Miriam had been an odd duck since she came to them at the library nearly fifteen years ago, teenager-skinny with an early-bird-special fashion sense. In the last couple of years her husband, Vivek, had been doing a postdoc in London, and solitude could make a person loopy, but Liesl didn’t think it fair to blame this strangeness on Vivek’s absence. Miriam had made evasive maneuvers against Liesl’s attempts at friendship and took weeks to even work her way up to a blushing “good morning” until Liesl cornered her in the basement one day, where she sat cross-legged on the dusty floor, inventorying a delivery of manuscript materials from a prominent Italian academic and author.
“I want to have dinner,” Liesl had said. “You and Vivek and John and I should have dinner.”
“Oh. Why?” When Liesl thought back to that afternoon, she had a perfect memory of Miriam’s knit eyebrows creating a pattern of lines on her forehead that Liesl had read to understand that Miriam thought the dinner was some sort of punishment. Liesl had not allowed herself to be dissuaded.
“To eat the food we all need to keep ourselves alive, for one thing.” She smiled when she said it, tried to make it clear that was a joke.
“But all together?”
“All together.” Liesl kept the smile fixed on her face, hoping that social norms, if nothing else, would force Miriam to reciprocate.
“Okay. Thank you.”
“I wanted to welcome you. Properly, to the library.”
“Christopher already has.”
“Christopher has? Welcomed you?” Liesl stepped back a second and was about to ask the meaning, but Miriam jumped to her feet and dusted off her trousers, making it clear she was looking to leave. Liesl stepped to the right to block her before she could go. “Saturday then?”
Miriam dropped her eyes to the floor, clutched her clipboard to her chest, flushed a spectacular crimson, and near-whispered her assent. “Saturday then,” she said, as though Liesl had suggested that the foursome go drown kittens together. Surprised at the resistance to a simple meal, Liesl put a hand on Miriam’s shoulder. She glanced behind her to make sure that no one else had come down to the basement who would be able to hear them. “I’ll stay down here and help you with this inventory. This shipment will take ages to document if you’re doing it yourself. I’d like to help you.” She took the clipboard from Miriam. “Get into the habit of asking me for help. I’m never going to say no.”
“It’s all right, really. I’m halfway done.”
Liesl didn’t answer, but she didn’t return the clipboard either. Refusing to be put off, she took the pencil that Miriam had tucked into the top of the board and crouched down beside the skid of file boxes.
“It’s not always like that, you know,” Miriam said. She didn’t crouch down next to Liesl, not yet, but she had uncrossed her arms and her forehead was less severe. In remembering, Liesl remembered the forehead. When the crosshatch on the forehead faded, she knew she’d made progress. “When there’s only a couple of women.” Miriam stopped and chewed on her upper lip and thought about how to phrase the next part. “Someone told me once that you shouldn’t trust them, the women you work with.”
The statement was so odd that Liesl didn’t question it. But she had disproved it by sitting there on the floor with Miriam and helping to inventory the Italian’s papers in half the time it would have taken Miriam herself.
Miriam never got less odd, but she became a fraction less closed off over the years, thanks in part to Vivek, who insisted on accepting Liesl’s invitations and who brought out a humor in his wife that was often absent when he wasn’t at hand. This Miriam, though, poised in front of a dark computer, was so much like the Miriam in the basement all those years ago, clutching her clipboard and refusing to come to dinner.
“Does Miriam seem all right to you?” Liesl asked Francis.
“Garber still doesn’t know?” Francis turned his back to Miriam. Liesl knit her hands. She wasn’t holding a book, but she wanted to be. She wanted something to grasp, something to hold her steady.
“I don’t think we can wait any longer,” she said.
“Wait for what? Garber? I agree.”
“Wait to involve the police.” Liesl wondered who at the Toronto Police Service to even call. It wasn’t as though she could dial 911 to report a missing book.
“Are you out of your bloody mind?” Francis took her shoulder and sat her down at his own desk. “You’d go to the police before Garber?”