Women go to the bathroom in herds, there's no reason they shouldn't buy cellphones in herds too. Or gossip in herds in their identical business suits, their employer's fading acronym stitched above each heart. Jeremy smiles at the sight of them, and remembers dances in the eighth grade, all the girls he liked gathered and moving in one group, one organism, one unified body unifying all his confused feelings. And now they are like him, middleaged and plain and on their lunchbreak at a cheap pizza place.
"How are you doing today sir?" It's the black guy, bald. His head is like an egg that's malformed-fatter-at the top. This seems to be caused by his glasses, wrapped tight as rope around his face. And he always calls Jeremy sir.
"Same as always."
"Buffet and Coke? $4.85."
Jeremy passes him a five, and receives in return fifteen cents and an empty glass. He grabs a tray and plate and starts down the aisle of a dozen pizzas. He gravitates to the beef, the minuscule bits of meat like periods jabbed into the greasy cheese. He sits near the Cellphone Herd, but leaves enough distance to overhear them if he wants to, or read in peace. It's remarkable, how people end up. He props open volume three of James Joyce's Letters and grins at the red marks in the margins, the scribbles and underlined passages made by a version of himself now twenty years gone, when he thought to be a scholar, a teacher-really just a writer.
He still has that eye, but not that heart, or that mind. He still sees things, hears things, notices things others don't-but even then he trips over them, can't make much sense out of them, can never put them all together. For instance he still sees the women in their business suits with their plastic bags of brand-new cellphones at their feet, and he thinks it is peculiar and endearing-but he doesn't know why. The further he takes an observation the more it becomes like a commercial or stereotype-there's no real thought, only a pleasing image and an easy conclusion. A conclusion like these women must all be hollow and dead inside, or that he, a desk clerk, a secretary to a secretary, an assistant to an assistant at a college library, is little more than an anecdote.
One of the women glances at him in between talking to her friends. She smiles through her lipstick and looks quickly away. She looked at the book and could probably tell that it is not a best-seller, not a beach-read. It is not something she can mention in passing as she gets up to go, or a conversation-starter if she thinks to linger at his table. It is not Harry Potter. It is something she probably knows nothing about and wouldn't care to know anything about. And it is something Jeremy once wanted to make his life's work, and he thinks that maybe it was looks like hers that killed that part of him. He could never take the loneliness he knew was necessary to write. He would go to bars or bookstores or restaurants; he would stand on streetcorners or outside of his own house and wait for the neighbors to pass; he would sit in the cafeteria in college for hours, and wait for someone to sit with him, ask what he was doing, be interested. But no one ever did. So he sat in various corners with various books or notebooks, being able neither to read nor write, staring at the people who were supposedly his peers and becoming more and more angry until they didn't even acknowledge his existence. They only looked at him funny, and he hated it. And he still hates it, that immediately dismissive look.
One of the new phones suddenly rings and the woman scrambles through her purse like only prissy middleage women with long nails can-like a delicate rat-and finally pulls it out. "Where's my vibrator?" she asks her friends. "Shouldn't it vibrate?" When they realize what she means all of her friends laugh the way all dissatisfied, frigid, middleaged women laugh at dirty jokes-as if they're still virgins, or wished they were. They wipe their dainty hands on their napkins and page through their tiny instruction manuals, licking their fingertips before turning a page.
"Well-well Mr. Waxman, how are you today?"
He slaps the book closed at the sound of a familiar voice. It's Professor Mane, from the history department. He wears old jeans with rolled-up cuffs, a white v-neck sweater underneath a skyblue raincoat, and bursting out of his backpack are books, notebooks, paper, and the bottom end of a table-leg, apparently used to ward off any attackers on his walk home. Mane doesn't own a car or a computer, so it makes sense he carries a stick instead of Mace, or a gun. A brilliant burst of short white hair shoots from his head, and the white beard and stern look on his face gives the impression of Santa Claus if he had come from Puritan New England: all wrath, and no gifts.
"Neil," Jeremy says, and they shake hands. "What, does the school just let you roam around like this?"
