The Woman in the Library

by Sulari Gentill

Hannah Tigone.

There was a definite hint of admiration in the way she asked, “Do you need a bag?”

Lol

Well, I spent Friday at the library. I wrote a thousand words and deleted fifteen hundred. Regardless, the Boston Public Library is a nice spot in which to be stood up by the muse.

It’s pretty spectacular—the ceiling in the Reading Room is something to behold. I’m afraid I spent rather a lot of time staring at it. I can’t help but wonder how many frustrated writers have counted the decorative cornices before me…

It’ll give me something to do while I’m in this writing slump, and perhaps your productivity will rub off! And eventually, I might have something for you to read and comment on in return. Regards and so forth, Leo

Writing in the Boston Public Library had been a mistake. It was too magnificent. One could spend hours just staring at the ceiling in the Reading Room.

I am a bricklayer without drawings, laying words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, allowing my walls to twist and turn on whim. There is no framework, just bricks interlocked to support each other into a story. I have no idea what I’m actually building, or if it will stand.

Still, ceilings have a wonderful lofty perspective that buses do not. These have gazed down on writers before. Do they see one now? Or just a woman in the library with a blank page before her?

It occurs to me that a psychology student would make an excellent protagonist for a thriller. A student, not an expert. Experts are less relatable, removed from the reader by virtue of their status.

There are other people in the Reading Room, of course, but they are shadows. Unfocused as yet, while I try to pin a version of these three to my page. I write for a while…scenarios, mainly. How Freud Girl, Heroic Chin, and Handsome Man might be connected.

“I apologize if I was staring.” Handsome Man addresses me tentatively. I have enough of an ear for American accents now to tell he’s not from Boston. “My editor wants me to include more physical descriptions in my work.” He grimaces. “She says all the women in my manuscript are wearing the same thing, so I thought… Heck, that sounds creepy! I’m sorry. I was trying to describe your jacket.”

“Cain McLeod.”

Aka Handsome Man

“Winifred Kincaid…people call me Freddie.”

Main character

“She’s a writer too.” Freud Girl leans over and glances at my notebook. “She’s been making notes on all of us.” Damn! She grins. “I like Freud Girl…I sound like an intellectual superhero. Better than Tattoo Arms or Nose Ring.”

Got herrrr

“Awesome!” Heroic Chin turns to display his profile. “I hope you described my good side and…” he adds, flashing a smile, “I have dimples.”

Ew. Go awayyyyy

“I’m Marigold Anastas,” Freud Girl announces. “For your acknowledgements. A-N-A-S-T-A-S.”

Loll

Not to be outdone, Heroic Chin discloses his name is Whit Metters and promises to sue if either Cain McLeod or I forget to mention his dimples.

Eye roll

And so we go to the Map Room to found a friendship, and I have my first coffee with a killer.

Dear Hannah, Bravo! A sharp and intriguing opening. You have made art out of my complaints. The last line is chilling. An excellent hook.

It’s also much less common in the U.S. for women to be as heavily inked as women in Australia.

????

but since Winifred is American, she is not likely to find it wanting. Do you need somewhere for Freddie to live?

Why refer to both name and nickname back to back?

I received my tenth rejection letter for the opus yesterday. It feels like something which should be marked. Perhaps I shall buy a cake.

I’m still a little in awe every time I step into the chequerboard foyer of Carrington Square. It’s one of those Victorian brownstones for which Back Bay is famous—a magnificent gabled exterior, renovated to perfection within.

My one-bedroom apartment looks out over an internal courtyard featuring landscaped gardens and cast-iron fountains. It’s beautifully furnished and decorated—an address usually beyond the means of a humble writer.

in bookcases in which are stored the works of each of the previous Sinclair scholarship winners who w...

The collection is both inspiring and terrifying. Wonderful novels in almost every genre, crafted in the year during which ...

In the fifty or so years the scholarship has been running, the apartment has no doubt been refurbished and redecorated several times, but these bookcases remain untouched, sacrosanct. The heart and purpose...

