Loneliness

The library was still and silent on a weekday night. The stacks creaking with age and weight always sounded to Mikey like threatening footsteps and made his hair stand on end and his hands ball into nervous fists, the white skin stretching across his knobby bones. He imagined what he would do if a withered hand stole out between the enormous tomes stacked high in the reference section or what he would do if that hand touched his shoulder or caressed the back of his neck, one dry and ancient finger scratching down the skin there with all the tender care of a lover.

At night the library always got to him. He tried to imagine it how it was during the day, full of whispered conversations and the hushed pitter patter of the feet of adults and children alike. The sunlight always fell through the tall windows with what felt like carelessness, ease, radiating heat and lighting up and fading the spines of countless books. But then that careless sunlight would fade and there would be just the sounds of his own breathing and footsteps, and the stacks would be dark and looming instead of warm and inviting.

When Mikey was the only one in the library he was constantly looking over his shoulder and making as little noise as possible.

But not tonight. Tonight as he sat at his desk, his feet up on the false oak wood, dangerously close to knocking over the bronze plaque that always made him feel like a real grownup - Michael Way, Head Librarian- he had things he wanted to say. He couldn’t go home and say them, because his apartment had paper thin walls and the last thing he wanted was to be heard by his neighbors, who once knocked politely on his door and asked him if he could start singing a little quieter at night, the baby was having trouble falling asleep.

Maybe that was just an excuse. Maybe he wanted to sing in the cavernous library because if he did it loud enough, his voice would be sure to echo of the walls back at him, and if he closed his eyes, he was sure it would feel like he wasn’t singing alone. If only for a moment. But that moment would matter, he was sure of it.

He hummed a little in the back of his throat, testing the air. The sound was small and there was no echo, so he tried it a little louder. Making loud noises in the library felt indecently wrong, but it also sent a thrill through Mikey, like he knew he was doing something wrong but that didn’t stop him.

He hummed again, this time even louder. When the echoes finally died out, the library seemed even more silent than before. The feeling of doing something wrong was still pulsing through his veins, making his head surge, and he loved it. He took his feet off his desk and sat up, folding his hands in his lap like his mother had taught him.

“Happy birthday to you,” his voice was high and wavering, a voice that would never sell records but was pleasant all the same, in the same way your father singing you a lullaby was. “Happy birthday to you,” he was growing both confidence and volume, and later he would remember how the windows were rattling slightly, though at the time he didn’t notice.

“Happy birthday to Mikey, happy birthday to you.”

The echoes died out and after a moment of silence the idiocy of what he had just done smacked Mikey in the face. How pathetic and low could he get? Singing happy birthday to himself in a deserted library in the middle of the night? Why did he even think of doing it in the first place?

Because no one else was going to, he thought bitterly at himself. And you know it.

It was true. His parents were dead. His only brother was self absorbed addict, lodged away in a rehab somewhere. Gerard couldn’t even remember Mikey’s birthday even when they lived the same house. There were no friends. Oh, sure - he joked around and sometimes ate lunch with the two assistant librarians, Billie and Ray, but they were best friends themselves, and seemed exclusive. And they didn’t know when his birthday was, anyway. It’s not like he was going to tell them.

---

After his little show, the creaks and darkness got to be too much for Mikey. He ducked out into the September night with his collar turned up like a spy, slinking to his conspicuously lonely car and driving home. He went up the three flights of stairs and opened his rickety door, smiling when his cat wrapped herself around his legs, mewling.

“Hi, King,” he said fondly to her, closing the door behind him. “Have a good day?”

King was too busy sniffing his shoes to answer, but Mikey got the gist.

He went quietly into his bedroom, falling horizontally onto the double bed fully clothed and without bothering to eat or turn the lights off or set his alarm, let himself fall into a kind of stupor/sleep, his thoughts few and far between, but still conscious enough to know that King had slunk into the room with him and was now laying at the foot of the bed.

Right before he fell fully asleep, he wondered his life would be like if he wasn’t always so fucking lonely.

