Yet today I find myself entering the library. Unobtrusively, shaking droplets of rain from my coat. And there is Ms. Laporte at the front desk, surprised in the act of stamping a date into a library book for a patron, casting a startled glance in my direction, a confused smile, with an expression of—is it gratification or mortification? Inevitable that I will pass by Ms. Laporte’s desk, greet her with a courteous smile, though not a warm nor even a brisk handshake (for we have not had that sort of relationship), nor would Ms. Laporte offer her hand to me. And the thought comes to me, unbidden—Not you. Sorry!

I know: Ms. Laporte is (possibly) in love with Mr. N__, the notoriously obscure and reclusive twenty-first-century author of enigmatic fictions.

But though I share a name with N__, I am not in fact N__. Thus I have no responsibility for the fantasies attractive, well-groomed, and “stylish” women, married or un-, spin of me in their idle hours.

As (partial) restitution for avoiding the library/avoiding Ms. Laporte for months, I will donate five hundred dollars to the Friends of the Herrontown Library.

3.

After the post office and the library, there is the neighborhood grocery store. Where, like Herrontown residents who have neither the inclination nor the energy to drive three miles to the glaring Safeway at the mall, I am obliged to shop for necessities.

McGuire’s Grocery, corner of Humboldt and Depot. In a neighborhood of old redbrick buildings, small businesses, vacant storefronts. Draw a deep breath, step inside. A sensation of unease, anticipation awaits.

Three cashiers. But only the third cashier is of interest.

The name hand-printed on the little plastic badge is exotic—KEISHA. The woman herself is not at all exotic: in her late thirties, sallow-skinned, shyly awkward—“H’lo, sir, how are you today?” (Annoying query that cashiers at McGuire’s Grocery are evidently required to ask customers.) From a distance Keisha appears to be bald, but closer up you see that her delicate head is covered in a fine, soft down, the hair of a newborn. She is painfully thin—upper body, arms, wrists. Her face is a girl’s face cruelly drawn with fatigue, her eyeballs lightly flecked with blood.

(Cancer? Chemotherapy? And now her hair is beginning to grow back?)

Vaguely I recall, this is the female cashier who’d been wearing unflattering knitted caps on her head last fall. And then, for a while, could’ve been months, she’d disappeared from the grocery altogether. Until this minute I had not quite realized she’d been gone.

Though the most physically frail of the cashiers at McGuire’s, Keisha is the most diligent and efficient. Deferential to customers, respectful and attentive to her work. Rarely smiling until she hands me the receipt for my purchases, and then a sweet, shy smile—“Thank you, sir.”

Evoking the reply: “Thank you.”