How Can I Help You

by Laura Sims

In the library, time is dammed up—not just stopped but saved. The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever. —Susan Orlean, The Library Book

Men can never keep their violence to themselves.

I’ve always believed in the restorative properties of baths—for my patients and myself.

“The library is a community center now. It’s a gathering place. We want people to come together and, yes, talk, if they want to. We want young people to come here and hang out. If they grow up in the library, they’ll value it later, see?”

The truth is I don’t read; when I’ve tried to here and there, it’s been too unsettling, reading someone else’s thoughts and feelings in fine print. I have enough of a time dealing with my own thoughts and feelings—why should I take on someone else’s, too?

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, staring, red-faced, as I walk away.

Well, someone has a fetishist for being dominated.

But once they’ve left, the emptiness yawns wide once more. I had a project. Now I don’t.

Sometimes, when the bath fails, the fire succeeds. Fire succeeds: that’s something I learned as a child—standing safely back from a house ablaze—and I’ve never forgotten it.

Who is this woman?!?

I tell Patricia it was nice meeting her, though I want to say: It was weird meeting you. It was disturbing meeting you. Patricia gives me a distracted smile.

At the sight of it, I moan.

She seems aroused. Most "killer angels" seem to want the power of life and death. Margo/Jane seems to want more. Not sex, but to be there when death comes, taking part of it with her at that moment, to breathe their last breath.

my master’s thesis: Digital Library Services: Tools of Equity in Community Outreach.

I hate her right now: she suffered a blow; she picked herself up. Now she’s stepped back into her meaningful life. And she makes it look easy. It isn’t—for some of us.

Better to come up with a good, solid lie than dish out vagueness. This is for that troublesome heart of yours, I’d tell a patient who eyed my needle questioningly. This will help you sleep, I told another. Those weren’t lies, come to think of it.

While I was reading the description, my pulse sped up. I didn’t know a book could do that, either.

It takes an effort for me to close the book and set it aside. To drag myself up from the chair to clean my dishes and ready myself for bed. To not touch the book again when I’m tucked under the covers. To turn out the light.

No. It wouldn’t be wise to read again; it throws me off-kilter. And really, I have no desire for any book but mine.

“It’s like being a bartender,”

Maybe one of the reasons I'd love being in a bookshop or library. Next career,, maybe.

Maybe Merricat was a monster—she had certainly done monstrous things—but she was human, too. Deeply human. I rooted for her from the first word to the last, even knowing I probably shouldn’t.

Turning to face the other mourners was the hardest part—feeling their love and pity envelop me, their hands reach out to enfold me in embraces that weren’t, and would never be, hers.

OMG, what wonderful writing in these passages.

already dreading the hours I’ll lose to our tedious togetherness.

And now I’m scalded and scoured, serene, with a purified soul. Who needs religion when you can have a nightly bath?

when she’d walked in to find me perched on Ms. Jensen’s bed, breathing in her death.

Who said in life you get to do what you want? I’m one of the lucky ones—I got to do what I wanted for years and years.

Sounds like interviews with The Ether Man.

so I could go on seeing the raging beauty of that fire. It was the first great thing I’d made; I wanted to savor it.

Sociopath? Maybe psychopath? Sociopath is a term used to describe someone with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), a mental health condition characterized by a persistent pattern of disregard for societal norms, laws, and the rights and feelings of others. Some signs in childhood but not diagnosed until at least young adult. Psychopath has lack of empathy and no remorse. Do not rationalize their actions. Clinical observations at ASH have suggested 4 possible subtypes of psychopathy: narcissistic, borderline, sadistic, and antisocial. Iss

comparison to my calamitous Jane, who potentially killed over eighty patients, though they’ll never be sure.

OMG

But I know what he thinks about libraries. He’s told me before that he hates the miasma of social welfare and desperation filling the air of even the nicest, newest, most sleekly designed libraries. Contemporary design doesn’t make it any less of a homeless shelter, he’s said before. I’ve told him, of course, about the library’s role in fostering equity, providing a physical and digital space for its diverse community . . . but

Well, Dan's horrible.

his bright, blandly decorated office on the twenty-first floor, the one that holds him high above and safe from the dingy masses.

seeing her as an anonymous frump to seeing her as a crazed killer. There would be no nuance, no shading of gray. But Margo is all gray, all shading; she shifts like the sky from one moment to the next.

I will say Margo hasn't really been described as a frump, even referring to her queenly air.

“Good fucking riddance,”

Hell yes

I’m not guilty, I tell myself, closing my eyes. I’m just writing things down. I’m just making things up.