---

Mikey’s internal alarm clock woke him up the next day at 8:10, giving him about 20 minutes to get up, get dressed, actually start his mind up, and go to work. He cursed and moaned under his breath but of course no one but King heard it, and King didn’t seem too interested. She didn’t even bother waking up to say goodbye. Mikey couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt a little.

He changed his tie from black to black with blue stripes and his pants from black to gray, knowing that no one would notice anyway. His car stopped on the freeway but all it took was one curse to life to get it going again, and he got to the library parking lot at 8:32 on the dot. One minute earlier than yesterday, he thought proudly, wondering if getting older was making him faster.

Billie and Ray greeted him with their usual early morning cheerfulness, and Mikey greeted them with his usual early morning grunt and head tilt in their general direction. The library was almost empty so early, besides for the usual old men in the Newspaper Corner and the frazzled college students obviously cramming for a test they forgot.

Mikey sometimes brought coffee to the more hopeless looking ones.

“I’ve been there,” he always said when they asked him why.

Billie and Ray were perfectly capable librarians; it was with this thought that Mikey had no qualms about locking himself in a back storage room, laying down on the carpeted floor, and falling asleep until 10, when the stay-at-home-mother-and-her-whiny-children rush started and he was needed at the desk. Emerging from the back with bed head and a rumpled suit jacket, he plastered on a smile and went to the desk, ready to deal with the oncoming stream of overdue payments, issuing new library cards, and checking out books.

It was all very hectic and stressful; Mikey loved it.

---

“Keep it real, Mikey man,” Billie said as he and Ray left for the night. The library closed at 10:00 on weekdays, and Mikey always let them go home early if there was no one around.

“Bye, guys,” Mikey replied, putting one hand up in a wave, watching as they immediately fell into step and began a conversation, obviously happy to be with each other. Ray threw his head back in laughter at something Billie said and Billie punched him on the shoulder as they disappeared around the corner.

Mikey stared at the point they had been last, still, his face blank. Something was burning in the back of his throat - he supposed it was jealousy, but he didn’t really want to admit it to himself. The only real friend he had ever had was Gerard, and it’s not like Gerard ever really cared about anyone but himself anyway, at least not since their Grandma died and he decided it would be really cool to immerse himself in crusty punk and alcohol and the occasional line of coke and leave his baby brother behind to fend for himself. As hard as Mikey tried, he couldn’t believe Gerard would ever really get better. He -

A slam on the desk in front of him jolted Mikey out of his thoughts with a loud yell.

“Sorry, man. Shit’s heavy,” the man on the other side of the counter said, smiling a little, not quite laughing. He gestured at the pile of books in front of him, and they were indeed large and heavy hardcovers.

Mikey tried to stop his heart from breaking out of his chest, as it was threatening to do. “It’s okay. I just… I didn’t know anyone was left in here.”

“I’m a master of stealth,” the guy said, his lips curling up into another smilelaugh, his eyes twinkling.

“Must be. Can I see your card?” It was ten to ten, and Mikey was impatient.

“I’m new in town, so I don’t have one,” he was still smiling but his tone was apologetic. Excellent, Mikey thought dryly, but he said nothing, keeping the façade of nice librarian up.

“Fill this out, shouldn’t take long,” Mikey gave the guy a form and finally tipped his eyes up to look him straight in the face. He had metal hoops going through his lips and metal studs going through his eyebrows and nostrils. Mikey could see tendrils of ink curling up past his shirt collar and twist around the back of his neck, and he recognized the black and brown combination of color in the guy’s hair from back when Gerard used to dye his hair - a fading dye job.

Thinking about Gerard made Mikey angry, but something about this guy’s face made Mikey smile.

He took no time with the form, and when he handed it back covered in handwriting that was all caps, Mikey noted his name was Frank. Not Franklin, but Frank. He smiled at him.

“Hold up a second, Frank. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay…” he stopped. “Shouldn’t you have on a nametag or something?”

“My name’s Mikey,” Mikey said, smiling widely, unable to remember the last time someone had asked him for his name and actually looked interested. He walked to the other side of the desks and got a blank ID card. When he came back, Frank gave him a half smile and closed the ‘library safety’ pamphlet he had been leafing through.

