The auto parts factory shutting down two months ago put a lot of people out of work. Since there wasn’t a lot of other work to be had, a lot of people, people like Dump and Leggy, found themselves taking jobs they wouldn’t normally take. Like housekeeping. Never, at any time in either of their lives, did Dump or Leggy think they would find themselves as maids.

“Too bad the old bitch ain’t here today,” Leggy said, strolling across the wood floor of the living room toward the glass doors of the library on his overly long legs. Dump guessed that was probably how he got the nickname. Practically no torso and legs like two skinny trees.

“Why’s that?” Dump asked. He liked to work much better when the “client” wasn’t there. That way he didn’t feel watched.

“Old whore usually tips pretty good.”

“I guess,” Dump said. Dump was a very squat man, shaped somewhat like a dumpster, and when he worked up a sweat his stink really broke open. Even he was aware of it. He couldn’t imagine what other people thought. To be surrounded by that pungent, wet dog kind of smell wafting out of him regardless of how often he bathed.

“What?” Leggy said. “You couldn’t use a few extra bucks. Usually enough for a six pack, at least.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Maybe she’ll tip us more next time.” Truthfully, he didn’t care. He was comfortable around Leggy. If Ms. Blanchette wasn’t there, that was just one less person to be around. One less person to smell his stink or look at his repellant physique.

Dump watched as Leggy, reaching the library doors, depressed the silver, antique-looking lever. A blossom of sweat had started just below the ‘Happy Housekeepers’ logo on his shirt.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Dump said.

Leggy, hand resting on the door lever, turned and fixed Dump with a ferocious stare. His perm had worked itself up into a frenzy and sat above those hateful looking blue eyes with a wild intensity. Leggy took his hand off the knob and twisted the waxed tips of his gray-brown handlebar mustache.

“Why the hell shouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know ...” Dump looked at the ground, rubbed his greasy chin with his hand, the other hand fumbling with his utility belt loaded with bottles and rags and the feather duster. The feather duster was perhaps the most emasculating part about the job.

“You tell me not to do something I’d goddamn like to know why not.”

“It’s just ... When she’s here she always tells us not to go in there.”

Leggy made an exasperated sigh, throwing up his arms. “Dump-o. Know what?”

“What?”

“The bitch ain’t here.”

“I know.”

“So, if the bitch ain’t gonna be here, then we’re gonna do what our contract tells us to do. Which is clean everywhere in the house unless otherwise specified by the client. Well, the client ain’t here to specify us not to clean in there.”

Dump shuffled nervously on his thick legs, admiring the job Leggy had done on the wooden floor.

“Stop bein a fuckin candyass, Dumpy.”

“Whatever.”

Leggy moved closer to him.

“Look, Dump – what does Miss What’s-her-face call that room?”

“The Library.”

“Yeah. Of course she calls it the library.” He screwed up his face and started mocking Ms. Blanchette. “’Don’t go in the library.’ ‘Never mind the library.’ ‘The library’s okay. Just leave it.’ ‘I’ll get the library myself.’” He slackened his face, pulled an engraved silver flask from his jeans pocket and took a swallow. The crazy light in his eyes intensified and, after capping the flask and putting it back, he gave a couple of frisky upward tugs on his mustache. “So what
is
a library?”

Dump knew what Leggy was fishing for. Knew that was probably his whole reason for wanting to get in there in the first place. “It’s a place that lets you borrow books.”

“Right, my man. A library is most definitely a place that lets you borrow books. So, I guess since Miss Drycunt ain’t here to give us her little tip, we might just have to borrow one of her precious books.”

Dump didn’t really want any part in thievery. He hated this job, hated the people he worked for, every bit as much as Leggy did, but he didn’t think that gave him the right to take things from them.

“Now,” Leggy said. “You gonna help me clean up in there or not?”

“I think I’m just gonna go wait in the truck.”

“Aw, shit, man. You know you wanna get in there too. I mean, I ain’t ever had the urge to read a goddamn thing in my life but something so shut up like that, something I ain’t
supposed
to touch, well, that makes me awful eager for some fuckin learnin. Don’t it you?”

Leggy had finally hit upon something that struck a chord with Dump. He had, on a number of occasions, wondered what was in that room. Maybe it was a collection of old pornography. He’d heard that some rich fucks collected that kind of thing although he didn’t really see what a bunch of old shit could have that
Hustler
didn’t, except the girls didn’t shave their pussies back then.

Leggy could tell Dump was now interested. He turned back to the glass doors. “So you go ahead and sit out in that hot ass truck if you don’t want to do what our contract states but if you want to do a good job you’ll follow me on in here.”

