The Pencil Incident
I had been coming to the Humanities Reading Room every Wednesday at 3pm for years, with a regularity that would have given me abs of steel had I applied the same dedication to an actual workout routine. I had also, because I was a creature of habit, claimed the same seat whenever possible: third row from the window, left-hand side, close enough to the radiator to survive whatever cuts the building had made to its heating budget, and far enough that I wasn’t driven into madness by its clanking.
Two tables over. I noticed him because of the way he sat, hunched over, trying to take up as little space as possible, failing to realise that sometimes it wasn’t size that drew people’s attention, but presence. Or aura, as the kids called it. Dark hair pushed under a beanie that had no business existing on anyone’s head in June, the hood of his jumper still half up like he hadn’t quite committed to taking it off, sleeves shoved up to his elbows, as though some part of him had registered the actual temperature. Just not enough to do anything about the several layers of fabric. He had the kind of face you involuntarily did a double-take at: sharp along the jaw, skin so clear it practically glowed, and the sort of symmetry that made you suspicious and envious in equal measure.
Putting him out of my mind for a while, I focused on the script for an upcoming non-fiction audiobook narration. As I worked my way through the text, adding different breaks, pauses, and inflections to the text that would help me record it, I couldn’t help but look around once Beanie Boy shifted.
He was toying with a pencil, flipping it in his hand like he thought it made him look cool, catching it every time without so much as glancing up. It was performative. It must have been. But it was understandable, because it was infuriatingly mesmerising, especially given how effortless he made it look.
Until he didn’t. Something about the trajectory must have been off, because instead of completing a clean 180-degree flip, it spun wildly out of control, flew straight out of his hand, whizzed past his ear, and landed on the floor with a faint clatter.
He froze and did the smallest, most sheepish scan of the room I had ever witnessed. The exact same look you give a room after a piece of food slips off your fork and lands in your lap. Did anyone see that? Please let nobody have seen that.
Unfortunately for him, I’d seen every second of it. And I did the one thing no true Brit, or even respectable foreigner in the UK, ever does in public: I made eye contact with a stranger. A flush of pink crept up the exposed skin of his neck, and I had to bite down a laugh, though I still grinned wider than the Cheshire Cat. Something in his face eased at that, like being caught by one person rather than forty was its own kind of relief.
He picked up his pencil, and we went back to our books. Or I did. I don’t know what he did for the next twenty minutes because I was making a very deliberate effort not to look over there again and mostly succeeding.
The socket was what got him to move to my table. I’d claimed the only working outlet within arm’s reach with the smugness of long practice, and when his laptop seemingly started dying, the sole other option in the room was the empty chair across from me.
He hesitated at the end of my table like he was waiting for a verdict. I shuffled my books six inches to the left, which is library sign language for ‘go on then sit down’, and he mouthed something that was almost certainly ‘thank you’ and sat.
For a while, neither of us did anything useful. I went through my script. He typed whatever it was that beanie-wearing men in June typed. But I noticed, because apparently that afternoon I’d decided noticing him was a hobby with real commitment behind it, that every so often he’d glance up, not at anything in particular, just in my general direction, and then go straight back to his screen before I could catch him properly in the act. He never said anything. Never did anything. Just looked, like he was deciding something, and then, evidently, decided against it.
After finishing my script, I had changed to researching for my cyberpunk novel idea, for which I needed a book. The book in question was even available without me having to order it. So there wouldn’t have been an issue if it hadn’t lived up near the top shelf, the kind you needed the wheeled step ladder for, the one that sat at the end of the row like an entitled little throne. Except the ladder was already occupied, three shelving units down, by a man who had clearly decided that was where he intended to remain for the rest of his natural life. Or at least until the library closed.
I stood there going over my options. I could ask the ladder guy to get a move on. I could abandon the book entirely and watch cat videos on YouTube instead. Or, and this was the option with a distinct amount of self-interest baked into it, I could go and ask the tall Beanie guy sitting across from me to grab the book for me instead.
