Norman dragged the cartful of books after him, making a note to check the wheels after he'd unloaded it; one was squeaking and dragging against the carpet. Not enough to make dragging the cart around tricky, but... annoying, all the same.
"Wouldn't... wouldn't be stuck with half-broken carts if that budget cut hadn't happened last month..." Really, he was just half-heartedly grumbling to himself to distract himself from the tedium of reshelving work, pulling one book after another from the cart to replace them on the shelves.
Anything would be better than this, except... he sighed, and fished a print-out from his pocket; the library's list of missing books, which might as well all be white whales as far as he was concerned.
The library's copy of The Whale had been missing for years, fittingly.
"Hope whoever took the thing gave it a good home..."
