Open Secrets by Alice Munro Read Free Book Online

other ways, not so like. He could not imagine Jane ever presenting a man with a mystery, and following that up with the information that it would never be solved. Jane was a woman to give a man peace. The submerged dialogue he had with her—sensual, limited, kind—was very like the one he had had with his wife.
    The Librarian went to the switch by the door, and turned out the main light. She locked the door. She disappeared among the shelves, turning out the lights there, too, in a leisurely way. The town clock was striking nine. She must think that it was right. His own watch said three minutes to.
    It was time to get up, time for him to leave, time to go to Walley.
    When she had finished dealing with the lights, she came and sat down at the table beside him.
    He said, “I would never think of you in any way that would make you unhappy.”
    Turning out the lights shouldn’t have made it so dark. They were in the middle of summer. But it seemed that heavy rain clouds had moved in. When Arthur had last paid attention to the street, he had seen plenty of daylight left: country people shopping, boys squirting each other at the drinking fountain, and young girls walking up and down in their soft, cheap, flowery summer dresses, letting the young men watch them from wherever the young men congregated—the Post Office steps, the front of the feed store. And now that he looked again he saw the street in an uproar from the loud wind that already carried a few drops of rain. The girls were shrieking and laughing and holding their purses over their heads as they ran to shelter, store clerks were rolling up awnings and hauling in the baskets of fruit, the racks of summershoes, the garden implements that had been displayed on the sidewalks. The doors of the Town Hall banged as the farm women ran inside, grabbing on to packages and children, to cram themselves into the Ladies’ Rest Room. Somebody tried the Library door. The Librarian looked over at it but did not move. And soon the rain was sweeping like curtains across the street, and the wind battered the Town Hall roof, and tore at the treetops. That roaring and danger lasted a few minutes, while the power of the wind went by. Then the sound left was the sound of the rain, which was now falling vertically and so heavily they might have been under a waterfall.
    If the same thing was happening at Walley, he thought, Jane would know enough not to expect him. This was the last thought he had of her for a long while.
    “Mrs. Feare wouldn’t wash my clothes,” he said, to his own surprise. “She was afraid to touch them.”
    The Librarian said, in a peculiarly quivering, shamed, and determined voice, “I think what you did—I think that was a remarkable thing to do.”
    The rain made such a constant noise that he was released from answering. He found it easy then to turn and look at her. Her profile was dimly lit by the wash of rain down the windows. Her expression was calm and reckless. Or so it seemed to him. He realized that he knew hardly anything about her—what kind of person she really was or what kind of secrets she could have. He could not even estimate his own value to her. He only knew that he had some, and it wasn’t the usual.
    He could no more describe the feeling he got from her than you can describe a smell. It’s like the scorch of electricity. It’s like burnt kernels of wheat. No, it’s like a bitter orange. I give up.
    He had never imagined that he would find himself in a situation like this, visited by such a clear compulsion. But itseemed he was not unprepared. Without thinking over twice or even once what he was letting himself in for, he said, “I wish—”
    He had spoken too quietly, she did not hear him.
    He raised his voice. He said, “I wish we could get married.”
    Then she looked at him. She laughed but controlled herself.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just what went through my mind.”
    “What was that?” he