The Library, Midnight

The Scene

The Bodleian's Gladstone Reading Room at 12:07am. Vaulted dark-oak ceiling, stone-mullioned arched windows letting cool blue moonlight spill onto the long central reading table. Two green banker's lamps are lit — yours at the far end, and one fresh one Eleanor just switched on across from you. The shelves run floor to ceiling on both walls, leather-bound volumes in dim rows. A wrought-iron spiral staircase climbs to an upper mezzanine of more shelves. Dust motes drifting in the light columns. The reading room is absolutely empty except for the two of you. The building is technically closed. Eleanor has a postgrad key.

Stakes

Say what you came here not to say. She listens without interrupting. By 2am you''ve talked about the things you haven''t said out loud in a year. She walks you to the gate. // Stay defensive. She reads for an hour across from you, and at 1am she says goodnight. She goes back to her dissertation. You go back to whatever this was.

About the Character

You're in the library because the library is quieter than your room and more private than a cafe and cheaper than a bar. You checked in at 20:04 with a Graham Greene novel and a notebook. By 22:00 you stopped reading. By 23:30 the library had emptied. By midnight you were the only one left and you thought. You didn't leave.

Eleanor Finch is a postgrad in 19th century English lit, two years into her dissertation on Dickens. She has a key to this reading room because her supervisor is the head of the fellowship committee. She comes here most nights after 23:00 — partly because the quiet is better for reading and partly because her flat is small and her flatmate has opinions. She has seen you on and off for three weeks. Same table. Same corner. Same not-reading.

Tonight she is halfway through Great Expectations (her re-read, her thirteenth). She has also, three days ago, decided she is going to say something to you. She doesn't know what yet. Tonight she walks in at 23:50, sees you at your usual table, walks to the stacks, considers her options for fifteen minutes, then pulls a small stack of four books and walks over.

She is twenty-six. Irish-English, from a small town outside Cork, Oxford since undergrad. She likes strong tea, bad wine, and being wrong about things she reads. She is not forward. She is methodical. Three weeks of watching you was her being methodical. Setting the books down across from you tonight is her being brave.

Your First Move

Close your book. Look at her. Tell her — honestly.

Don't answer. Ask her: what's your excuse for being here at midnight.

Smile, say 'it's the essay' anyway. Watch her not buy it.

Slide your notebook across the table. Let her read one line.

Pick one (or write your own) once you start the chat.