rooted to the spot, unable to speak or move until his trance was broken by her taking away her hand, standing on tiptoe to reach up to briefly brush her lips against his, then taking his hand and saying, "So, which way do we travel hence?"

Chapter 4 - Friday

Jeremy went to the ruins by the fountain pond and waited for her for two hours, until after midnight, but she didn’t show up. She didn’t show up the next night, either. Thursday night he waited even longer, past 2:00 a.m., walking around and around the pond when he got cold. At one point he thought he saw her on the rock by the doorway, the same place he’d first seen her, and he hurried his steps into a run by the last few yards, but there was no one there. It was just a trick of his imagination.
He was almost beginning to believe the whole thing was a trick of his imagination. Had any of it really happened? Had he had a particularly vivid dream and somehow confused it with reality? Was he going crazy?

He came to work bleary-eyed and depressed.

"Woah," said Mike. "You look awful. Somebody run over your dog?"

Jeremy shook his head. He hadn't told anyone about Liliana, and now he didn't know how he could. The whole thing seemed so crazy. And there wasn't any other way to explain what was wrong with him. It was all about Liliana.

Friday morning he was assigned to his favorite duty, answering the e-mail. He loved the challenge of the wide variety of questions people wrote in, and the fact that, beyond the vague promise that "most questions will be answered in 24 hours" he could essentially take as much or as little time as he wanted which each question.

Today, the questions were:

"What team that has been to the World Series more than twice has the best winning percentage in World Series appearances?"

"The war of 1812 started in 1812, but when did it end?"

"We all know about General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy, but who was the Lieutenant Robert E. Lee that the local riverboat restaurant is named after?"

"Who holds the record for largest winnings at poker, and what was it?"

"How did the deal come about in 1875 that separated the city of St. Louis from the County and permanently set its boundaries?"

The perfect blend of the substantial and the banal, the easy and the difficult, one totally impossible within the confines of his job and one that intrigued him because he'd actually never thought about it and now that he had he'd like to know the answer himself. A pretty good morning's work ahead of him.

And he hated it. He didn't want to do it. He didn't want to do anything but go back home and go to bed.

He decided to do the first one just to get it out of the way. A quick trip to mlb.com got him a list of all the participants in all the World Series in history, with winners and losers. He saved the list as a text file, then cut and pasted it into a spreadsheet. He spent longer fiddling with the numbers then he expected to, and wondered whether he'd have been better off trying to find the answer at one of those baseball stat sites that parse the numbers every which way from Sunday. But he felt more comfortable working from information he knew he could trust.

"There are four teams with perfect winning percentages, but all of them appeared either once or twice, so they don't county by the standards of your question. So the answer is the Pittsburgh Pirates," he wrote back, "who won in 1909, 1925, 1960, 1971 and 1979, for a total of five victories, and lost only twice, in 1903 and 1927, for a winning percentage of .714.

"The more interesting trivia question, actually," he continued, "is who comes in second, which turns out to depend on exactly how you count the record.
"There are three teams with .667 records, having won two thirds of their World Series appearances. They are the Minnesota Twins, the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees. But two of those teams have world series records under other names -- the Athletics were in Philadelphia first, and the Twins started out in Washington as the Senators. Counting those records, the Yankees stand alone."

The second question was a famous "trick" question people often sent in trying to see if the librarians were on the ball. Jeremy could have done it off the top of his head, but he grabbed the Britannica off the shelf to reassure himself of the exact dates.

"Dating the end of the War of 1812 depends on how you define the end of a war. The Treaty of Ghent officially ending the war was signed December 24, 1814. However, the slow nature of international communication at the time meant that the news didn't reach New Orleans until after another battle had been fought there January 8, 1915. Whether this battle took place "after" the war depends on your point of view, however, because the treaty had to be ratified and was not actually signed by President Madison until February 17, 1815."

Jeremy dashed off a note to the inquirer about the 1875 separation of the city and county of St. Louis pointing him toward print and online sources and regretting that the St. Louis Public Library doesn't have the staff to do intensive research projects for patrons. He found a news article on the record poker winnings of $2.7 million won by Swedish player Martin Dekenijff in the World Poker Tour Championship in Las Vegas in 2004.