Today I return from the library exhilarated. We had lingered in the Map Room for hours, Cain, Whit, Marigold, and I. It was bizarre, four strangers who seemed to recognize each other, like we’d been friends before in a life forgotten. We talked about all manner of things, laughed about most of it, and poked fun at each other without restraint. It felt like being at home, and I breathed out completely for the first time since I stepped on that flight from Sydney.

Cain is a published writer—his first book was reviewed by the New York Times. He doesn’t tell me that last bit; I google him on the way home. The Washington Post called him one of America’s most promising young novelists, and his first book was something of a sensation.

Wow!

Marigold is in fact studying psychology at Harvard,

Whit is failing law. The failing part doesn’t seem to bother him. It is the only way, apparently, that he can avoid be...

Leo Johnson crosses my path on the stairs.

Leo is also a writer in residence at Carrington Square. He’s from Alabama originally, though I think he went to Harvard at some point. He holds a fellowship which seems to be the American equivalent of the Sinclair, and occupies an apartment a few doors away from mine.

Leo is the closest thing I have to a colleague.

“Would you like to come in for a coffee?” Leo shakes his head. “No, ma’am. There’s a story-cooking gleam in your eyes. I’ll leave you alone to write. Let’s compare notes in the next couple of days.” I agree, relieved. I do feel an urgency to write. And I like Leo even more for the fact that he understands.

We had all agreed to meet at the BPL tomorrow. Actually, Cain and I had agreed to meet, to form a writers’ group of sorts. Marigold and Whit had decided that any group should include them, regardless of its purpose. “We can be sounding boards,” Marigold insisted. “And inspiration,” Whit added. And so it was arranged.

I like this motley crew

A reporter talking to a camera. “…the body of a young woman was discovered by cleaning staff in the Boston Public Library.”

That was true. “Do you think they’ll close the library tomorrow?” “Maybe the room she was found in, but surely not the whole library.” Marigold’s voice drops into a part whisper. “It must have been close to Bates Hall.”

“We might have passed him on the way out—the killer, I mean.”

Marigold has a paper due on juvenile maternal separation anxiety, which she calls “mommy’s boys and the women who create them.”

Lmao

It feels a little indecent to write so well in the wake of tragedy. But I do. The story of strangers bonded by a scream.

Well played, my friend, well played! The Sinclair Fellowship is a terrific idea. You can place Winifred in Back Bay without burdening her with vast wealth. And she can be Australian.

And you put me in the story! With a Southern accent and my own fellowship. I am overwhelmed! You forgot to mention that Leo was tall and devastatingly attractive, but I suppose that’s a given.

okay i like leo. But is hannah stealing his ideas?? Or just genuine helping?

And now the other subject of your email… God, Hannah, thank you. I really did not expect you to offer to take my manuscript to your agent. I’m embarrassed that you might think that I was fishing for that. I assure you I wasn’t. And though I’m too proud to accept your help, I’m too desperate to turn it down.

“Where do you think they found her?” I ask. I don’t really know the library that well. I’ve only been using it for a few days. “That’s what I can’t figure out,” he says. “We heard her scream, so she had to be in one of the rooms around Bates Hall…but they were searched.” “Unless the scream had nothing, in fact, to do with the body.” He frowns. “True. The scream might have been what the crime writers call”—he pauses for effect—“a red herring.” I smile. “Still, a heck of a coincidence.” “They do occur in reality, even if they are a bad plot device.”

We learn that the body was found in Chavannes Gallery, which was being prepared for an event the next day. That the woman’s name was Caroline Palfrey.

“Brahmin.” “As in the cow?” I ask, a little confused. “As in the social class.” He explains that the Palfreys are from a long line of Brahmins, members of Boston’s traditional upper echelons. “They’re rich?” “It’s more than wealth,” he says. “The Brahmins were integral to the East Coast establishment. They’re a culture unto themselves.

we all head into the library only to find that Bates Hall—in fact the entire second floor—is closed.

There’s something all-American about Marigold’s smile, wide and quick and optimistic. You can imagine the Stars and Stripes fluttering behind her when she smiles, almost smell the apple pie.

Honey. Read the room. We're not patriotic rn.

But they all smile while they talk—that’s the difference, I think, that’s what makes it American. Australians don’t seem to be able to smile and talk at the same time—unless we’re lying, of course. And then the smile is involuntary, a tell of deceit.