A very tall ass. Even employing the flowery ways of 'derriere' or 'keister', the essence of the description remains, so long as one keeps the 'tall' within. I could say, "Today a tall caboose faced me", or "As of Friday morning, I encountered the tallest badonkadonk right outside the library", and none of my communication's intent would be lost. But if I instead complemented this mental picture with a circumference approximation or an informed volumetric guess, the other party would no longer care about the fact that what I have right in front of me is the property of the tallest person I have ever seen.

When astray thoughts finally collided with my freeze-and-ponder instincts, I rushed down to one knee and offered a hand that picks up books and another that collects pens. Hands do not pick up books and collect pens at the same time; it's a rule I must have read somewhere. An encyclopedia, half-a-dozen pencils, three journals, one stapler, some funny stickers. If one was to follow the order dictating a set of hands' behavior, it is clear that the encyclopedia rests atop one or more palms, that the journals lay on the thick base, that the stapler and the pencils scatter above one journal, and that the stickers decorate everything else. These left hand's fingers broke every convention someone, probably, once, imagined as such.

Had we lived on times of scarcity and less solidarity, my one-book-two-pens contribution would be met with disdaining smiles and a pat a tad too hard on the back. The lady with glasses reminded me of all progress we've made, and poured down a 'thanks' that felt genuine. If I didn't crane my neck, I feared for the destination of the accompanying 'sorry' and the subsequent 'come inside'. What if her words bounced off my head, sent away to never be heard again? She was already being kind enough to hide me from the sun during peak Summer; it's the least of things to reciprocate with courtesy.

En route for the front desk, I attempted and then failed to win the little competition I had conceived in three seconds. Small talk for the short distances? Check. Regular eye contact with the interlocutor? Overall, check. Relaxed yet confident gait towards the finish line? Impossible to check. From my experience, a walk with a basketball student athlete demands an unfinished stride and a skippy pace. With enough practice, any person can walk next to a basketball student athlete. But alongside the lady with glasses? Honestly, I am not sure what the training would look like.

As my comment on missing water fountains around campus was met with a nod, I started to wonder how long were we expected to share one trajectory. At the front desk, early on the weekend, wearing anything you fancy; that's what the interview invitation had said. Unless a panel side-by-side format was in place, me sharing paths with a stranger likely meant either of two things. She just so happens to enjoy being in the library at eight on a Saturday morning. Or she was Evangeline B., per the signature of the interviewer at the bottom of my scheduling e-mail.

Once the lady with glasses set her bag on a table, and the front desk in between made clear that I was the only external party, we exchanged seemingly confused looks. Because I had thought it convenient to wait for her belongings to be dropped, my name and a non sequitur 'Hi' needed to wait until I managed to ignore all retroactive judgements of my jokes on the way to the front desk. "Well, I don't know why I didn't say my name earlier. I'm Max, and I am here for the assistant position. My interviewer is Evangeline, or, I mean, are you---"

With a warm handshake and a lot of grip, Evangeline apologized for "being late" and not knowing "what was I [she] thinking". I was also pointed to the chairs we would use for the interview and told to wait for her logging into to her laptop. The pointing hand was within my field of vision, but not the chairs. I still had my eyes locked on Evangeline's larger-than-life embracing hand.

Sat where told, my eyes shifted between a miniature shelf, a miniature desk and a miniature door frame. Evangeline approached the shelf, and the shelf scale became a joke. Evangeline stood in front of her desk, and the desk morphed into a tall stool. Evangeline neared the staff room door frame, and the door frame felt as the ideal hole for a window. The lady with glasses could be working on a doll library, for all I knew. "And I could be looking less perplexed," I thought.

Evangeline brought her own chair so as to sit comfortably, and began asking me why I wanted the job, how many hours I could put in, and what my thoughts on weekend shifts as a student were. It may have been due to my roommate and him being around seven feet, because after the second question, I was able to focus solely on the interviewer's face and ignore all height-related brain fog. Sure, sitting on the table brought me back to my interactions with the teachers from kindergarten, but it's not as if Evangeline will suddenly become "regularly" tall or I will grow the size of the room. "Like talking to Sam, that's all it is, just a few feet taller. Nothing new," I reminded (repeated to) myself.

"And you indicated previous library experience. Could you tell me more about that?" Evangeline's voice had that lower frequency I have often found among taller people. 'Often' meaning my roommate Sam, Evangeline and a school bully from middle school. "It wasn't exactly a library. My uncle owns a bookstore, and I would help him on Summer and Winter breaks. I hope you don't mind..." Although my body was under control, with eyes never going too far from the lady's face, my mind still hadn't finished its hydration break upon meeting Evangeline, and so all the exaggerated bullet points I had made about my time at uncle's were not ready for dispatch.

"Oh, no, that's totally fine, we don't expect students to have prior experience, but if you do, that's great. As a clerk at the bookstore, you probably gained something that can be transferred here, you know? Before this place, I also worked at some nice bookstores... So I understand you" I wanted to shower Evangeline with gratitude for talking slow and giving my bullcrap of relevant experience the time to resurface on my brain. "That's nice, yeah, although I mostly dealt with the cash register, I helped out cataloguing new purchases and, sometimes, ordering books from a different branch, like, an inter loan here, I guess." Evangeline nodded and smiled, correcting my 'inter' with 'interlibrary'. She probably meant no ill-will, but her eyes were too piercingly blue for me not to jump to wrong conclusions.

Evangeline said she appreciated my time, and waited for me to stand up first, or so was my impression. Next to her, I awkwardly noticed neither the distance between the two of us, nor that between her behind and the chair, was changing. As a first among firsts, I simply approached and offered a handshake. "Thanks again for the opportunity. I'll be on the lookout for any updates starting..." my voice trailed off as the deadline Evangeline had given me was being confounded with her engulfing hand. "Starting next week, you'll get an e-mail from me, but you know, to be honest, you've got a good profile." The lady was still taller than me even when sitting, and I could not take it anymore, and I stared for a second too long at the invisibility of my hand and my wrist and part of my forearm. "Only now you get surprised?" Her giggling kicking in.

As my wrist came back to view, so did my common sense and decency. I laughed with the eyes diverted. "Nah, just... You know... Sorry about that, it's, it's rude on my end." Evangeline waved my apology away and stressed that I shouldn't worry, and that she would have in fact expected a comment earlier.

"So. You said profile's good?" I sprinkled some aloofness, or whatever was left after embarrassing myself. "Yeah! Get ready for my e-mail, that's all I can tell you" Evangeline was smiling more than at the beginning of the interview. Maybe I should have brought up her height in advance? "Sounds good! See you in two weeks, then." Evangeline replied with a "See you!", which confirmed I would finally be able to quit my job at the cafeteria, and rejoice on the sweet return-on-investment of working as a library student assistant.