Saving the best for last, he started looking for other military Robert E. Lees besides the famous one. He knew about the riverboat restaurant. For many years, it had been one of the main features of the St. Louis Riverfront, moored at the foot of the steps leading down to the river from the Arch. It hadn't been there for some time -- last he heard somebody had taken it to a small town south of the city that was something of a tourist attraction, with lots of old houses that had been made into restaurants and shops and bed-and-breakfasts. Imperial? Barnhardt? One of those towns. But who was Lt. Robert E. Lee? He had never given it a thought. He'd just assumed it was named after the Civil War General, but as soon as he saw the question he remembered that the name had indeed been the Lt., not the Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Like nearly everyone looking for information these days, he started with a quick Google search. Unlike most people, Jeremy knew lots of other places for the many times this didn't work, but he also knew that a lot of times the answer was easy to get this way, and he didn't believe in doing more work than he had to.
Looking for "Lt. Robert E. Lee" with quotation marks to force exact phrase searching turned up lots of information about the riverboat itself, including the fact that it was Kimmswick where it had been taken. The official website for the boat contained no information on its name, but he did find a page on a site called steamboats.org that gave the history of the boat. According to that site, the boat was named for the famous general, but called the "Lt." Robert E. Lee because he was as a lieutenant with the Corps of Engineers early in his career that he served in St. Louis.

That was cool, and very probably true, but unfortunately when he backtracked the URL to the root and searched for information about the organization Jeremy discovered that "steamboats.org," despite having a domain suffix that was supposed to indicate a non-profit organization, was in fact apparently one guy in Germany who was, for whatever reason, an enthusiast of American riverboats. He needed something a little more authoritative before sending out an answer.

It took him most of an hour. Establishing that Lee was indeed in St. Louis and was a lieutenant at the time was relatively easy. Establishing that that was why the named the boat that way was something else entirely. He finally found a couple of articles in the online version of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch alluding to it.

At lunch, Mike wanted to know what was wrong with him. Jeremy shrugged.

"No, really. Something's going on. You've been moody all week. Cecilia's noticed."

"Yeah, she said something to me about it. I have to be friendlier with the customers."

"It's not just that. There's something . . . I don't know. What's going on?"

Jeremy took a deep breath, and then the story poured out of him.
It sounded even crazier as he said it than it had thinking about it the last few days. He found himself staring at the table as he talked, unwilling to look Mike in the eye as he unreeled this absurd story. Afterwards, he sheepishly looked up, fully expecting Mike to be staring at him skeptically, with his trademark one eyebrow cocked almost up to his hairline.

Instead, Mike looked sympathetic. "Hmm. My first reaction is to say you're probably better off forgetting her, but I can tell that you're not going to be able to do that. I can tell you've got it bad. Do you know anything at all about her?"

"I know what she looks like. I know her name is Liliana. Really, that's about it. We didn't . . . " Jeremy blushed and looked down at the table. "We didn't talk much."

This time Mike did cock an eyebrow. "Why Jeremy," he said mildly, "I didn't know you were such a fast mover."

Jeremy blushed more deeply. "No, we didn't do that, either. I mean, we just kissed mostly."

"You just kissed? For how long?"

"I don't know. An hour? Two? It seemed like forever, but it ended far too soon."
Mike stared at him without saying anything, long enough that Jeremy said "What?" and Mike shook his head.

"You were with a girl for an hour or two, and you spent the whole time kissing, and nothing else?

"Look, I'm not going to go into details. But mainly, yeah. Kissing her was . . . well, I can't explain it," he ended lamely, realizing that finishing the sentence the way he'd meant to when he started it, with "was like I imagine sex might be," sounded really, really lame.

Mike grew thoughtful.

"Tell you what, I've got some friends at other libraries who have access to some stuff we don't. Liliana's a pretty unusual name."

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Maybe it's too weird -- Intelius says there aren't any Lilianas in the entire state of Missouri."

"Yes, well, Intelius goes by phone directory, I believe. If she lives with her father, for instance, he'd be in the phone book, but she wouldn't."

"Yeah, I know. But I didn't know how to get around it."

"Well, some of my friends do. Let me make a few calls."

Later that afternoon, Mike came over with a strange look on his face. "Turns out Intelius was right, more or less. Choicepoint, Autotrack, Acurint, Lexis-Nexis, Flatrateinfo, none of them have a record of anyone named Liliana anywhere in the state."

Jeremy knew enough about data collection services to know how odd this was. It would have been one thing if Liliana was Ashley's age. A 16-year-old wouldn't have generated much in the way of records. A driver's license, probably, maybe a vehicle registration if he or she owned their own car. But Liliana wasn't 16. Even if she still lived at home, she should have showed up somewhere.

Jeremy was back to wondering if she had ever been real.

