Seeing other libraries

Once a week, usually Fridays, I leave the office in the middle of the day and walk west past a string of row houses and grand buildings with names and porte-cocheres. My coworkers probably think I'm at lunch, but lunch is in the fridge, and I am at the branch library where I have been sending all of my reserves recently.

I still like my old branch, and it's close to my apartment, but things just haven't been the same between us. First, it started closing an hour earlier on its two designated 'late' days, forcing me to either race uptown or wait for the weekend (the other nights it closes at 5). Then more and more often, I would go to pick up a reserve and it wouldn't be on the shelf, and I'd have to ask at the desk for it; sometimes they wouldn't even check among the to-be-shelved reserves, telling me to "come back another day." I admit I'm impatient, but when I get the notice that a book is in, I expect it to actually be in. I forgot my library card at my new branch once and an employee was able to work around it with my last name and card number -- imagine! He could have just said no.

I've come to depend on the time out, too. The smallest errand can take on jailbreak dimensions. On a nice day the blossoming trees wave and what was an icy wind-conducting corridor becomes a breezy stroll. I nod at the doormen, the nannies with their charges; even the tourists unable to process a walk sign don't bother me much. I don't take my phone, because no one at work has the number and frankly there is nothing that can't wait a half hour till I come back. My head clears out, well, except last week when that 20-minute period set off my allergies so bad I spent the rest of the day rubbing my eyes like a 12-year-old girl watching "The Notebook." I still would have taken the walk. Maybe it won't work out with this branch but right now it's new and sweet and springlike.