“Are you going to serve me, young lady?” the woman demands.

“Would you like me to serve you?” I ask patiently. I don’t point out that she could have saved herself a lot of time by simply asking to be served.

The woman’s eyes boggle. “Why do you think I’m standing here?”

“There are an infinite number of reasons,” I reply. “You are, as you may have noticed, directly adjacent to the water fountain, which is a high-traffic area for the library. You might be using the desk to shuffle documents on your way over to the photocopier. You may be admiring the Monet print on the wall behind me—something I do several times a day. You may have paused on your way to the door to tie your shoelace, or to double-check if that person over in the nonfiction section is your ex-boyfriend. You might, as I was before you came along, be enjoying Linda’s wonderful rendition of ‘The Three Little Pigs’—”

I have more examples, many many more, but I am cut off by Gayle, who approaches the desk hurriedly. “May I help you there?”

Gayle has a knack for turning up at opportune times. She has fluffy blond hair, exceedingly potent perfume, and a thing about bringing me lemons from her lemon tree. I once made the mistake of saying I’d enjoyed a slice of lemon in hot water and since then I’ve barely gone a day without a lemon from Gayle. I’d tell her to stop, but Rose says people enjoy making themselves useful in these small ways and the best thing to do is to thank them and throw the lemon away. Bizarre as it sounds, Rose tends to be right about these things.

“Finally!” the woman says, and then launches into a story about how her son left his library books at the beach house and then it got fumigated so they weren’t able to collect the books until yesterday and now they’ve incurred a fine and, also, she’d like to extend her loan, but the book has twenty-seven reserves on it! Twenty-seven! As far as stories to get out of fines go, this one is rather benign, I have to say. I spoke with a gentleman recently who explained that his daughter had taken his library copy of Ulysses on a trekking vacation to the Andes, where she’d left it in a mountain village with a mother of newborn twins whose husband had recently passed away. I marveled that an Andean village woman could read English so well as to read Ulysses, not to mention have a desire to read such a book while single-handedly raising her twins on a mountaintop, but before I could ask him much about either, he shuffled away. (Gayle, of course, waived the fine.)

I work in the library four days a week, plus two Sundays a month. If it’s not raining, like today, I walk the thirty-five minutes to work while listening to my audiobook and I arrive at the library a minimum of fifteen minutes before my shift. If it is raining, I catch the bus and arrive at a similar time. I then spend the day recommending books, processing returns, and avoiding questions about the photocopiers. Depending on the particular day, I might also order new books, set up the conference room for author talks or community meetings, or put together book packages for the home library service. I try to avoid conversations about things other than books, although I’ll occasionally indulge Gayle in a conversation about her garden or her grandchildren, because Rose says it’s polite to do this with people who we like.

I’m listening to Gayle waive the fine for the woman with the coral-colored fingernails when my eye is drawn to a young man in thick glasses and a red-and-white-striped beanie entering through the automatic doors. A homeless person, most likely, judging by his too-loose jeans and the towel draped over his shoulder. He makes a beeline for the shower room. The Bayside library boasts two showers (thanks to its former life as a hospital), so it’s not uncommon for the homeless to come in to shower. The first time I saw a homeless person come in, I was affronted, but that was before I worked with Janet. Janet, my old supervisor, taught me that the library belongs to everyone. The library, Janet used to say, is one of only a few places in the world that one doesn’t need to believe anything or buy anything to come inside … and it is the librarian’s job to look after all those who do. I take this responsibility very seriously, except if they require assistance with the photocopiers and then I give them a very wide berth.

I reach for my handbag and follow the man toward the bathroom. He’s tall—very tall—and lanky looking. From behind, with his pom-pom bouncing on his stripy hat, he reminds me a little of Wally of Where’s Wally? fame.

“Wally!” I call as he steps into the small vestibule—an airless, windowless tiled room leading to both the men’s and women’s bathrooms. I usually avoid this space at all costs, but seeing the man enter, I feel an unexpected compulsion to face my fears.

“Were you planning to use the shower?”

He turns around, eyebrows raised, but doesn’t respond. I wonder if he might be hearing impaired. We have a large community of hearing-impaired patrons at our library. I repeat myself loudly and slowly, allowing him to lip-read.

“Yes?” he says finally, his intonation rising as if he is asking a question rather than answering one.

I start to question my impulse to follow him. I have become more wary of vagrants since a man exposed himself to me a few months back during an evening shift. I had been replacing a copy of Ian McEwan’s Atonement when suddenly, at eye level, there was a penis, in the “Mc” section of General Fiction. I alerted Gayle, who called the police, but by the time they arrived, the man had zipped up and shuffled out of the place. “You should have snapped it in between the covers of that hardback,” Gayle had said, which sounded messy, not to mention unwise for the hygiene of the book. When I pointed this out, she suggested I “karate-chop” him, which is neither an actual karate move (I have a black belt) nor something I would be tempted to do, since karate has a pacifist philosophy.

I have been doing karate since I did a trial class in grade two and the sensei said I was a “natural” (an odd comment as there was nothing natural about kata—on the contrary, the movements felt very specific and unnatural). Still, I found I enjoyed it immensely—the consistency, the routine, the structure, even the physical contact, which was always firm if not hard. Even the “Kiai” shouts, while loud, are to a count and expected. So twenty years later, I’m still doing it.

“Well, here you go then.”

I reach into my handbag and retrieve the small toiletry bag that I keep in there. I hand it to Wally, who holds it away from himself as if it might contain a ticking bomb. “What … is … this?”