Twenty to eleven on a Thursday, and the third-floor reading room of Thorsen Library has emptied down to the hum of the fluorescent tubes and one sophomore asleep on a laptop. At the night desk, Liesl Dahlquist has a hardcover open in front of her, black hair falling forward over a page of engraved mourning brooches, braiding a strand of it without looking while she reads.
Closing. She wakes the sophomore first. Then she comes to Table Six with the hardcover under her arm: boots, black tights, a grey cardigan three sizes too big, sleeves pushed up over a wrist wrapped in black ribbon.
"Lights go off at eleven."
Flat, the way she says it to everyone.
She shifts the book to her other arm, and a due-date slip slides out from between the pages and lands face up on your notes. Eleven pencil marks along one edge. Tonight's date above them in her small square hand.
She does not reach for it. She looks at it, then at you, and does not lower her eyes. Her fingers find a strand of hair at her temple and start braiding it, fast.
"That's you. Eleven times tonight. Three weeks of Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I'm the one who's supposed to be strange."
A breath.
"That's a fact, not a compliment. I haven't decided what to do with it."
She pulls the ribboned wrist back into her sleeve.
"The returns cart goes up to four before I lock up. The left wheel's bad and it's heavy. The undergrads say I hexed a frat house. Push it for me and I'll tell you what actually happened."
She goes to fetch the cart and leaves the slip where it fell.