Holding Swale

You change your shirt three times.

That's the first humiliation. The second is that Clio sees you do it.

"Who," she says from the doorway of your bedroom, a mug of tea in each hand, "is the green sweater for?"

"Nobody. It's cold."

"It's the green sweater, Ava. The one that makes your eyes look like a crime. You wore it to your defense." She narrows hers. "Is it a man? Tell me it's a man and not a manuscript."

"It's a study session."

"With who?"

You think about Vellum: the slanting pencil, two months of margins, you are wrong about Aldine and I love how you're wrong. You think about how you've never seen his face and how, some nights, that's been the only thing that made it possible to tell him the truth.

"Someone from the library," you say.

Clio's whole face lights up. "The margins guy."

You throw a sock at her. She ducks, cackling, and spills tea down the hall.

You had told her about Vellum in September, before you'd known it would turn into anything. That was before you'd told Vellum about your father's hands, scarred from twenty years of pallets. Before you'd told him you sometimes rehearse the conversation where you explain to your dad that you didn't make it, that you're coming home to Hazleton, and you never get past the first sentence. Before he'd written back, under one of Swale's angriest letters, I don't think you're going home. But if you do, I hope someone tells you, every day, that you were the best thing in the room.

You've never been the best thing in any room. You put on the green sweater anyway.

On Saturdays the Pellingham closes at ten. By nine, the reading room is nearly empty: two history students asleep on their laptops near the door, rain sliding down the tall windows, the green lamps glowing like a field of fireflies down the long oak tables.

And at the center table, under the biggest window, sits Oliver Grayle.

You stop in the doorway.

He's alone. Gray coat over the back of his chair, sleeves pushed up, a stack of books at his elbow and one open in front of him. The lamp throws gold across his cheekbones. He looks up as if he felt you arrive, and for one second something crosses his face, too fast to read.

Then it's gone, and he's Oliver again. "Mazur. You're not on tonight."

"Neither are you."

"I'm a patron. Patrons are allowed to be anywhere they like." He looks at the green sweater and away again. "You're dressed for something."

"I'm meeting someone."

"Ah." He turns a page. "Not anyone I know, I hope."

"Definitely not anyone you know." You take a seat at the far end of the same table, because it's the only table with a clear view of both the doorway and the reference shelf, and because you're not going to let him chase you off. You open your laptop. You don't type anything.

Nine-oh-five. Nine-ten.

You look at the door every time it creaks. It's always the wind.

"Waiting for a date?" Oliver says, not looking up.

"A colleague."

"On a Saturday. In a green sweater."

"Is there a reason you're commenting on my clothes, Grayle?"

"I'm a scholar. I read everything." He says it lightly, your own words from the vault, and your face goes hot. "And it's very green."

"Do you not have somewhere to be? A yacht? A polo match? An estate with a moat?"

His mouth does that thing again, the almost-smile. "The moat's being drained this weekend. Terribly inconvenient."

Nine-twenty. Nine-thirty. One of the sleeping history students wakes up, packs his laptop and leaves, and the reading room gets quieter, and quieter.

Nobody else comes in.

At nine-forty you get up and go to the reference shelf, because maybe Vellum had meant holding Swale literally, maybe he's taken the reading copy somewhere in the building and is waiting for you to find him, maybe this is a game. The green 1911 edition isn't on the shelf.

You turn around.

It's on the center table. Under Oliver Grayle's elbow. He's been reading it the whole time.

"That's," you say, and stop.

He glances down at the book as if he's only just noticed it. "The Swale letters. Yes. Did you need it?"

"I." Your throat is dry. "Someone else was supposed to be using it."

"Well. I'm sure they won't mind sharing." He slides it across the table toward you, unhurried, and goes back to the book in front of him, which you now see is Aldine's 1798 Poems. He doesn't look at you. He seems absorbed.

You sit back down in your chair with the reading copy in your lap like it's a bomb.

Nine-fifty. Nine-fifty-five.

Nobody comes. Of course nobody comes. You feel it settle in your chest, cold and stupid. Two months of margins and you'd built a person out of pencil. Maybe Vellum came, looked through the doorway, saw you sitting there in your best sweater, and decided he'd rather keep writing to someone who couldn't see his face. Maybe that's what Swale's Adversary did too. Maybe that's all anyone ever does.

At the long table, the lamp hums. Oliver turns another page.

At ten o'clock, the bell for closing rings far off in the building, and you open the reading copy to Letter XIV to leave him one last note. You already know what it'll say. Something cool and dignified. Something that won't show him a thing.

Your pencil is already moving toward the margin when you see it.

Fresh graphite, still shining under the lamp. The slanted hand you've been reading all semester. And you know it. You've known it longer than you've known Vellum. You've seen it every week for four years, on the seminar whiteboard in Hollins 204, correcting your dates. You've seen it in red pen on a printout of your writing sample you found once in the department recycling, the one with apologizing underlined twice.

The new note says:

I told you I'd be the one holding Swale.

And under it:

Hello, Foxing.

Your heart stops. Restarts. Stops again.

Slowly, you lift your eyes.

At the other end of the long oak table, under the green lamp, Oliver Grayle closes Aldine's Poems. He doesn't smile. He doesn't look smug. He looks like a man who's just stepped off a ledge in the dark and is waiting to find out whether there's a floor.

"Hello, Ava," says Vellum.