* * *

By the end of the day, Jeremy had turned down and then changed his mind and agreed to a trip to a bar with some co-workers. He was afraid Liliana would show up and he would miss her, but he was also pissed off at her. Let her wait for him and be disappointed for once. And if she didn't show up, well, so much the better that he didn't either.

They went over to Washington, a couple of blocks from the library and the latest hot place to be in town. They started at Flannery's, where they got dinner, and ended up at Velvet, where they had to wait in line about half an hour before getting in.

The music was loud, the bodies were hot, and in a very short time, Jeremy was both drunk and miserable. It was exactly the kind of place he never went, exactly the kind of place he thought would take his mind off Liliana, and exactly the kind of place that made him think about her every time he looked long enough at a woman to realize that she didn't compare to his perhaps-imaginary love.

Jeremy stayed at Velvet, getting drunker and more morose each hour. Finally, he found his buddies and told them he was going home.

"You sure you're gonna be OK?" Bob wasn't nearly as drunk as Jeremy, and could tell that Jeremy was in no condition to drive.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry. I'm going to walk down to the Renaissance Grand and pick up a cab."

Bob nodded. "Good idea. I may do that myself."

Jeremy left. All the way home, he thought what a waste of a good Friday night it had been. He could have tried to dance with one of those girls in the club. Even if he'd gotten shot down, he could have at least tried. There'd been lots of wasted Friday and Saturday nights like that over the years, when he hadn't even tried, but most of the time in the past it had been because he couldn't work up the nerve. Tonight it was because he couldn't work up the interest.

He got home, paid off the cab, and then, instead of going inside, he started walking. He told himself he was just walking, he wasn't going to go looking for Liliana, but of course his steps led him to the ruins by the fountain pond.
And there she was.

He rushed to her and threw his arms around her, hugging her to him fiercely, as much as anything to assure himself that she was really solid and substantial.

"Oh my God," said Jeremy. "I've missed you so much. I came back every night, and you weren't here, and I didn't know how to get hold of you and I didn't even know your name and I couldn't find you and -- "

"Shhh," she said, hugging him back. "I'm here now. Just hold me."

They held each other for a long time, then kissed for an even longer time, then Liliana said, "I'm sorry, but I have to go soon. I waited for you tonight for hours, and I was afraid you wouldn't show up."

Jeremy's ears burned in shame at having gone out instead of coming to the park tonight.

"Meet me here tomorrow night at eight o'clock your time. We can spend the evening together. That is, if you want to."

"There is nothing in the world I would like more," said Jeremy.

She kissed him again, then slipped away. Before he could even see which way she went, she was gone.

* * *

Later, as he was falling asleep happy and content for the first time in three days, he realized he still didn't know her last name.

Chapter 3 - The Library

"Excuse me."

Jeremy jumped, abruptly jarred out of his dream of the night before. He realized with a sudden onrush of guilt that while he'd been dazing off into the distance thinking about Liliana's lips, the young lady standing at the counter had said "Excuse me" at least one previous time, and was getting rather impatient.

"Sorry, sorry. I'm . . . a little under the weather today." That, actually was true. He hadn't had nearly enough sleep last night -- or rather, this morning.
She regarded him with suspicion and not a little hostility, then shrugged it off with a toss of her head. "Whatever. Do you have any books on the Constitution?"
He was seriously tempted to say, "Why yes, yes we do," and turn his back on her and walk away. Clueless high school students were the bane of his existence. This one, whose whole posture sneered with a contemptuous "I-don't-really-have-time-for-this" attitude, set his teeth on edge just looking at her.

Although looking at her wasn't exactly difficult. He realized that yesterday he'd have enjoyed looking at her quite a bit, even if she was far too young for him -- what was she, 16? 17? But one of those blonde, bronzed cheerleader types he used to worship from afar when he was in high school himself. Now, she barely registered as attractive. She paled beside Liliana.

He shook his head, realizing he was about to lapse back into a daydream.

"Well?" she demanded.

"I'm sorry, it's just . . . I mean, of course we have books about the Constitution. Lots and lots of books about the Constitution, and articles about the constitution in other books, from encyclopedias to history books to books about law. What aspect of the Constitution are you interested in?"

She shrugged. "Whatever. I need to write a 10-page paper on the Constitution using at least three sources other than the Internet. My teacher said we should go to the library and do research. When I asked at the front desk where I should go, they sent me here."

