What I Read Before the Shift Starts

I wake at two in the afternoon, which is the middle of my night. The flat is warm because the sun has been on it since ten. I make coffee too strong, stand at the kitchen window, and wait until the street below sounds like people rather than delivery vans. Then I walk to the library.

It takes twenty minutes if I go along the river. In summer there are people on the lawns doing nothing, and I envy them in a mild, uncomplicated way. In winter the water is grey and fast and I walk faster.

The Second Floor Reading Room

The reading room is on the second floor, under a high ceiling that makes every cough travel. The tables are long and the lamps are green. The same pensioners are there with the newspapers, and two students who are always on the edge of falling asleep. Nobody has ever asked me why I am awake at this hour.

In that room my hours are not strange. They are simply not mentioned.

I read about places with too much light or too little. Last month it was a book about a winter in the far north, where the sun does not come up for weeks and everyone keeps a strict routine to stay sane. I understood the routine part. I underlined that and nothing else.

Sometimes I read cookbooks instead, the old ones with too much butter and instructions that assume a whole afternoon. They are useless to me and that is the point. A book that could be useful would be work.

Due Dates

I never take more than two books. Two is a promise I can keep. The librarian stamps the card and says the date out loud, and I always think she is telling me something about my own schedule, though of course she is not.

I have never once been late, which is perhaps the only discipline I have left over from a normal life.

At half past six I close the book, put it in my bag, and walk to the bakery. The reading room stays open until eight, and I feel a small, unreasonable regret at leaving before it closes, as if I were abandoning a shift.