Librarian

The librarian frowned.  Usually she was a good judge of character.  Long years of directing readers to the correct shelves for their particular interest had made her expert at reading people.  Little old lady in a hand-knitted cardigan - 746.43 in the Dewey Decimal System - Knitting.  Middle-aged man with a beer gut - 641.873 for home brewing or 636.7 for dogs if he looked like the pet-keeping type.  Small boy - always 567.9 (dinosaurs) or 625.2 (railway engines).

She loved the Dewey Decimal System.  It made sense of a random world.  Order out of chaos.  Of course, most readers just wanted fiction which needed little intervention from her.  Fiction was filed alphabetically, according to the surname of the author.  A simple system, which the librarian rather despised.  She sometimes tried to guess which area a reader would head for.  Harried mum - Romantic fiction.  Frazzled executive - thrillers.  But it wasn’t the same.  There was no real challenge to it.

No, Dewey had her heart.  Every possible interest or human endeavour categorised and classified and stored correctly on the library shelves.  It got to be a game she played in her head as a reader approached her information desk.  Could she predict the request?  But this one had her flummoxed.  The girl had looked like an art student: a little hesitant, hand-made dangly earrings, floaty fabrics with a bohemian vibe.  Arts (740’s) or crafts (745) maybe even fashion design (746.92) for sure.  So she was taken aback when the girl made her request.  She answered automatically, the number popping out of her internal filing system without conscious deliberation:

"Second floor, first shelf on the right.  We don't get many requests for that."

The girl nodded & turned away.  The librarian watched her head towards the stairs, vaguely alarmed.  She didn't look the type for 623.4 - Firearms.