Of course...

 ...the thing I failed to take into account before speaking to Crusty the patron's friends and housemates, (y'know, in regard to Crusty's general crustiness and sanity-sapping stench), is that his friends might in fact go tell Crusty that I'm the guy who told them. This only occurred to me after I arrived at the "liberry" to open up this morning. 

It was a troubling thought.

In an ideal world, they might take Crusty aside and calmly tell him something like, "Pardon me, Crusty, but are you aware that your body odor is capable of knocking a buzzard off of a shit wagon? Well it can and, oh look, it has. And on a related subject, your beard seems to be doing its best impersonation of the Ally Sheedy snowflake scene from The Breakfast Club on a fairly constant basis. Would you, perhaps, be so kind as to take a damned bath?" 

However, while I would much prefer that Crusty's friends were discrete about where they gleaned their information, I had no control over how they imparted it to him and I could see that for them it would probably be far easier to blame it on me. It could just as likely get phrased, "Pardon me, Crusty, but were you aware that someone seems to have given you a good hearty beating with a large chunk of driftwood they hauled out of the cess pit of a hog farm? And your chin, sir, while still covered in hair, is like a putrid yet flaky croissant originating from the Butt-Riest Valley Baking Company and which I have no doubt was once in close proximity to the wang of a desert-dried corpse. But don't take our word for it; that guy from the library said so, as well." 

What if Crusty was pissed off at me? What if he confronted me about the matter? What if he, dare I say it, raised a stink? 

I mused on that for a while before deciding that if he wanted things to go down like that, it would be fine with me. I would simply say, "Do you really want to have this conversation?" If so, I would then explain to him that being exposed to his leavings was not fair to our patrons, nor to me, nor to our computer keyboards. Furthermore, I now know that he is not homeless and does have access to running water and soap, so he no longer has any excuse for turning up smelling like a turd blossom. 

While I was still formulating my potential side of the argument, the door opened and Mr. Stanky walked in.  Sonofa... He signed up for a computer and I put him on the little one by the stairs, his favorite. 

Mr. Stanky's hair looked wet. I hoped he had just washed it and that it wasn't simply clogged with grease. I supposed he could have had a bath. After all, I hadn't been clubbed by his usual invisible stench cudgel when he came in. In fact, it actually took a couple of walkbys as he sat at the computer to detect any sort of odor from him. He was stinky, but not anywhere NEAR his usual levels. He only stayed his half hour. 

By 12:30 there was still no sign of Crusty. Perhaps he was too embarrassed at being confronted with his own uncleanliness to return? Maybe it would be a good thing if they told him I'd said it. 

Around 1:45, Crusty walked in and signed up for a computer. I'm not entirely sure if he'd bathed his whole body, but his face seemed a good deal cleaner. He'd trimmed his beard short and there was no sign of crust. Furthermore, while he didn't smell springtime fresh, he certainly wasn't overpowering. Perhaps he'd bathed and just put on some old and only semi-stinky clothes. Whatever, it was a vast improvement and a welcome one. 

Crusty also failed to punch me in the face or acknowledge at all that I'd had anything to do with his sudden sprucing up. Competition for the computers was pretty fierce, so he got busted off a couple of times before I had to leave for the day. Still, I'm satisfied that he's moving in a positive direction.