The archives have stayed quiet today. Oh, the rest of the library outside has been busy and crowded with patrons. It is the spring equinox exams week at the university, and the students have been arriving in a needy, wing-flapping rush of footsteps. But none of them have the need to consult one of the ancient manuscripts I have to watch over (and of course: they haven't the clearance to even touch the pages) and I have been left alone. Very, nicely, alone. I have only had to endure speaking with one person—and she wanted to find the fresher.
Once I dealt with the acquisition that came in today (a thin bread-white paper novella from the late Coruscanti Empire, thousands of years ago), there hasn't been much for me to do. But I haven't written in here for awhile, and I have three more long empty hours to waste. It isn't as though I will be committing a work of fiction.
Several hours ago, I went out for lunch with the usual group of my co-workers. D. has been hiding away in her office on a holo-conference with the archivist at the K.C. art museum, and as I expected, she didn't care. We wound up going to a restaurant Andraste had heard about in the university district. And: this time, Stupid Girl came along with us. Ketzia must have asked her, but I wouldn't have thought she would accept. She only bothers to socialize with D.
Yes, I do realize that I don't actually know her. We usually work different days, and I have only spoken with her several stilted, awkwardly mean times. It isn't her fault, or her responsibility, that D. gave her some of my hours. But she has presumed to give me advice on tasks I know how to do, and I have an obvious opinion about that.
She has one side of her head shaved down to ocean-green stained stubble, and the other half still has long gleaming hair. It makes her head look lopsided. She wore wooden sandals, and a hyperchic blouse that slid down the side of her scrawny shoulder. And she does have these waifish, glassblue, staring eyes, which I noticed while she went on in her little voice about her three romantic partners, and how she has—direct quote—a low sex drive.
Only several weeks ago, I would have thought, and I may have gone on to say, something with a mocking sneer like: Congratulations.
But this time, today, I only took a drink of my spaceblack cola. When Stupid Girl arrived at a pause, Andraste said, with a snap of her eyebrows, how Oh that is so nice for you, and then informed her what her preferred sex act is. It might be even be true—I don't think I know a single detail of Andraste's personal life—but she made it into a joke, and someone (and I shan't say who it was) had to laugh. Stupid Girl responded with a pinched glare.
After that moment of awkward, clenched silence, we left that for other topics. Roderick told some slight, easy antidote about the weekend trip he and his boyfriend took to the northern pole islands. Celina asked Ketzia about the status of her infant. Minnas complained about several problems with the technical aspects of the new cataloging program.
It has occurred to me again, while I'm reminiscing, that Andraste has not made one remark, or joke, about how I must have someone new since I took up with the Divine Thing, and she flatters herself on her ability to just instinctively know these things. But I won't complain about it since, this way, I don't have to put her off with an excuse.
It could be that I don't have the tell-tale rosepink burning complexion of true love, since I'm not in any sort of love with him. I should hope I know better than that.
Then in the sudden, typical way, it was behind me in the past, and I was back here at my desk, and I have written this. D. must have thought, when she came over for a very important consultation, that I was working on a catalog report for the morning's novella. She still writes by hand when the whim seizes her—archivists are, after all, supposed to be eccentric.
I still have a half hour before I can excuse taking a wandering break—and I have already written up the catalog report. I should just go take out a book. Since I am an archivist.
Roderick joined me as I left work today. It was raining again, a sullen, weeping drizzle, and he puffed his umbrella up over our heads as we walked down the front stairs. He seemed a little nervously shy. I was about to mention that when he went ahead to the point. Apparently, there has been a flare-up in the discord amongst the main house yards. The boyfriend is an engineer with the local house, and while (obviously, and typically) he is under a nondisclosure contact, he has hinted at a few details. It was enough that Roderick thinks—since my own father is a lead house engineer—it could explain the man who was asking after me.
I have to admit that I was taken aback with a jerk of surprise that he had even remembered-since I mentioned it once, during a conversation I have mostly forgotten, over a year ago— that my father is an engineer. But I managed not to actually say it.
We were standing on the pavement by then. Roderick lives in a different part of the city, and he takes the airbus that arrives on the opposite side. Before he left, he leaned forward to tell me, in a darting fish whisper that I could only just hear, to be careful.
I had time to think on that while I waited for the airbus, and then during my commute as it floated through the streets. That man, who I've still never seen, is not with House Darsk. The Divine Thing has made certain of that much. He might have looked like an aristocrat, but he was likely, probably, only an agent with another house. There is always, as I wrote here only recently, some sort of conflict going on between the houses.
But this might be one of the occasions—like that time, thirty years ago in the past, when Lady Ozma Kuhvault took the suicide contract, and (predictably) forced her telbun to join her in it—when it turns into a war made for historical gossip. I had nodded over at Roderick. Yes, I know (as he does, as he must) to be careful.