Free The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

switching to one of the beanbag chairs, propping it up on a wide stack of books like a giant orange beanbag throne.
    Loraine leaned over the desk to hand me a sealed envelope, which I knew from experience probably contained a twenty-dollar gift card to one of the chain restaurants by the highway. “Merry Christmas!” she said. “And Hanukkah too, of course. Make sure you get some sleep. You could really use it.” Glenn stood there pretending to be fascinated by the Junie B. Jones books. When she left I closed up, and Glenn and I walked upstairs together. We passed Rocky at the main desk, and I thought of introducing Glenn as an old friend, but of course Rocky had seen him at the benefit. So instead I just said, “Merry Christmas! I’ll call you for a movie!” and Rocky gave a look like he was trying not to laugh. No: more like he was trying hard to look like he was trying not to laugh, but couldn’t get it quite right.
    Glenn and I went to Trattoria del Norte and drank a lot of wine, and I struggled to make conversation. We didn’t have much in common, I was discovering. And the more I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to date someone whose magnum opus was inadvertently based on a tile cleaner jingle. Nor did I want to be around when someone pointed this out to him. He didn’t seem even slightly aware of my ambivalence, though, and he just kept grinning at me from across the table, trying to stare into my eyes. I’d watched
The Music Man
enough times as a child to be wary of smiling musicians. The way they waltz into your library singing, swinging that con man briefcase and telling you to be spontaneous. They tell you this whole damn town could be saved with a little luck and a good marching band.
    To fill the silence I almost started telling Glenn about Ian’s temper tantrum, but thought better of it. If I was already bothering Rocky, who knew the kid and worked with me, how much would I annoy someone who
really
didn’t care? And amid the five hundred stupid decisions I made that winter—decisions that pointed straight to jail or worse—this drunken, half-arbitrary choice was probably the one that saved my life.

10

Stupid

    I tried to be objective in the way I watched Ian that winter, after read the origami e-mail. I don’t think I was imagining the way his eyes had gone dull or how he tended to shifted his weight heavily back and forth between his feet now, as if he were angrily waiting for a bathroom. He had always been moody, but before there had been good moods, and slightly manic moods, and now there weren’t. I gave him
The Search for Delicious
in early January, and he returned it the next day.
    “It was too boring,” he said. “I stopped.” I was shocked.
The Search for Delicious
, which my best readers will finish in a day, skipping dinner if necessary.
    “Well, what do you want now?”
    “Something else stupid.”
    “You want something stupid?”
    “Well, it’s all stupid, so I guess I don’t care. I’ll read a baby book.” He squeezed himself into one of the plastic chairs built for three-year-old rear ends and picked
Blueberries for Sal
without looking. He flipped the pages so fast I worried he’d rip them. “This book is the smartest book ever. This book is a genius. This book is too hard for me. Yay.” He shoved it back horizontally on top of the other picture books.
    Another day, he came bolting down the stairs, his coat still zipped. “Don’t tell her I’m down here!” he whispered, and ran past my desk and into the aisles. In the brief second I saw his face, it didn’t look scared, but it didn’t look exactly like a child playing a game, either. It looked like he was trying to be bad.
    A minute later, Mrs. Drake came down the stairs as fast as she could in her stacked heels and jeans and gray cashmere. “I’m sorry, Sarah-Ann, have you seen my son, Ian?” My God, she was thin. Her elbows were the widest part of her arms.
    Ian couldn’t see me from where he