Chapter 17, Boundaries, Part 2

"Excuse me, ma'am?" A soft country drawl pulled me from my surreptitious homework. Describe information theory and how it relates to Boolean logic. Include references to Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication."

A woman in short, blonde hair and a Louis Vuitton purse stood before me.

"Yes, ma'am, how can I help you?" I asked.

"Look, I don't want to seem like a horrible person," she began.

This sounds promising, I thought.

"But I was wondering if you could ask that man to leave," she pointed at a man wearing a paint-stained t-shirt and torn sweatpants that looked like they hadn't been washed since Clinton was president. He was snoozing in a chair.

I feigned ignorance.

"Do you mean leave his seat?" I asked.

The woman tried to not look guilty.

"No, I mean leave the building." She leaned in closer. "He smells. It's bothering my daughter who's trying to read."

I leveled my gaze at this woman, who wore camo chic and had fake rhinestones on her manicured nails. She glanced sideways.

"Ma'am, it's one hundred and six degrees outside today. Where do you suggest he go?"

"I don't know," she replied. "Don't they have shelters or something?"

"Ma'am," my own cornbread-and-sweet-tea accent started to come out. "That man has just as much right to be here as you or your daughter. If the smell is bothering her, perhaps she can move to another area of the library."

The woman reddened. "I thought librarians were supposed to be nice." The barb fell about a hundred feet short. Unbeknownst to her, my skin was as hard as the stage I danced on.

I walked over to the man, who had begun to snore. The smell of rotting onions fried my nose hairs to a crisp.

Well, she wasn't wrong. Breathing through my nose, I shook the man's shoulder.

"Sir," I said. "You can't sleep here."

He woke up and sat up a little straighter. He groggily grabbed a newspaper to scan, and I walked back to the reference desk.

As I looked around the library, I saw people going about typical activities. People tapped away on the public computers, some were browsing the music collection, others were reading the Dallas Morning News. Sounds from StoryTime floated over the stacks. I wondered just how many people in the library were living double-lives, not necessarily of the dancer sort. I wondered how many nice, kind men I encountered sold drugs on the side. I wondered who was committing financial fraud. I wondered what vices people were hiding from the public eye and to what degree.

Like a pointillist painting by Georges Seurat, we are only points on a spectrum, a compilation of moments in time. But no one can see everything; no matter how many points there are on a canvas, the artist will never show the full work. I was Rose and Ariel at the same time but no one ever saw both. I wasn't really a stripper; that wasn't the core of who I was. Ariel was the nerdy, book-loving, learning-driven, earl-grey-tea-drinking, prone-to-anxiety-and-depression, impatient, tenacious, and resilient person outside of the club. But inside the club, I was Rose. I was the coffee-with-whipped-cream drinking, hot, superficial, charismatic, avaricious, scheming, and devious Rose.

When I saw my supervisor walking over with a cart of Withdrawn books to process, I snapped shut the tab that had my homework assignment open.

"Ariel, could you please stamp and greenline these?" My supervisor dabbed a small hankerchief to her eye. She had weepy eyes, and it took me about two months to realize she wasn't crying. "And when you're done, remember to fill the empty soap bottles in the bathroom. They weren't filled yesterday."

Oops. You're slipping, Ariel, I thought. I shouldn't have to fill the dumb things, anyway.

She glanced at my Reading Rainbow shirt. Take a Look, it's in a Book.

"Also, you're not allowed to wear shirts with text on them," she said.

But it's about reading!

"Just know for next time."

Swallowing my indignation and embarrassment over the forgotten soap bottles and verboten shirt, I turned to the stack of withdrawn books.

Picking up a title, I lamented throwing away a perfectly good book, just because no one had checked it out.

Women Pirates, I read. Fascinating.

It's just going to go to the recycler, a familiar and seductive voice whispered. No one will notice.

I slipped it into my bag.