He owed me, I told myself. I could have made a scene when he did that spectacular pencil air-flip thingie, but didn’t. That was, roughly, the argument I made to myself on the twenty-second walk back to our table.
I leaned down close to his ear rather than risk my normal speaking voice getting us both ejected, and that was the moment I discovered he smelt, in the most unfair and distracting way, like cedar and something herbal underneath it, the kind of thing that would keep my mind occupied for hours afterwards, trying to place exactly what it was.
’Care to use your tallness for good? ’I whispered. ‘I need a book. Top shelf. The ladder’s busy. Consider it repayment.’
He turned his head just enough that we ended up closer than either of us had strictly signed up for and murmured back, ‘Repayment implies I did something wrong.’
The Welsh accent he spoke with surprised me in ways I can’t describe without either seeming racist or classist, and I just hoped it didn’t register on my face. ‘You nearly took someone’s eye out with it, John Wick.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘That’s what they all say.’ I straightened up before this went on long enough to prove I shouldn’t have asked in the first place. ′ Help a damsel in distress, won’t you?′
I put on my sweetest look, and he got up without further argument, shaking his head, a smile skimming his lips.
When we got there, I pointed up at the specific spine, and he had to lean past me slightly to reach it, close enough that I was aware of him in the unhelpful, entirely-beside-the-point way you’re aware of weather.
‘That one,’ I whispered. ‘The blue one.’
‘They’re all blue.’
‘The caerulean one.’
‘Seru-what?’
‘It’s the third from the left.’
‘Now you’re talking sense.’
He got it down on the first try, and I thanked him.
Back at the table, he didn’t say anything else. Until, minutes later, he tore a full page out of his notepad and wrote something, sliding it across. I gave him a look of confusion before I pulled it closer and read his message.
For the record, I would’ve got it anyway. You didn’t need to appeal to my chivalry.
I wrote back: I’ll remember that next time you make a scene.
I did not make a scene. Scenes involve other people noticing.
I noticed.
You don’t count. You’re the only witness, which makes you an accomplice, not an audience.
I feel hurt. Am I not enough for an audience?
That’s a very private performance. Those don’t come cheap.
I had to physically stop myself from reacting, let alone reading anything into it, and wrote, ’Any chance of a discount?′
For the woman who almost laughed out loud at my pencil mishap? Doubtful.
We went on like that for the better part of an hour, notes accumulating across several torn-out paper piles between us. I learned, in fragments, that he was only passing through London for work; that his English accent came from his Welsh father, despite him never having lived in the UK himself; and that he had strong, entirely unearned views about the woman three seats down, who he was now convinced had been suspicious of him since the pencil incident. I never asked what he was working on. He never asked what I was. It felt less like disinterest and more like an agreement that whoever we were outside this room didn’t matter.
At some point he wrote something dry enough that I laughed properly, not the breath-through-the-nose version, an actual, audible laugh that made two heads turn in our direction, with the specific, wordless disapproval only a silent reading room can produce. One of the heads belonged to the woman three seats down. Beanie Boy looked apologetic and a little embarrassed. I pressed my knuckles to my mouth like that would retroactively undo it.
He wrote quickly: I think it’s time I leave. Before you get us thrown out.
Before I get us thrown out. I like that. Very generous of you to believe we’ll both get the boot.
I’m a generous person.
He started packing up and, before dropping the pencil into his bag, flipped it again, just as he had the first time. I watched it happen almost in slow motion: the same angle, the same trajectory, the pencil flying away… Except this time his hand shot out and caught it with a smooth, unhurried gesture, almost like he’d been waiting for the chance to redeem himself.
He just looked at me, one eyebrow raised, mouth pulling a smug smirk that may or may not have stirred something in me. He slipped the notes we'd exchanged into his bag before I could say anything and headed for the door before turning back:
‘Aren't you going to walk me out?’
