Cawley is not LA but after a week in Duster, it feels like Paris.
I step off the bus and look around. There are things here. A pharmacy. A hardware store. A Mexican restaurant. A thrift shop. A hair salon. There's a traffic light — one, singular — and a woman pushing a stroller and a teenager on a skateboard.
And — god bless this town — there's a coffee shop. It's called Bean There, and the air coming through the open door smells like espresso. I rush inside.
"Can I get two large lattes?" I say. "Oat milk, if you have it."
"Sure." The girl starts making them without comment and the anonymity is so beautiful I want to hug her.
"That's seven forty," she says.
I stare at her. "For both?"
"Yeah." She looks confused. "For both."
In LA that would be fourteen, minimum, plus tip, plus the silent judgment of the barista if you don't put at least three dollars in the jar. I hand over a ten and tell her to keep the change. I'm feeling reckless with my allowance and this girl has given me the gift of being nobody.
I carry my coffees down Main Street, almost with a spring in my step. The library is three blocks from the bus stop, past the Mexican restaurant, which I'm already mentally bookmarking for later. I also pass a barber shop and a bridal shop with a window display that makes me grateful I'm single.
The Cawley Public Library is a single-story building with a flat roof and a mural on the side wall that appears to depict the history of agriculture in the Central Valley. There are two benches out front, a book return box, and a sign that says OPEN SATURDAYS 9AM – 4PM.
I push through the door and when the air conditioning hits me, I stop walking and just stand there. Cold air. Clean, quiet, cold air. I close my eyes and let it wash over me.
The library is one big space with rows of shelves, a reading area with armchairs, a children's section in the corner with beanbags and a rug, and a front desk where a woman is cataloging books. There are only a few people in here, mostly elderly.
I walk to the front desk and the librarian looks up. She's maybe seventy, with white hair and glasses on a beaded chain.
"Hello, dear. Can I help you?"
"I'd like to borrow some books."
"Take your pick," she says, gesturing to the rows of shelves. "Do you have a library card?"
I shake my head. "No. Do I need one? How much are they?"
She narrows her eyes at me. "Library cards are free," she says. "That's generally how libraries work."
"Right. Of course. I knew that." I actually didn't know that. I've always just bought books.
"I'll need a photo ID and a local address," she says.
I give her my driver's license — suspended but still valid as ID — and the address of the Dusty Rose Motel, which she writesdown without comment. "You can borrow up to ten items for three weeks."
"No. That's — ten is great. Thank you."
I take my two coffees while she prints my card and don't know where to start. I haven't browsed for a book in years. I haven't read a book in — I'm embarrassed to admit, even to myself, how long. The last thing I read was a self-help book Sita gave me called "Manifest Love" which I got forty pages into before I left it on a lounger in the Maldives.
The shelves are organized by genre and I drift through them. Literary fiction. Science fiction. Mystery. History. Biography. I pick up books and read the backs and put them down. I pick up more. I have no idea what I like because I've never taken the time to find out.
I end up in the romance section, which takes up the largest space. The two women who were browsing earlier are gone and I have it to myself. The covers are ridiculous — shirtless men, windswept women, couples in various states of embrace against backgrounds ranging from Scottish castles to New York penthouses to, in one case, a spaceship.
At the end, there's a smaller shelf with a handwritten sign that says LGBTQ+ ROMANCE. It's only two rows with colorful spines. The covers are less ridiculous than the duke section, though there's still plenty of dramatic eye contact. I'm not sure why it caught my attention. I have queer friends — well, gay friends. Raj and Oliver, who actually did have the decency to check in on me since I left jail. But I don't have any close lesbian friends and reading a romance about two women has never occurred to me.
Maggie flashes through my mind briefly as I pick up a book. Something about a summer and a second chance. I turn it over and read the back. Just curiosity, that's all it is.
I take it to one of the armchairs and sit down with my coffees and I read without looking up. It's the most peaceful I've felt since before the wedding.
The book is good. Not in the way I expected — I thought it would feel foreign, like watching a movie in a language I don't speak, but it doesn't. The dialogue is sharp and funny and the chemistry between the two women is palpable. When they finally kiss it's a hundred and ten pages in and I realize I've been reading for three hours.
