He liked to lose himself in the labyrinth of shelves where no one could see him, and there he would take his lunch. Yesterday it was a grilled cheese sandwich, which he nibbled slowly and leisurely, while flipping through Camus. He picked the philosophy section yesterday, and it was at precisely twelve o’clock in the afternoon that he took his sandwich from his bag and proceeded to eat.
At one, he glimpsed people pass by his shelf and eye his sandwich. They looked at his hand pointedly, and then at the crumbs circling his mouth. They tried to catch his eye and point to the sign that forbade eating in the library, but he continued to munch his sandwich until it was finished and he continued to flip through Camus until it was finished, and so they decided to leave muttering under their breaths.
At two in the afternoon yesterday, he sat yoga-style on the floor with a thermos of black coffee and flipped through Nietzsche. At three he plucked Sartre off the top shelf and lay down resting his head on a stack of de Beauviors, and at four he strolled back and forth the aisles with Heidegger and a bar of Mars. It was only when it was already five in the afternoon and the library was finally to close and the lady who was behind the desk told him that he absolutely had to go that he realized that he had, once again, forgotten to return to his work.
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