There are those who thought my going to work in a library was a bad, bad idea. After all, people with obsessive-compulsive disorder are usually told to avoid places where they could find large number of objects to organize, lest they become completely overwhelmed by the need to organize and find themselves lost in the midst of their own obsession.

Well, that is exactly what I did. Good or bad, it was about a year after I had been diagnosed with OCD. I was taking a class at the community college, and needed to do some research, so I went to the public library. Now, I wasn’t a book buff, and still am not, really, but I couldn’t resist the lure of row after row of items that were classified, sorted, and stored IN ORDER. I was in heaven.

I had never studied the Dewey Decimal System, but within fifteen minutes I had it pretty much figured out. I started grabbing books off of the return carts and putting them back where they belonged. I wandered through the library doing this for about an hour before someone who actually worked there caught me and politely asked me to let those who knew what they were doing handle it. I swore I did know and offered to show her, but she asked me to leave.

So, four years later I had a degree in Library Sciences, and less than two weeks after graduating, had moved to Portland and gotten myself a job in the main branch of the Portland Public Library. Things went great for about five years; I climbed the ranks until I was the Senior Restocking Coordinator. But on that fifth year, some intern in personnel noticed the one strange thing about my record; I had never taken a vacation day. I never even called in sick. To be honest, I couldn’t stand to be away. The idea of someone putting books back in the wrong place in my absence was enough to drive me absolutely bonkers. So I opted to never be away for more than I had to in order to eat, sleep, get the occasional haircut, and run whatever other essential errands came up.

I didn’t have any family. And I hadn’t been on a date in years. I was the classic old librarian. My firm support bra, knee-high stockings, hair pulled back, long skirts, and comfortable shoes had earned me plenty of snickers when patrons though I couldn’t hear. Truth is I heard them every time, but I really didn’t care. As long as they kept coming in and checking out books, I would always be able to satisfy my needs; regardless of what anyone thought of me. All I needed was my books and my Dewey Decimal System, and I was a happy woman.

Someone in management decided it wasn’t a good idea to have me continue to work without vacation, so I was told that I had to take a week off whether I wanted to or not. My personnel file showed my OCD; I hadn’t attempted to hide it. In hindsight, I realized at that moment that I probably should have, but it was too late. I had to spend a week away, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

Next thing I know I’m on a bus to some place called “The Land’s End Hotel and Resort.” I wasn’t thrilled, but a coworker had recommended it to me as “a cozy place with a TON of books,” so I was hoping I could satisfy my obsession without being to obvious about it. Supposedly a haven for writers and poets, which is fine. Could be a haven for serial killers for all I care; if they’ve got a lot of books, it’s the place for me.

When I walked in, the girl at the front desk; Sarah, smiled as though she knew me, even though I was fairly certain I’d never seen her before. “Ms. Masters,” she began, and I wondered how she knew me. “Glad to see you made it. I have you slated to stay in the Genevieve Room.”

She said this as if it should mean something to me, but it didn’t.

“It’s full of books.” She explained frankly; making no effort to hide the fact that she knew exactly why I was there.

I didn’t care why she knew; she had just told me what I was hoping to hear, and I took the bait without hesitation. “Just point me in the right direction. My nose will guide me the rest of the way.”

The room was nice enough; big bed, a couple of chairs, a coffee table, and a loveseat. But I barely noticed any of these because my eyes went straight to the corner with the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I dropped my bags instantly and rushed over to see how they had been arranged.

I was shocked. There didn’t seem to be any organization whatsoever. Not by Dewey. Not alpha by author. Not alpha by title. Maybe it was by publishing date. I grabbed the very last book on the bottom of the right-most shelf to check the date, but dropped it in the process. The book fell open to a page that I read over as I picked it up:

The room's brass "Genevieve" nameplate flashed once in the hallway light as I closed the door -- quietly as I could, even holding the handle down until the door was completely seated in the frame, just to keep the latch from clicking. The room was long and strange. A cherry wood, queen-sized sleigh bed sat at one end, turned sideways to the room and backed into an irregular, book-lined wall nook in such a way as to block the three lowest shelves?. Two wingback chairs faced each other over a low coffee table in the center of the room, and a loveseat sat at the far end in he center of a dusty square of clear hardwood floor. It was a horrible layout; it looked as though a madman had rearranged the furniture according to plan impossible to either understand or explain.

I looked around the room again to confirm what I suspected; this passage was either about the room I was now standing in, or it was a freakish coincidence. I flipped the book over to see the title. It was “Stories of the Land’s End Hotel and Resort,” by Remington Davis.

I decided it must be some sort of promotional book that they send out to potential guests to promote the hotel, so I stuck it back on the shelf and continued to puzzle over the strange order in which the books were placed.

Two hours later I had determined that they were not organized by and method that I could possibly devised, and I had managed to rearranged them three or four times before decided to go alpha by author. Dewey was better suited to very large collections, and though this was certainly an eclectic selection; with titles such as “Blue Dolls in Wisconsin, A Renzo Novel,” “The Bartender’s Guide to Serving Mythical Creatures,” and “The McGaa,” a series of bookshelves in a corner of a hotel room could hardly be called a full collection.

