And she made good grades as a librarian student, because she couldn't be bothered to put off her homework. So she got a good job with the city's library, at the Danford branch. The city was big, it had many many branches, and Jeannie worked at one of them. Somehow, she was in charge of obtaining new and appropriate books, which she did with her normal diligent if not dispassionate work ethic. As such her library branch always had the latest books, and as such folks were always requesting these books to be loaned to the branch nearest them.

They tried to move her to the main branch, the Theodore Roosevelt branch, downtown. No, she said, I don't want to work downtown, there's bums. But you are so good at what you do, they said. We'll give you a raise and your own cubicle- you will have to share your computer with only two other librarians! She said no, I don't want to. So people made requests.

And now she is in love with the postman. She doesn't know it, and wouldn't admit it, even if she did know it. But there is something about the way he leers at her, something about the way he is constantly wiping the drool from his lips when he is around her, picking up the branch's mail or dropping it off. He's a skinny little man, a weasel, with an acne-scarred face rife with the vestiges of a bad case of the chicken-pox. He has a mustache that has obviously taken most of forty years to grow, and makes his tiny head seem tinier. His collars are always grimy, he walks with a peculiar limp, as if the doctors threatened him with polio as a child to keep him from putting his hand up the nurses' dresses.

But no one ever leered at Jeannie before, no one ever wiped drool from his mouth in her presence. She isn't flattered, she isn't intrigued, she's disgusted, but secretly, and she does not know this, she loves it, and she loves him. She thinks of him constantly, constantly thinks about writing letters to his superiors, to her superiors. One day he walked into the branch and rolled his eyes at her for the better part of ten minutes, as if to say girl, you are killing me. Then she realized her slip was showing, a half inch below her hem, snow white below institution gray, and she didn't know that it was because she loved him so much that she adjusted it right there in front of him instead of marching on her sturdy black shoes and solid white stockings to the back. She grabbed the hem of her slip at her was it and yanked it up with the most delicate of yanks and for a split second she exposed an extra two inches above her ankle more than she had ever exposed to any man in her life, and the postman actually shuddered, he actually almost swooned, and had to go the bathroom to wipe his chin, Jeannie curled her lip at his back as he walked away for it, she slitted her eyes and flared her nostrils and felt a stirring deep within her bosom, within the pit of her stomach, something she had never felt before.

And she sorted the letters which would go out to patrons to let them know that their books had been transferred from the Danford branch to the branch nearest them, so that they could read the latest which Jeannie had been wise enough to order for her branch. She sorted them because that was the contract the library had with the post office, the letters had to be sorted to receive a reduced bulk postage rate. And here is the proof the Jeannie is in love with the postman- every letter she checks in the computer, to see if the patron has already picked up the book, because all of the librarians at all of the branches tell these patrons that in all likelihood their requests will be complete well before the mail arrives with their letters telling them so, and as such they should simply stop in at their local branches after a few days if they are eager to read those books. And so Jeannie checks to see which patrons have actually done so, since there is no need to send them letters telling them they can pick up the books which they have already picked up.

Actually, there is a reason too, sort of, for example, it's in the procedure manual to do so, and that procedure manual can be used to promote a librarian or fire her. Also, some patrons depend on those letters as proof to one authority or another about their intentions regarding one topic or another. If William Johnson wants his boss to understand that he is dedicated to the subject of tax mergers, and so dedicated that he would request the latest book on the subject to be sent to his branch, how better than to show him the letter? He could drive over to the Danford branch to get the book, he could just buy the darn thing from the nearest retailer of tax merger tomes, but the letter looks more official, makes it seem like an honest effort, and not posing, like if William were to waltz into the office holding up a copy of the book with the receipt for its purchase sticking out of somewhere in the middle, suggesting that Will had done some reading already, on the train into work or while riding shotgun in the car pool. No, it would be better to get the letter from the library, and have it open and on his desk where his boss, or even better,m his boss's boss J.P. Witherspoon who is secretly looking for a bright and eager young man, preferably white of course, to put on the fast-track to a V.P. position. J.P. has a daughter to marry off, after all, a homely girl who rides horses and reads romance novels, who volunteers at the children's hospital expressly against her father's wishes. Let the poor take care of the poor, he tells her, and she just sits demurely at the piano, her head bowed, because although J.P has never laid a hand on any of his three daughters, Lena knows that in his deepest heart of hearts he raped her every night, from the time she was born until she turned sixteen, got her first period, and her sister was born, and she knows deep in her heart of hearts that she will never find a man who can replace her father, executive V.P track or no. So there are reasons for the letters.

