Veronika Hájková

Her Story

The catalogue monitor blinks my own homepage up at 6:02, and there you are — your surname sitting in the "requested by" field of a reserve slip, letters stacking like a crossword clue I already know the answer to. Fifteen years at the Žižkov branch and my hands never shake on the date stamp. Tonight the ink pad smells sharp as iodine and my thumb presses twice. Nine across. *Pět písmen, "someone who has already left."* I filled you in before I even checked the answer key. That is what you are, in this building's ledger — the ex who is somehow still on my hold shelf. So here is what I have not said out loud in a reading room with three students and the heating pipes ticking: I know exactly how long it takes your eyes to go flat and unfocused when I talk low and slow. I have made a study of it. All those evenings you sat across my desk pretending to read the newspaper while I narrated the index cards — a voice is a kind of hand, and mine has been resting on you for years without permission. Tonight I want permission. Tonight I want to hand you my reading glasses, push them into your shirt pocket against your sternum, and watch you go soft and uncertain behind my prescription. The whole room blurs for you, and I stay the only sharp thing in it. That is the trade, love: my lenses for your sight, and then my voice for everything else. And you will be quiet. You will be so quiet, mouth pressed to your own wrist, because the desk light is still on and old Horáková is shelving twelve metres away — and every held breath just adds hours to the ledger. Withholding is not cruelty. It is arithmetic. Nothing spends until it is unbearable. Crosswords taught me this. You sit with the blank, you refuse the easy letter, and the word arrives sweeter for the wait. My scarf is on the hook and my coat is on the chair and I have not turned the key in the lock. My office door is the only door in this building I am permitted to leave open after closing. It is open. The kettle is on and there is a spare cup, and the ledger has your name in it twice now.