Sabrina So Far

Deep in thought about the mystery of keys and their obvious value as metaphor, she stepped into the elevator, and turned to face the closing doors. Silently, she flipped through the files of her disordered mind. Wait. Doesn’t this second key have something to do with some— "Hello there!" An unexpected voice rang out with a kind of boisterous good humor, ricocheting off the four walls of the elevator. —some old books? she finished her thought and then turned to find the source of this unexpected salutation. But here was the thing. . . She could have sworn that no one was in the elevator when she stepped onto it. "Old books? Love them! No end to their charm, is there? I mean, they’re—well, they’re old for one thing—and often full of intriguing recipes, arcane and esoteric, of the most delightful and occult mysteries of life. Thaddeus Golas, here!" And a hand shot out, suspended in air, apparently waiting for Sabrina’s own to engage it. It was attached quite confidently to a broad masculine shoulder, leading in turn to a body and a face, the likes of which Sabrina had seen only in movies about— well, about romance. High adventure. He was an amazingly handsome, “swashbuckling” vision of a man. Theatrical. No really. Positively histrionic, as though a sword should be hanging from his belt, with gloves and lace tucked in somewhere. Swashbuckling? She thought. Why would I think of that ridiculous word? It's like out of another era—Victorian, or— Oh! That’s it! And she came to herself with a start. That's what the other key is for! The cabinet of old Victorian erotica in the rare books department at the Salt Lake City library. She’d been working there during the summers while going to school. Now hesitantly, she took the extended hand, a bit confused in the timing of two simultaneously interesting discoveries: the key, and the man. "Certainly that must be it!” said the stranger, “Queen Victoria did it with the key in the library! But why do you suppose that no one has noticed its disappearance? That, my dear Watson, is a question for the inquiring mind!” "What? How do you--" Sabrina stammered, unable to fathom how this man—however friendly and good looking—could be so intimately involved in a conversation with her own private thoughts. "What do you mean?" she asked, her eyes narrowing into two little slits. "How do you know about the library?" "Did I say library? Well, I meant the game, you know. Clue? You said that's what the key is for, and I was—I was playing with you." "Oh. But I don’t think I said it exactly. I only thought it. And you mentioned its disappearance. I don't believe I—“ "Yes, the interesting thing is why you forgot that you had it in the first place; or maybe why it was forgotten in the third place, having been overlooked in second place." Sabrina puzzled over this maze of tangled thought. And here she surprised herself with a defensive posture: "Are you kidding?! No one around there ever looks in that cabinet. It’s practically in its own room and hardly anyone even knows it's there. I took this key because Mrs. Gollaher said it was off limits to everyone but researchers and historians, and I knew I’d never get a chance to see the books if I didn't sneak a peek on my own. Victorian erotica, 18th century," she said, lifting her eyebrows, Groucho style. Then whispering, she said, "They're going to dispose of the whole collection within the year; some buyer from Chicago. So I borrowed the key while I had the chance. They have two other ones; and obviously they haven't missed it, because no one’s said a thing about it." "Oh, no need defending yourself to me. I rather like research myself," he said, leaning with his elbow against the wall. "But I do believe its 19th century". "Who are you?" Sabrina replied suspiciously, annoyed at his offhand grasp of trivia, and so early in the morning too. "Why are you acting like you know anything about this at all? And why are you in my elevator? Are you married?" she heard herself asking, to her profound chagrin. What other dimension had she stepped into? A place where people shared each other's private thoughts, and felt comfortable asking the most improbable personal questions?