But Jeannie doesn't care anymore, although she doesn't known it. She doesn't know it, but she is trying to make the postman's burden a little bit lighter. He's so skinny, after all, and has a smoker's hack, and looks like five shades of death warmed over whenever he lugs in the latest shipment from Random House, the six or seven books which the library receives once or twice a month. She thinks about this when she catalogs the books in the library's computer, thinks about the poor postman taking a nip out of his flask to overcome inertia and bring those books in, thinks about his skinny legs, fish-belly white in his summer postman shorts as she shelves the new books, and prepares the request forms which patrons form other libraries will fill out when they get onto the catalog there and see that her branch has these volumes which the skinny postman with his horrible mismatched toupee lugs into her library after spanking a lethal mixture of Old-Spice and water onto his his chest in preparation for seeing her yet again.

She had a dream about him the other night, further proof that she is in love with him, although she doesn't recall the dream, doesn't recall any dream. When she was twelve she was attacked by a large dog, a mastiff, a great huge saint bernard shepherd, a rotweiler, a gigantic greyhound doberman pinscher pit-bull elephant mixture of a dog, it charged right at her as she walked to school and almost shattered the wooden fence that it ran into trying to get at her, barking so loud that windows broke in nearby cars and the clouds were shook to shreds and all of the grass around its muzzle died from its breath, it was black and gray and brown and the color of poisonous mud and excrement and mushed up flies and it wanted to eat her, but not delicately, to eat her body ripping her limb from limb and chomping down on her legs and arms and torso while her stubborn head watched until it had ripped her fingers off one by one and her toes and ripped out her guts and her intestines and her inside and washed its face in her syrupy black thick blood, and she had calmly walked on by, had not even looked at the damn creature, just walked on by and went to school and got a B on her spelling test, but Jeannie had dreamed about that demon dog for two weeks straight, although she never knew she dreamed about it, never knew it had bothered her, and after two weeks her dream returned to the weird and convoluted enigmas that most dream are made of- she was over it.

They were having sex on a beach, it was just the tiniest bit cold and he was on top- she could feel the gooseflesh on his thighs between her legs. She didn't have an orgasm- didn't feel it much at all, and when he got done he pulled out and yanked the condom off and tossed it into the ocean. She looked down at herself and saw that she was dressed, she looked up at him and he was dressed in his postman clothes, his wintertime postman clothes, the soiled jacket with the dirty fur around its hood and the mustard stain on the sleeves because every day at 12:30, rain, sleet, or dead of night he ate his lunch at the Lou's hotdog cart on the corner of Eighth and Van Buren. She stood up and they were in the library, the main branch, and he put his arm around her and said she was the best he'd ever had, and she gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek and told him to go to hell, but sweetly. She'd never told anyone to go to hell, and never spoken sweetly before, and although she didn't know it, Jeannie was very very glad when she woke up that she didn't remember the dream at all.

She's going through the mail, checking each request letter's recipient's record to see if he or she has already picked up the book- about half have. Those letters she shreds. She hears the door open, and sees the postman coming in.

***

Charlie is in love with the librarian, and he knows it. He's a terribly honest man, and told his wife about his feelings for the librarian. She's understanding. Explore your feelings, she says, Charlie, it's okay to have feelings. Aren't you afraid I'll leave you for her? he asks. His wife is honest, too, and she loves her husband. No, you'll always stay with me.