Satisfied with my work, I left my room to stroll the halls and see if I could find any other shelves to organize. It didn’t take me long to come across the next set. This one’s collection was just as strange as the one before, with books apparently about mysterious disappearances, fantasies about wood nymphs, melancholy ghost stories, and so on. It was also just as disorganized. An hour and a half later, this was no longer the case.

I continue about the hotel for most of the night; in absolute compulsive heaven. My watch read 3:09 a.m. as I collapsed back into my room. I flopped down on the bed, exhausted but fulfilled. I looked up happily at my first project of the evening as I already felt myself drifting off to sleep.

Jerking so forcefully to an upright position that I nearly fell off the bed, I felt short of breath as I stood and walked over to the shelves. The books were not in the order I had left them in. There were no other signs that someone had been in my room during my explorations of the hotel, but how else could you explain the fact that the books now seemed back to their original position?

Wasting no time to contemplate this, I set in to work again. Once I finished, I double-checked that the door was locked tight, and then settled into sleep.

Nonetheless, the next morning the books were once again disorganized and chaotic. I threw on my clothes and rushed out of the room to check on my other projects. They too had been returned to their original state of chaos. It was all I could do not to scream.

I ran to the front desk as fast as I could. Sarah, the girl from the night before, was there.

“Who is in charge of the books in this hotel?” I demanded.

“I’m sorry?”

“The books; who arranges them?”

Sarah smiled at me, and I could see she was amused. “No one, ma’am; they just sort of arrange themselves.”

“Nonsense,” I spat in frustration. “Someone has to be moving them around; because I alphabetized several shelves last night, only to find they had been put back in the original order this morning. Even the books in my room had been rearranged.”

Sarah’s smile widened slightly. “Ms. Masters, I can talk to the Management regarding your concerns if you like, but I would ask you to remain calm. The books are a mismatched collection for sure; some have been provided by the hotel’s owner, some left by previous guests, and some seem to just show up. They are placed on the shelves and taken back off by whoever happens by the shelves. And in all my time here, I have never heard anyone complain about their lack of organization. In fact, several guests have commented on how it was mysterious how they managed to just happen across a particular book that provided them the information or distraction that they needed at that particular moment in time.”

I already felt foolish and didn’t need this sexy young thing making it worse. But that was of small concern next to the central mystery. Someone had been following after me moving the books back after I fixed them, and I wanted to know who. “Fine,” I clipped and stormed back to my room.

When I got there, someone had placed a book on my bed. It was titled, “Chaos Theory for Beginners.” I was not amused, so I picked the book up and actually almost threw it before regaining my composure and placing it on the shelf.

I started in again on the shelves in my room before heading down the hall to replace the books that I worked on the night before. And again when I returned, the books had been moved back. This time, the Chaos book was sitting on the coffee table, and there was a note.

“Read this, Veronica. Trust me.”

It wasn’t signed. This was starting to get downright creepy. I grabbed the note and headed down to the desk.

“This was sitting on a book in my room. On my coffee table. I want to know who wrote it.”

Sarah shrugged. “It isn’t signed.”

“I know that, that’s why I’m bringing it to you. Who could be getting into my room?”

“Well, several staff have keys to the suites.”

“And do they often wander into people’s room to rearrange books and make reading suggestions?”

“The staff doesn’t,” Sarah said, a twinkle evident in her eyes, “but the Management has been known to do things like that.”

“Well, then I’d like to talk to the Management.”

Sarah shrugged. “I’m not sure when I can arrange that, but I will work on it. In the meantime, I’d suggest maybe you try reading the book.”

“I’m not much of a reader.” I admitted. I knew what was coming next.

“But don’t you work in a library? And didn’t you tell me the last time you were down here that you stayed up all night rearranging books?”

“Yes,” I answered; daring her to ask the next question.

“Okay.” She didn’t.

I figured I wasn’t going to get anything else out of her, so I stormed back to my room. When I got there, the book was on the bed with a new note.

“Veronica, trust me. You want to read this book. It has information that should help explain things to you.”

It was signed “The Management.”

I gave up. This was obviously not going to end until I at least tried to read the damn book. So I opened it up to the introduction.

Chaos theory, put simply, states that all things are interconnected in the universe. What appears to be random is usually just a pattern that is too complex for us to recognize. Many people mistakenly believe that “chaos” means without order, when it actually means is without apparent order.

Dropping the book, I ran back to the bookshelf and began to study the books on it once more. They still appeared to have no sense of organization, although I could tell that they had been put back in the same order they had been in before I had fixed them. Absentmindedly, I left my room and began to check all of the other bookshelves I had rearranged.

I spent two days doing this; going from bookshelf to bookshelf trying to decipher the code to it all. Guests would pass me with curious glances, but no one tried to either help me or stop me. And still I couldn’t see any pattern. Once in awhile I would think I had come up with something, only to discover the theory didn’t hold up with the next couple of books I reviewed on the shelf.

