The People Who Haunt the Library

I see the same people in the library almost every day, and I wonder about them.

A.M is a heavy-set, clean-cut forty-ish year old guy who uses the computers almost daily. Faithfully, at 9 o' clock almost every morning, he's there, handing me his library card as a collateral for headphones before he sits down at machine number 9. That's how I know his name: from his card. He's always dressed nicely, in slacks and a colored button-up--he even carries a briefcase. I like A.M because even though he comes in all the time, he doesn't treat me or the other librarians too familiarly. He doesn't try to be funny, and he doesn't make personal observations about our appearance like some people do. I don't know what he does online every day. Maybe some of the time he's job searching.

Another ghost I see is one I will call the Lonely Reader. This one's a strange case. LR is a tall, also clean-cut, maybe mid-thirty-year-old who I see every day. And I mean, every day. He is always there at open. He always sits down in one of our nice, soft chairs with a newspaper or a book off the display shelf. As far as I can tell, he never goes down to the lab (unusual), he never checks anything out, and he never asks for anything at the desks. He just comes, and sits, and reads.

One day, I was working the desk in the fiction area, and I noticed LR down there. A line of several soft and lovely lime-green Ikea benches line the back wall of Fiction, each with a pile of pillows. LR was sitting on one. He had one of the millions of pillows wrapped in his arms. He wasn't reading. He just sat there, hugging that pink pillow looking...sad? Or tired. I don't know which. He didn't move for a long time.

I think LR might be homeless. But you would never, ever think it to look at him.

Speaking of homeless. HL (for homeless) is another ghost I sometimes see around. And not just the library but the whole city center and that intersection of state and center. HL is another skinny, mid to late thirty-yr-old. He has chin-length greasy hair that is well-combed, and wears dingy clothes in a dignified way. I first met HL working--once again--at the fiction desk. He handed me a pink rubber ball that he thought maybe some child had dropped. HL has a strong smell about him and dirt under his nails, but he is as quiet and unassuming as LR.

I hope these guys, whatever their troubles may be, are able to find some rest at the OPL.