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Ellipses | Dec 06 2002

Another scene with the buxom circulation librarian. As he stood in line waiting to check out his books, two other librarians handled checkout and the buxom librarian did something behind them. He didn’t think there was much chance he would end up in her line because she didn’t have a line, but then just as he stepped up to the counter, the phone rang and one of the other librarians answered it, so the buxom librarian took over for her. Not exactly looking at him, she said, “Buh, buh, buh. Sorry about the line. It’s Saturday afternoon, it’s quite hectic.”

“Hey, that’s okay,” he replied.

He waited to see if he could think of anything else to say, but nothing came. He tried to remain calm and just leave himself open to the moment, but it was hopeless: he felt neither calm nor open, and nothing came.

As he stepped away from the counter, several things he could have said flashed through his mind. The first was to ask her if she knew where that came from, saying buh, buh, buh like that.

“I’ve known other people who say that,” he could have said. “It’s said instead of regular words. It’s like a spoken sort of ellipses.”

Short of this he could have simply complimented how well she was handling the hecticness. Both approaches would have had their merits, although he liked the first one better, because of the word ellipses. Ellipses struck him as a word a librarian would definitely like and might even find sexy, in the right circumstances.

Obviously it was moot point now: he said neither. In fact he said nothing. Again.

She was wearing a sweater she wears a lot. He thinks of it as her Lawrence of Arabia sweater. He believes she wears it because she thinks it hides her belly. He hasn’t actually seen this belly of hers, but the sweater (or the pullover, rather; it’s more a pullover than a sweater) definitely gives her lots of room to hide it, particularly given the way her breasts, which are of considerable size, create a kind of tent effect.