About halfway through the third day, I realized that I had not slept. I also realized that the management had not yet come to meet with me like I had asked. For a moment I thought about going to the desk and giving Sarah a piece of my mind about it, but then decided I was just too tired. So, I wandered back into my room and collapsed on the bed.

“Veronica.” The voice said calmly. It was deep and warm; like a snug blanket on a winter eve.

“What?” I mumbled.

“You wanted to see me?”

I realized that the voice must belong to the Management, but why he had decided to wake me up in my room to meet with me was beyond me. I was instantly angered at the intrusion, and a little embarrassed to realize that he must think me a terrible slob to be sleeping fully dressed on top of the covers.

I sat up quickly only to realize that I wasn’t in my room. I was in a huge library. There were shelves lining the walls from the floor to beyond where I could see. My first reaction was ecstasy at the idea of having so many books to organize, but then I remembered my experiences with books over the past couple of days, and couldn’t decided if I should be excited or afraid.

The voice apparently belonged to the man sitting in the high backed chair across from me. He looked like he was in his mid-thirties. He was wearing a light denim jacket over a blue oxford shirt, khaki slacks, and Converse tennis shoes. He smiled sincerely at me.

“Hey there.”

I looked down and realized that I was sitting on a feinting couch amid piles and piles of additional books, as well as scrolls, maps, and musical manuscripts.

“How did I get here?”

“I brought you here. You could say it’s my office.” He sat back and took a sip of the tea he was holding. “My name is Remington Davis. Many around here call me The Management, but you can call me Remi. Care for some tea?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to be charmed out of getting the answers I needed. “Have you been rearranging the books?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you keep messing them up.” He said this kindly; with more amusement than annoyance in his voice.

“But they aren’t in any order.”

“That you can figure out yet, you mean. Although I give you full merits for trying.”

I couldn’t help but feel like he was talking down to me. “Look, I’ve worked in a library for several years, so I know a thing or two about organizing books. It’s my life.”

“I know. That’s why you’re here.”

“No, I’m here because a friend recommended this place to me.”

“True, but you are also here because I wanted you here. It’s all connected.”

“Chaos theory, yeah, I read part of that book.”

“Actually, you only read the first two sentences, but apparently it was enough to get you started.”

“Started?”

“Yes, started. I need your help, Veronica.”

This was too much. “Look, pal, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why you know who I am. I don’t know why you’ve brought me here, or even where here is. I don’t know how or why you kept rearranging the books. I don’t know if you are trying to drive me insane, but that’s exactly what you are doing. You ever heard of obsessive-compulsive disorder? Well, I’ve suffered from it all my life. Therapy and drugs didn’t do a thing for me. Nothing did, until I wandered into a library one day. I need to organize things. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

I knew I was babbling, but I didn’t care. I could feel that familiar panic rising up in me. I was totally out of control, and that was something I could not handle. I had to have order. Patterns that I could recognize and control. And I had all I could take of confusion and disorder. I felt like I was the butt of some joke; something apparently this guy and that Sarah girl from the desk were in on, and I didn’t like the idea that I was being manipulated.

And yet, I was intrigued. This was stuff right out of a mystery novel; the only kind of book I ever really did enjoy reading. And someone wanted me. Someone needed my help.

The Management sat and watched me work through my internal monologue. When he thought maybe I had gotten to a crossroads, he spoke up.

“I know this is confusing, Veronica, and I don’t want you to think that I am toying with you. As you have no doubt noticed, The Land’s End Hotel and Resort isn’t your typical vacation spot. Strange and seemingly unexplainable things happen around here all the time. But I assure you there is direction and a purpose behind it all. We are here to help our guests in ways that no other hotel can. But as time goes on, it gets harder to do this. More guests come, and as they do, we have to be able to serve them while still providing our unique services to the guests that have come before.

“As you may also be able to guess, the books in the hotel play an integral part of what we do. They serve purposes that you can probably not even begin to imagine. But they have to be kept in a certain order. They have to be rearranged when new guests come. They have to be accessible where they are needed most. And it is getting to be more than I can handle.”

I just stared at him. I didn’t know what to say.

“This is where you come in. I know all about your so-called obsessive-compulsive disorder. Like so many other things, society has managed to take your unique talents and label them as a dysfunction. You may not have been able to see the patterns in where the books in the hotel have been placed, but I’ll tell you that you came very close; closer than I would have thought possible. In no time you will understand exactly how it all works.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

His smile took on an almost patronly quality, and to be honest, I liked it.

I smiled back; giving in. If there was some bigger plan at work here, I wanted to know what it was. And the bottom line was that I believed what he was telling me. I had no reason to, but I did nonetheless.

“If you say so.”

“It will all make sense in time, I promise. Let me start at the beginning.”

We talked for what seemed like months. When it was over, I had a new job; House Librarian for the Land’s End Hotel and Resort. I’d tell you more, but I can’t. The big secrets can’t be revealed until the story ends, and I for one hope that ending doesn’t come for a long, long time.

In the meantime, I can guarantee to you that when you are a guest at the Lands End Hotel and Resort, you will find exactly the reading selection you are looking for, exactly when you need it the most. I will make sure of that.