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to
remember to breathe that it didn't even dawn on me to resist.
     "From the very beginning I could tell
there was something dishonest about you," she prattled, "... and this
morning, when you showed up without a wound or a bruise after reporting a `car
accident', I knew I'd have to keep an eye on you and see precisely what you
were up to."  She grabbed the slide from my hand.  "And
from which book have you torn this?"
     The insult brought me back to my senses.
     "That's mine!"  I tried to
grab it back.  "Let go!"
     She let go of me, but not of the slide.
     "Yours?" she peered at it in front
of the light.  "I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you'd torn a
nude from one of the art catalogs.  Perhaps you can enlighten me as to
what this is a diagram of?"
       "I don't owe you any
explanations."
       "No, perhaps you don't owe me
any," she said, the glint of victory in her eye, "but you'll owe Mr.
K. some and how." She strode ahead without even checking to make sure I
was behind her.  At that moment I had no intention of escaping - quite the
contrary.  I went with her, all the time trying to imagine the sound her
orthopedic shoes would make on the cement corridor in the stacks.
       We passed behind the librarians'
counter - even senior employees were forbidden to do that without a reason -
Ms. Yardley going full steam ahead, staring straight at everyone we met and
announcing, "I'm taking this young man to Mr. K."  
    At the entrance to Mr. K.'s office I said to her,
"If all this to-do is to throw me out, then there's no reason for me to go
in there, I'll just take my things and go."
     But she was too smart for me. "If
that's the case, then you admit your guilt.  Good.  But now even if I
wanted to, I couldn't let you go. The theft of a slide from the library is a
matter for one of the directors."
       "Are you sure he's one of the
directors?" I asked skeptically, looking at the plywood walls that made a
corner of the corridor into a tiny cubicle.
       "He most certainly is a
director," she whistled importantly. "And he knows me, and knows that
when I'm right, I'm right."
       She knocked on the door once, and
then again, but there was no response.  She twisted the handle decisively
and went in.  Mr. K. sat absorbed in two books that were open in front of
him among a bunch of other junk that crowded his desk.  There was an old
lamp in the shape of a globe whose bulb had burnt an orange stain in the Pacific
Ocean, a few books piled in two low stacks, magazines, opened letters,
envelopes, post cards, and notes.
       "Yes," said Mr. K., taking
a bite out of an apple.
       "Mr. K.," Ms. Yardley began
resolutely, "this young man, whom we accepted to work with us in
conjunction with the municipality's Program for Summer Vacation Youth
Employment, made a fine impression on us in the beginning - so fine, in fact,
that we agreed to allow him to work with the public, and we put him in the
Catalog Room instead of poor Simpkin."
       "Simpkin," Mr. K. noted,
though I wasn't sure if in wonder, uncertainty, or confirmation.
       But Ms. Yardley made sure to clarify
the matter.  "Who took ill last month...”
       "Ahh," said Mr. K.,
regarding me through his glasses.
       He had a doleful and contemplative
expression, but I wasn't taken in by it.  The thickness of his lenses
hinted that it was nothing more than extreme myopia, and that this seemingly
sympathetic little man might actually be a tough and ready bastard who would
throw me out on my ear without a moment's hesitation.  I didn't
particularly care one way or the other, and if it hadn't have been for the
accusation of theft that Ms. Yardley was just then beginning to detail, I'd
have walked out right in the middle of the `enquiry'.
       "Here," Ms. Yardley drew my
employee's card out of the pocket of her flared skirt, "your signature is
all we need to pass the matter on to the personnel depart...”
       "Hey," I interrupted.
 "I also have