And it's true, although there's something about that librarian that gets his blood racing. Maybe its the enormous glasses she wears, maybe it's the institution-gray dresses she wears which sweep down to her ankles and hide every square inch of her body. Maybe its the severe bun into which she has her hair pulled back every day, without fail. He has not seen one single strand of that hair out of place, and doesn't know what he would do if he did.

He's always been a skirt chaser, although he was a virgin up to the day he married. It was a woman that led him to the post office, was the reason he took the exam, the reason he probably passed. She was buxom, blond, the very antithesis of the librarian, and three days after he got assigned to the Twenty-Eighth and Madison route she ran off with a carni and he never saw again. But he met his wife on the job, wooed her, married her, had three kids by her. Daughters, every one, and he loves them more than anything else in the world, every one. Gave up smoking for them, gave up drinking, started volunteering two nights a week at the children's hospital so he could learn to be a tender and caring father, and when his youngest was old enough to be watched by his oldest, his wife joined him at that hospital. Tuesday and Thursday at the hospital, Wednesday and Sunday at the Church, Monday and Saturday with the football, baseball, or basketball on TV, and Friday night dancing, which keeps his wife nice and trim and keeps him from getting corns, the death of all postman.

He loves his wife, loves his daughters, knows that what he feels for the librarian is lust, knows it's probably a sin. But he can't help himself, which is the nature of most sin, anyway. Every morning he puts on that Old-Spice because, honestly, his daughters give it to him for Christmas and he would rather rip off his own arms and choke himself with it than break his daughters' hearts. But he's thinking about that librarian too when he puts it on. He gets to her stop, eighth from the last one on his route, only the fifth route he's had since he became a postman, other postpeople get to know the city inside-out after a few years from changing routes over and over again but not Charlie, he's good at what he does and his customers like him and they raise a stink whenever there's talk of moving him to a different route, maybe even a better route, and Charlie doesn't want to leave them either, except for the time he worked the downtown section as a route supervisor. That was hell, all the bums, and he was glad when he was replaced by the postmaster's nephew Lewis. He gets to the librarians\' stop, eighth from the last, and takes a big gulp from his coffee thermos to calm his nerves, than he waltzes in their like atlas with the world on his shoulders, proudly bearing her library mail or the books she seems to get all the time- he asked the other postpersons who worked near other branches how many books they get, but no one gets as many as his librarian- and he gives her the books and tries not to smile to broad because he's so nervous he's sure he's about to vomit.

He's not sure how she feels about him but he gets a vibe, he gets a feeling, he gets a certain something in his chest, lining his rib cage, whenever he sees her looking at him. He knows she's looking at him because one looks at people when they enter a room or cough all of a sudden or ask you a question. But he gets that feeling, and he doesn't know what to do with it- usually he has to drink more coffee. He thinks maybe she likes him a little bit, maybe she'd like it if he struck up a conversation with her now and again. He's more than happy to talk to the customers, the postal guide for good mail carriers encourages postpersons to pass the time of day now and again with folks, make them like you, make them feel comfortable around you, make them feel like the post office is an institution like the schools or the church. And he would, too, he'd talk to her, if he wasn't in love with her so much. Charlie is famous for his lectures, could talk the ear off a tree, and he wants to show the librarian what an outstanding man his is, intelligent, forthright, creative, worthy of the brain of a librarian, if only to be friends because he loves his wife ten times more than the day he married her, but it's funny, it's ironic, the more he wants to show the librarian what a good cup of joe he is, the less able he is to speak.

Like the time he was running late, and he was so far behind that he didn't get to her stop until well after three. All he could do was roll his eyes at her, couldn't tell her why he was so late, how he been at Lou's cart having an all beef kosher- the only thing Charlie loved more than Lou's koshers was Lou's homemade mustard!- and there had been an accident, all manner of cars running into each other and crashing and yelling and broken windows, it was near downtown, far enough away that folks who knew a thing or two were the only ones who frequented the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, so no business execs, no admen, no court stenographers, no biker messengers, no bums, and far enough away that buildings had balconies again.