“I didn’t think there was so much to worry about in a library,” he said.

“You’d be surprised what sort of things can happen. People who read are really incredibly stupid,” Mikey laughed and told Frank to sign the back of the card, which he did with tattooed hands and chipping black nails.

“You are now an official member of the Belleville Public Library,” Mikey said grandly, his arms gesturing widely, his heart soaring oddly in his chest when Frank laughed and clapped.

“Dreams do come true,” he said, his smile exposing teeth that were straight but still somehow imperfect.

Mikey scanned his card and picked up the first heavy hardcover. “Desperation,” he read out loud. “Stephen King! Dude! Awesome!”

He looked up with stars in his eyes at Frank, who now seemed to be bathed in a glowing kind of light. “I’m assuming you’ve read The Regulators? My god, dude, the concept of parallel universes between the two is fucking genius, I-”

He stopped and blushed. “I’m sorry. I probably sound extremely nerdy right now.”

“No, dude, I’m a total King fan boy. And I totally agree, it’s especially interesting how he wrote one novel as Bachman and one as King, it creates a link between his alternate personality and himself - a healthy link, mind you, not one like in The Dark Half,” he laughed a little and Mikey felt his figurative jaw drop open.

“Dude, I have never met another person who has read The Dark Half,” Mikey said, still in awe. “Nor have I ever met another King fan boy. I named my cat after him.”

Whoa, Mikey. Just embarrass yourself some more, you fucking nerd. Mikey thought at himself, but Frank was not fazed.

“No way! Badass! I named my goldfish Pennywise!” Frank exclaimed, his voice raising a pitch in his excitement. They looked at each other and started to laugh, and Mikey decided that the sound of his laughter mixing with someone else’s sounded a lot better reverberating off the walls then his lonely singing of the night before.

Mikey checked out the rest of his books as they talked and laughed, and Mikey amazed himself because he knew that all of his laughter was truly genuine.

“Thanks a lot, man,” Frank said when Mikey handed over his books and new library card. “I know the library was supposed to be closed by now, so I really appreciate this.”

It was 10:30 and Mikey hadn’t even noticed the clock ticking past ten.

“You’re welcome, Frank. It was no problem whatsoever,” Mikey smiled and a silence fell over them, the first awkward one of the night.

“Would you… would you want to go get coffee or something sometime?” Frank asked him suddenly, looking unsure of himself for the first time.

“Yes. I’d love to,” Mikey answered without a moments hesitation, not even really realizing that if Frank hadn’t asked he would have himself.

“Awesome. You have my number on that form thing, just… just call me, whenever.”

“I will. Bye, Frank,” Mikey said, and Frank smiled and waved from the doors, leaving and taking the same way as Billie and Ray, his head bent against the slight cold and wind, his arms wrapped around his books. There was a wallet chain dangling from his belt loops, and it winked in dim light from the streetlamps surrounding the library at night.

Mikey locked the front doors after him and went back to his desk, staring at the form and staring at Frank’s number, still floating from their encounter, for many different reasons.

One, he had held a conversation with someone, a real conversation, without embarrassing himself horribly.

Two, he had actually gotten a guy’s phone number, something he had failed to do his entire life.

Three, he was still unable to believe how good it felt to laugh with someone, not alone or just with King, and he could still hear the echoes of their mirth in the back of his mind. He imagined their laughter absorbed into the books and magazines, mixing with all the laughter those stacks must have heard before.

He smiled at the thought of Frank’s goldfish named after a serial killer clown, smiling when he thought of how Frank’s back had bent with the weight of all the books he had checked out. The form crumpled into his back pocket brought hope to his heart, because the brief glimpse he had of life without loneliness, life with real laughter, seemed both beautiful and bright, two words he had used sparingly, if ever, before. Frank’s face swam into the forefront of his mind as he went about shutting the building down, getting it ready for the next day.

And as he drove away from the dark, empty library, Michael Way, head librarian, was still smiling.