Mane's operatic laugh fills the pizza shop as he sits down, and the uneasy women snicker, their faces still buried in their instruction booklets. "Yes sir," Mane says, "every day around five they take off the shackles and let the history professor have a run about town."
"Awfully brave on their part."
"I would say so."
"So how have you been? I didn't know you ate here."
Mane rubs his belly and grins. "All you can eat pizza for five dollars? And no shortage of local color?"
"The perfect break from your ivory tower."
"You got it."
"Have you been to the library at all today? I wanted to ask you how your book was going."
"Actually, I was in the library this morning."
"Must have missed you."
"And did I miss Josh? I didn't see him. Nativa said she heard he'd been fired?"
"Oh has he? I'd heard Terence mentioning something about him, but didn't know he'd actually been fired."
"He was such a good kid ... if you don't mind my asking...?"
"Oh I don't know. I think it was something to do with the rare books collection? He'd taken a few of them?"
"Josh? I can't see him doing that."
"Or it was making free copies? To be honest, Neil, I don't know." Mane knows he's lying, and lying to a person like Mane amounts to giving him more information than if you tell him the truth. "Anyhow," Jeremy says, "I've got to be somewhere soon and have to finish eating."
"All right then."
"Have a good walk home."
Mane laughs. "Will do." Jeremy watches him stop at the register and change a ten out for a five and five singles. Once Mane disappears down the street Jeremy's eyes pass from one empty seat in the restaurant to another, all the empty spaces where people usually are, and where they pass from eventually. Neat steel chairs, black, with a red cushion. All so ordered, with a bigscreen TV in the back, CNN and the daily fake news blaring from it. So cold.
What happened was simple: he'd seen Josh on the security camera the other night, vacuuming. He watched this kid, this kid in his early twenties, gliding the vacuum beneath bookshelves and under tables like he was painting a canvas. He even twirled the chairs out of the way with grace, manipulating the extension cord like a lasso, twirling it over computers, above desks, and around corners. And he did it in full view of his peers, even with their participation and approval. They looked up from their books and laughed as he passed.
Jeremy watched the reaction of the girls especially, and even from the poor resolution of a primitive black-and-white security monitor, he could tell that they adored him. Jeremy watched him go from monitor to monitor, vacuuming, and it wasn't until he went behind the counter and adjusted one of the computer's speakers that Jeremy saw his chance. He slipped out of the back room, and the music got louder the closer to the front desk he stepped. It was a lone piano and a bombastic orchestra, duelling and answering one another, and it was loud enough to be heard by every decent student studying in the library.
He found Josh on the second floor. He stood behind him and said his name but got no response. He repeated himself twice and finally tapped him on the shoulder.
As the vacuum ceased Josh said, "Hey man, what're you still doing here?"
"Late night," Jeremy responded. "You want to tell me what this is?"
"What what is?"
"This music?"
"Oh, Beethoven. Fifth Piano Concerto, The Emperor-"
"That's not what I mean. You know people are trying to study in here. You know you're not allowed-"
"It's cool man, I do this every night, they don't mind-"
"That's not the point-"
"It's the same people every night, they like it."
"It's not your job to do things they like. Just clean up and make this place look decent for when Terence comes in in the morning."
"What do you think I'm doing-"
"Because it's my ass if something goes wrong-"
"Just chill man, it's only music, I'll go turn it off."
He started smugly to the steps when Jeremy yelled, "Don't walk away when I'm talking to you."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Is this a joke?"
"You get back here, I'm not through talking to you."
"You know what? You can get off doing this to someone else. I'm going to go finish my work."
"You either get back here right now or get your things and walk straight out that door."
Josh smiled and shrugged and jogged down the steps. He grabbed his bag and with a flourish flung it on his back. Jeremy watched him from the top floor stop the music and adjust the speakers. With a last mouse-click he walked away, and a moment later The Emperor began again, a volley of uplifting sound, a pounding virtuosic piano and an answering orchestra, and it was in this flourish that Josh walked out the door, leaving Jeremy on his useless perch, in full view of every students' smug stare.