Charlie got the story from a cop while he waited for the wreckage to be dragged away enough so he could get on with his route. Cops liked Charlie and Charlie liked Cops, they were easy to talk to, and this one, a healthy blond surfer boy with justice in his heart and righteousness in his eyes, told him how there was a male secretary in the Witherspoon building who was taking a coffee break outside on the balcony, but wasn't having coffee because his doctor said it would give him acne, so he was eating an orange instead, and peeling it there and placing the peels one by one right next to each other on the railing because it just seemed like the right thing to do, to line them up, in the order they came off the orange, not in order of size, and it was revealed the the real reason the secretary like to take breaks on the balcony was because across the way at the movie theater there was girl who he had a crush on, she was really quite beautiful although, if the truth be known, somewhat of a dull egg. So he had these oranges lined up and was having a grand old time eating the orange and looking across the way although the shadows from the marquee obscured his view and who he was actually looking at was a coworker of the babe in question, homelier yes but altogether more bright, and he was so absorbed that he was quite startled when a Chinese man popped out of an office on that same balcony laughing uproariously at an e-mail he had just gotten, and the secretary saw this and saw his huge perfect-teethed mouth open wide with laughter, and he accidentally brushed some of the orange peel off, and he was very distraught at this, somehow the rightness of the orange peel was a delicate thing in his mind, and so he went after them, actually dove over that balcony, bounced off a van below, and to make matters worse, survived the fall. Cars screeched, windows shattered, people hollered, and the cop said, thankgod there weren't any ad execs or businessmen or court stenographers or bums because nobody rubbernecks lie they do, believe me, and we'd be here till Christmas.

He couldn't tell her any of it, although he told his wife and kids that evening and made it come alive, made them feel like they were there, like they actually were that poor forlorn secretary, or his orange peels, but the librarian- nothing, all he could do was roll his eyes, and then she- get this- adjusted her slip right in front of him. Charlie just about lost it, he just about lost it right then and there, that gesture of hers so completely explaining to him how insignificant she thought he was, how he was such a lowly and worthless human being that she would rather adjust the fabric of her clothing than stand there and wait for him to get up enough courage to say Sorry I was a bit late, and Charlie felt so low that he had to run into the bathroom. But the very minute he got there he figured it out, deduced her real plan, knew exactly what was going on, that she had purposefully done what she had done to purposefully make him think she was cool and aloof because playing hard to get was the oldest game in the world and was an iron-clad guarantee that she liked him, sort of. Charlie figured it out and told his wife about it that night as they lay in bed after a good night of dancing to the tunes of Garth Brooks and Olivia Newton John, and his wife giggled and said, I'll show you more than two inches of ankle. Man oh man, did he love his wife.

And, it seemed, the librarian. Charlie figures it will go away eventually, as all obsessions do, like the time he was obsessed with frogs and collected them and read about them at the library and drew pictures of them and his mom put the pictures on the refrigerator- it lasted about a week. He's walking into the library with no books this time but just the regular mail, a bunch of boring library stuff that probably could have been just phoned or faxed over, but Charlie doesn't begrudge it- after all, he gets to see her, and all mail means the Charlie has a job. He's got one hand in his pocket- and this is weird- there's sand in his pocket. How did sand get into his pocket? Charlie's not a slob, but he's being absent minded as he tosses the sand onto the floor, and then sees the Librarian looking at him, looking at his hand, and the sand, with an expression on her face that's not what you would call animated, but not the passive stone expression which she usually wears.

***

Sand, she's thinking. Why am I looking at that sand?

***

Albert hand frequents the Danford branch library, but never talks to anyone. He just reads the books. He killed for the first time when he was nine- it was a cat. Since then he has killed several more times, usually bums, occasionally a prostitute, or if he feels the urge, a housewife in the middle of the day. Last week he killed a little girl. It made him feel something that he'd never felt before. He used a knife.