~6.12~

In order to kill time, Ed headed to the library early. He was curious why Liv had been so desperate to get a library card. Before he lost his job, the last time he’d been to a city library was as a kid. He’d never gone as an adult. Since joining the street life, he’d found reasons to duck into them, but hadn’t done more than read a few magazines or a newspaper.

Those who had steady jobs and warm, safe places to sleep at night tended to think of street folk using libraries as simply homeless bums who went there to sleep off their drug or alcohol-fueled hazes. People with such advantages were also rather quick to dismiss the importance of having somewhere safe and relatively quiet one could go for a few hours at a time.

It was true that libraries provided at least temporary shelter from the worst weather and other hazards of urban life, but they also represented important resources for information, entertainment, and education that were within the price range of almost anyone.

There were limits, of course. Access to the libraries was theoretically free but just as the law forbade the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges and steal bread, so too did society place limits upon the ability of the rich and poor alike to go certain places in a less than suitable state of dress, or in a manner judged to be disturbing to other patrons. The standards varied from place to place and even from time to time… the inner city libraries were more accessible than the more modern ones that served the west side, and they became even more so outside of peak hours.

Under the new budget, of course, those libraries were only open during peak hours. Ed was lucky. While anyone who saw him might think he was down on his luck, out of work, and maybe even out of a home, he didn’t look like trouble.