Jason

Jason is a student whose growing connection with Maren takes shape in the library, first through books and written conversation, then through repeated efforts to be alone with her. Their exchanges make him appear earnest and attentive, but their final encounter brings his attraction directly against the threat posed by Maren’s nature: he moves closer even after she warns that she will eat him.

Identity and Introduction

Jason first introduces himself by writing his name on a piece of paper during a conversation with Maren. Before that, they have spent several minutes exchanging notes about books and the classes he is taking. He says he is double majoring and asks whether Maren has read Claude Lévi-Strauss or Margaret Mead, establishing his academic interests through the subjects he brings into their conversation.

The silent exchange is also flirtatious. Maren notices that Jason is cute and that he has chosen to spend time in a library of his own free will; she thinks they have just enough in common. After he writes his name, she writes hers beneath it. His smile makes a strong impression on her, though an irreverent inner voice immediately compares it to an advertisement for Colgate or Listerine. The moment presents Jason through Maren’s amused, watchful perspective rather than through an independent account of his character.

Courtship and Repeated Encounters

Jason asks whether Maren has a boyfriend. She sees him looking at her with painful earnestness and deliberately makes her answer difficult for him: she writes that she does. As she continues writing, she senses him cringe. She then apologizes and thanks him for his book recommendations. Jason replies that he would have given them to her anyway and hopes she believes him. His response leaves the exchange open to more than one reading: it can be understood as an effort to reassure her that his interest in books is genuine, even as the question about a boyfriend has made his romantic interest plain.

Maren later has a routine that divides her days between shelving books, eating a tuna sandwich while reading an Anne Rice novel in a secluded library corner, and returning to her small room in Mrs. Clipper’s boardinghouse to finish books. On two mornings a week she sits in on lectures and takes notes as if she were being graded. Jason can interrupt this routine simply by being at the library, especially when he follows her into the stacks. He startles her there with a quiet question about field studies, then apologizes when she gasps. The library becomes both the setting of her solitary habits and the place where Jason repeatedly draws her into contact.

By the middle of November, Maren has begun dressing in black cardigans, skirts, and lace stockings, thinking Jason might appreciate a better look at her legs. Around the same time, he corners her with an armful of books and invites her to a Thanksgiving potluck. She refuses. Jason quickly clarifies that vegetarian food will be available, but Maren tells him she is not a vegetarian and thanks him for the invitation. Her answer declines the gathering without denying the attraction that has been developing between them.

The Closed Stacks

In the first week of December, Jason follows Maren into the stacks carrying a yellow call slip. Such slips are used to request very old or obscure books not kept on the regular shelves; patrons are supposed to ask for them at the desk. Instead, Jason brings the slip directly to Maren and asks quietly whether she can help him. He comes close enough for his breath to fall on her neck, making the request an unmistakably intimate approach as well as a departure from library procedure.

Maren takes the slip and leads him through a door at the back of the library into the closed stacks. She enters a code, then guides him left and right through a zigzagging route to the farthest part of the collection. The lights flicker and sometimes go out for a minute, while dust and mold rise from the old books around them. The setting’s physical isolation gives their encounter a different charge from their earlier conversations in the public library: Jason has followed her somewhere separated from the ordinary shelves and their routines.

Attraction and Threat

In the gloom, Jason asks Maren whether she is a succubus. She tells him to leave immediately and threatens to eat him, beginning with his throat. Yet the encounter does not end with his retreat. Jason’s eyes shine in the dimness; he steps into her and runs his tongue along the edge of her jaw, saying, “I had no idea you were so twisted.” Maren sighs and presses her lips to his neck, answering, “Nobody ever does.”

The scene brings Jason’s curiosity, desire, and willingness to approach Maren together, but it does not establish that he understands the full truth about her or make her warning harmless. As she waits after threatening him, Maren recalls the thought, “There are some things I’m never going to tell you no matter how many times you ask.” The remembered refusal to disclose sits beside Jason’s question and his physical advance: intimacy is possible in the stacks, but so is concealment. Jason’s role in the story rests on that unresolved collision between the attraction Maren allows and the danger she names.