“Here,” he said, crossing to the fiction section. The fiction section at the library in town had fit into three spinner racks. Here, it occupied its own corner of overstuffed bookcases. “Here,” he said, running his finger down the plastic Brodart wraps on the spines of the books, the faded Dewey labels.
H, I, J, K… There it was, the edition he’d remembered from all those years ago. On the Road.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got it.”
“You can’t check that out,” she said.
He pulled out his wallet as they drew up closer to the checkout counter. He slid out the plastic ID holder, flipping past the health card and the driver’s license—not a very good likeness of his face or his name on either, and then produced a library card so tattered that it looked like a pirate’s map on parchment. He slid it delicately out of the plastic sleeve, unbending the frayed corner, smoothing the feltlike surface of the card, the furry type.
He slid the card and the book across the counter. Mimi and the librarian—a boy of possibly Mimi’s age, who wore a mesh-back cap just like his patrons, but at a certain angle that suggested urbane irony—goggled at it, as though Alan had slapped down a museum piece.
The boy picked it up with such roughness that Alan flinched on behalf of his card.
“This isn’t—” the boy began.
“It’s a library card,” Alan said. “They used to let me use it here.”
The boy set it down on the counter again.