Patty Cornhole and the Brimstone Clue

Mrs. A and Mrs. C were both out today, so Mrs. B and I split the day up between us with me opening. I must say, it was one of the easier shifts I've ever done. Even Mr. Kreskin failed to call despite the absence of Mrses. A & C. (I have no doubt he probably called to plague Mrs. B at some point today, though.)

I spent much of the time cross-checking our book database with the printed report concerning books of ours that are allegedly lost to the sands of time... (BEGIN BORING TECHNICAL LIBRARY BIT THAT YOU MAY FEEL FREE TO SKIP IN CASE YOU JUST WANT TO READ ABOUT MY MOST RECENT ENCOUNTER WITH MRS. CAROL SATAN) These are books that were checked out on our old VTLS system, before we moved to the new Millennium system, and may or may not have been returned to us in the intervening time. If they were returned, they've likely been checked out again in the last five months. If not, they will likely be missing from the shelves. Regardless, we have to look in the record for each book in question to find evidence of their status. If they've circulated in the last five months, we check them off the list as books we probably still have. If they haven't circulated we go look on the shelf for them and if they're not there we delete them. Fortunately, our paper record also contains the names of the patrons who last had each book, so maybe we can find them in the new system and put the hurt on them. I'd be happy to undertake such a lengthy and potentially fruitless task, just cause I have an overdeveloped sense of library justice. (END BORING TECHNICAL LIBRARY BIT)

So I'm searching away when a female patron approaches the circ counter. I'm so engrossed that I don't even look up at her right away. I just notice her peripherally and say, "Can I help you?"

"Could you put me down for the new Patricia Cornwell?" the patron said, sliding a book across the counter for return.

Ahh, Patty Cornhole, I thought. We meet again.

Having never actually read any of her fiction, I can't say that I really have anything against Patricia Cornwell. (I do kind of question her logic in blindly rejecting all previous research as to the identity of the real Jack the Ripper in favor of her somewhat forced view of it in her big non-fiction Jack the Ripper expose book from a couple years back. I didn't read much of that book either, but read enough to see that she didn't agree with the major points raised by Alan Moore in his graphic novel FROM HELL, nor with the research of other prominent Ripper-ologists. The New York Times book review of her tome was pretty scathing on this point.) However, despite having no real animosity toward her, I do think it's terribly funny to call her Patty Cornhole all the same. And it's especially fun to call her Patty Cornhole in a cheesy overly enunciated announcer voice, just like the guy who does I LOVE THE 90'S. Of course, I don't do this around the patrons.

Naturally, this particular as yet unseen female patron didn't know the title of Patty Cornhole's book, and since I haven't bothered to pay enough attention to Patty Cornhole's recent releases to know off hand, I had to look it up. It's called Trace. I mentally noted this, then scanned the barcode of the patron's returned book to bring up her account from which I could access the hold screen. At the same time that I scanned the book, my nose finally clued in that I'd been smelling something smoky and awful for the past half minute. It seemed familiar and in a bad way, but I didn't place it right away. I brought up the hold screen and added Trace to her list of books there.

"Do you need my card?" she asked.

Technically, I'm supposed to ask for it, but it's just as easy to bring up her record if she's already returning a book I can scan anyway. I explained this to the patron, still not looking at her. Then my eyes happened to fall on the Patron Name field of her record. It read: Mrs. Carol Satan. Only then did I finally look up at the woman herself and see that, yes, indeed it was her, standing there like the kiss of death. Actually, she wasn't quite as bad as the Kiss of Death. The Kiss of Something Foul to be certain, but not Death. In fact, Mrs. Carol Satan looked downright nice. Her hair was stylishly cut and she was dressed in a very pleasant ensemble and looked for all the world as though she were headed out to a nice restaurant or perhaps even to church. Sure, she wasn't actively smiling, but she was also not actively breathing fire and gnawing the heads off of infants, so it was a toss up as to her actual mood. I might not have even recognized her if she hadn't brought in a thick cloud of her usual stench of Brimstone and cigarettes. (They say smell is the sense tied closest to memory, but some memories are just too horrible and must be suppressed, so it's no wonder I didn't pick her up on radar earlier.)

What really burned me about this situation, though, is that by not paying attention to who she was in the first place, I had inadvertently been far nicer to her than I might otherwise have been. If I'd realized this was Mrs. Carol Satan in the first place, I would never have been so kind as to put her book on hold sans her "liberry" card. I'd have made her search through all the cigarette butts I imagine are clogging her purse and dig that sucker out. What's worse, now I've set a precedent in her head that she doesn't need her card for all transactions, which will surely come back to bite us in the ass in the future. My only real comfort is that she doesn't usually come in on days that I work, and it's only because I was filling in on this particular Tuesday that I saw her at all. When she bites in the future, she'll bite someone else. (Course, she'll likely bite Mrs. A or Mrs. C, who will then in turn bite me back later.)