He pressed the handle down and it didn’t move. “Locked,” he said. “No bother. A lock ain’t never stopped me before.”

Dump’s heart jumped around a little bit. He half-expected Leggy to take out one of the windows. Instead, he pulled a thin pick from his pocket and jabbed it into the keyhole, moving it around until he heard a click.

“Now,” he said. “I ask you: if these books is so important then why the fuck don’t she get a better lock?”

Dump couldn’t answer him. He was sweating again. He came up behind Leggy just as the taller man swung the French doors outward.

“You smell like a fuckin outhouse,” Leggy said.

“Sorry.”

They entered the library together. It smelled like the one library Dump had ever been in. It was cooler than the rest of the house.

“Feels nice in here,” Leggy said. “Why do those old shits always keep it so fuckin warm all the time?”

“Don’t know,” Dump said, eager to get his hands on one of the fat volumes lining the room.

He pulled one down. Nothing was written on the spine. Dump thought that was kind of odd. Most books, even old ones, usually had the title of the book or the author or
some
thing on the spine. Looking around, he noticed none of these did. But they
were
arranged, if in an unconventional manner.

The room was your standard rectangular room, probably intended to be a dining room until this book acquiring addict had taken it over and made it into something else. There was a window at the front of the house and to the left of the French doors. Except for these areas of glass (concealed with dark wooden blinds) the walls were lined floor to ceiling with books. It looked like the “arrangement” began in the far right corner of the room. The first volume there was white. While the other books varied in thickness they were all of uniform height. And they seemed to follow the color spectrum, more colors than Dump had ever imagined. Starting with that white book they darkened through every variant of every primary color until they reached a black book, located at the bottom of the wall facing them. The one with the windows that, had the blind been drawn up, would look out over the front yard.

Dump was eager to see what the book contained. Something nondescript like this was almost sure to contain pornography.

He opened it right up to the middle.

And was greatly disappointed. No gaping spread-legged poses. No emotionless couplings. Just a picture of a small block-like building, kind of gray in color, surrounded by a blue sky and resting on what looked like desert ground. Silently, he flipped through some more of the book. More of the same. Pictures of landscapes, sculptures, mountains, appliances. Every image seemed slightly familiar and slightly alien at the same time. Maybe it was just because, put in the context of a book, something bound between two covers and lovingly photographed, it made the ordinary seem like something else.

He glanced up at Leggy. Leggy had that angry look in his eyes. He shoved the book he had been leafing through up on a shelf and pulled out another one.

“What’d yours have in it?” Dump asked.

“Fuckin just pitchers of shit.”

“Yeah, that’s what mine is.”

“This is gotta be some kinda joke or somethin.”

“Maybe she’s a photographer.”

“Naw. Photographers got those special pitcher albums. Kinda like binders or somethin.”

“Maybe she had these made special.”

“Maybe she’s just a crazy old cunt. Besides, some of these pitchers ain’t right. I mean, you’d need some kinda Hollywood effects for some of this shit. Look here ...” Leggy crossed the room with a couple strides of his long legs and showed Dump a picture in one of the books, this one a light purple color.

The book showed a tree but it was all wrong. The roots were scraping at the sky and the leaves were down at the bottom. Another one showed some kind of flying device he had never seen before. It looked like one of those old round metal trashcans turned on its side with giant, papery moth wings.

“See,” Leggy said. “Don’t make no sense.”

“Maybe it makes sense to Miss Blanchette.”

“I tell you what: these books make me mad.” Leggy put the book back on the shelf and took a quick swig from his flask. “But I’m takin one anyway.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Dump said.

“Why the fuck not?”

“Well, it’s stealing, for one thing. And, besides, what would be the point? You can’t read it. Don’t think you could sell it.”

“Maybe they’re real rare. I bet I could get somebody to put it on the computer.”

“I say we just put em back and get the hell out.”

“I say we help ourselves.”

Dump replaced his book on the shelf and Leggy put his hand on the black one.

“I wouldn’t take that one,” Dump said.

“Fuck not?”

“She’d stand more of a chance of missing the first one or the last one but half of these are so close in color they almost look the same.” And it was true. If you stood far enough away, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell they were individual volumes.

“Guess you’re right.” Leggy’s hand bounced to his left and landed on an espresso brown one. “This one’ll do.” He slid the thin hardcover book into the front of his pants and pulled his shirt, two maids in dresses emblazoned above the left breast pocket, over it. “Ready?”

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