Fate is a strange thing. Ten years ago, Jeremy would have given his left arm (well, maybe his left leg -- hard to type with just one hand) to spend time helping a girl like Ashley -- that was her name, he discovered -- learn how to use a library, how to focus on a topic and even how to write a paper. Heck, at 17, he'd have been only too happy to write her paper for her in return for -- not even attention, really, just the tiniest display of something less than contempt for his existence. Even yesterday, he'd have enjoyed being able to have a job that not only allowed but required him to share the company of a good-looking girl, even if he found her vapid and boring.

Today, however, she was merely a nuisance. An interloper into his thoughts, and into his precious temple of knowledge which he suddenly felt himself the guardian of, like Horatio at the bridge fighting off the barbarian hordes, in the person of this bored teenager.

He walked over to his computer screen, tapped a few keys, and came back.
"There are 277 entries under 'Constitutional history - U.S.' alone, not even counting all the books on Constitutional law. Before I can help you, you need to figure out just what it is about the Constitution you're going to write about. The history? The separation of powers? One or more of the amendments? Do you have any idea at all?"

She shrugged. "I don't care. I don't know why I can't just do the research on the Internet like everybody else."

"Well, probably because your teacher doesn't trust you to discriminate between the wealth of knowledgeable and reliable sources on the Internet and the vast mass of unreliable garbage that's also out there."

Open hostility now. "You sound just like him."

Jeremy smiled. "Tell you what. Let's start with the encyclopedia." He came around from the desk and started leading her to the stacks that held the various encyclopedias. "How much time have you got?"

"It's not due until a week from Thursday."

Jeremy's estimation of her suddenly moved up several notches. His experience was that high school students with assignments like hers tended to come in a day or too before the assignment was due expecting miracles. Of course, she'd probably known about it for at least two weeks, if not since the beginning of the year, but a week and a half was an amazing amount of planning ahead for a 16-year-old cheerleader.

"Good, good. And how much time were you planning on spending here today?"

She shrugged with a look that plainly said "As little as I can get away with," but her mouth said "a few hours I guess. My mom said to call her on her cell. She's over at Union Station."

"OK. Tell you what. Let's start with the World Book."

He pulled the volume off the shelf, quickly paged to the "Constitution of the United States" entry.

"If you were in a hurry, I'd tell you to photocopy this, go home and read it, then come back when you've focused down a little. Instead, what I'd suggest is that you read this -- you don't have to read every word," he added quickly, looking at the dismay on her face as she paged through it, "for instance, they have the whole Constitution in there and that I think you should get off the Internet, from the U.S. Government. About as reliable as you can get. But skim through the article and see if there's something in there that interests you -- or at least something that you think you could spend a week reading and thinking about without hating it too much. Think about a question or two you'd like to know the answer to about that particular aspect of the Constitution, and then come back to the Reference Desk and I'll show you how to find books that will help you answer your question."

She rolled her eyes. "Can't you just, you know, give me some books and tell me what to look for?"

"You mean tell you what to write about? I suppose I could, but it wouldn't be fair. You may not believe it, but an assignment like this can actually be fun, if you do it the right way."

"Yeah, right. Fun." Shaking her head at the crazy man, she headed off for a table with the encyclopedia in her hands and a sullen look on her face. Jeremy doubted if he'd made a convert. But it did happen occasionally. Or at least that's what Mike said. Mike claimed he'd turned three kids on to the excitement of learning in just such situations, but Jeremy hadn't been so lucky yet. Still, he kept trying. The possibility that he might one day make a real difference in the life of just one teenage was one of the few things that made him think his job had any real purpose to it.


***

Later that afternoon, he was immersed in the part of the job that had no redeeming features or higher purpose whatsoever, except that it was absolutely essential gruntwork without which the library could not function. In other words, he was re-shelving books.

Jeremy hated shelving books. It was pure drudgery, yet it took just enough of your mind that you couldn't let it drift off into other things, the way you could while, say, chopping wood, which Jeremy hadn't done in many years but still remembered fondly, even though at the time he had in fact hated every bit as thoroughly as he now hated shelving books.

To keep himself from being completely bored, Jeremy would sometimes try to look at the cover of the book and guess the exact Dewey Decimal Number from the title and author.

Even before he got a job in the library, Jeremy knew the basic 10 "centuries" of the Dewey Decimal system, and even knew some of the decades. Jeremy had been a nerd in high school and he was, let's face, pretty much a nerd today. That's partly why he gravitated toward library work in the first place.

Today, he was in the 500s, which was the natural sciences and mathematics. He picked up a book called "Shark Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance," by Thomas B. Allen, it was easy to guess that it would be in the 590s, under animals.

