Merry Xmas if you want it

There I am, upstairs shelving in Fiction, regretfully disturbing the whole, lovely, quiet wing of the library with my booming cough. Think of it as thunder, an astonishing natural phenomenon. No explosion from a mere ribcage should be capable of such a noise. Yes, I shouldn't be here, but who will shelve these books if I don't!

I mean, besides my 23 co-workers.

I need a break. I drift over to the big windows that look out on the main floor of the library.

A couple is making their way across that floor. I have known them for perhaps 15 years. She is quiet and calm and pleasant. He is a bit goofy, but not in a comedian's way, just very naturally genial and simple and sweet and disheveled, like Columbo. Nearly always I see them together, a middle aged couple somewhere in their fifties. I am very fond of them.

There they go, holding hands. I cough. Through an inch of safety glass, one hundred fifty feet away, they look up and, smiling, wave.