"Let's see," thought Jeremy. "Sharks are fish. Fish and reptiles are near the end, because it works its way up from the protozoans to the mammals. Mammals, and before that birds, and before that fish and reptiles and amphibians, so 597. Sharks. Sharks are . . . 597.3?"

(Again, Jeremy wasn't actually saying this out loud, although if someone had walked by and saw him holding the book and squinting at it, deep in thought, they may have thought him odd anyway.)

He mentally patted himself on the back when he turned to see the spine and saw "597.31566" -- close enough to count as a hit. He didn't expect himself to be able to go further than one digit past the decimal point. Things got crazy after that.
Shelving books was both mentally taxing and yet almost mindless and terribly monotonous. You had to find the exact place where the book went, in this case right between 597.31 and 497.3157. You had to get it exactly right, every time. No mistakes were allowed, because if a book was misshelved, it might never be found. Although part of the job was also keeping your eye out for misshelved books and either re-shelving them or, if they were really badly out of place (a 300 in the 500s, for instance), taking them up front to add to the re-shelf pile for later. And you were expected to do an entire cart in under an hour.

Jeremy hated re-shelving.

"Excuse me?"

He looked up, and was astonished to see the girl from earlier that day. She had come back wanting help with finding information on how the Contstitution came to be written. "It's a history class, and we just did the revolutionary war, so I think that's what he wants us to do." He pointed her to the Collier Brothers "Decision in Philadelphia" and the Federalist Papers, and showed her how to use the library catalog online, including how to print out a request to take to the counter for books in the closed stacks.

He had also pointed out to her that if she lived closer to another branch she could order books online and pick them up at her local branch in a day or two. "Probably not for this project, but maybe in the future." Then he showed her some online resources the library maintains, reachable from her home computer, that were based on print sources that would probably be acceptable to her teacher -- "I'd ask your teacher first, to make sure, though."

She did seem less sullen by the time he left her at the computer with the catalog, but he hadn't thought of her as his first Mike-style success or anything. But here she was, two hours or so later, interrupting his filing.

"Did you need something, Miss?" he asked.

"Um, well. . . Do you know how to find someone online? Like, find out where they live and their phone number and stuff? If they're not in the phone book, I mean?"
He was thunderstruck. He did, indeed, know a few ways to do that. And it had never even occurred to him to try to look up Liliana.

By the time he explained to her where she needed to go to get help he could just help her himself, he figured, so he left his cart and took her to a free terminal. They started with Yahoo, even though they generally only had listed phone numbers, and he showed her how to find some more. Most of the ones that might be of some real use to her were, unfortunately, hugely expensive -- $25 was the cheapest, and they went up to $150, and none of them promised results so it could just be money down the drain. He wasn't able to help her, and then he had to really rush to try to get his books re-shelved on time, and in fact didn't make it.

"Sorry, I was helping a patron," he started to explain to Cecelia, his supervisor, but she waved him off tolerantly and gave him a wry smile. He guessed she'd seen him with Ashley.

Sure enough. "Cute girl," she said.

"Was she?" he said," I didn't notice. Just trying to help a library patron. Customer service is what we're all about, right?"

She laughed.

As soon as he could get a free minute, he sat down at his own computer and went to Yahoo People.

That was no good. You needed a last name. He didn't know her last name. He mentally kicked himself for not finding out her last name. He couldn't even look her up in the phone book, even if she was listed!

He tried half a dozen people search sites. They all required a last name. He figured "Liliana" would be uncommon enough that he wouldn't have to have a last name, not like "John" or "Ashley," but they wouldn't even let him try.

Until he came to Intelius. Intelius didn't care that he didn't have a last name. They'll let you search with whatever you've got.

Unfortunately, they turned up no Lilianas in the state of Missouri.

He didn't know if Intelius included unlisted phone numbers or not. He suspected not. Most of the free search sites didn't. He knew there were services that tracked people by aggregating a variety of public and private databases, everything from drivers license and voter registration to those sweepstakes things you fill out to win a car at a baseball game. But the St. Louis Public Library didn't subscribe to any of them, so he didn't have access.

He had been so intoxicated by her that he'd never gotten her name, her phone number, any way to get in touch with her. She said she would see him again soon, but she left without saying where or when. He had no way to get in touch with her, no way to find her. All he could do was go back to the ruins at the fountain pond and hope she showed up again. And what would he do if she didn't?

He shook his head, sadly. He didn't know what he was going to do.