Woman of Light (28)

The neighborhood eventually eased out of the short stacks of downtown factories and office buildings. Luz rocked side to side as the streetcar climbed past the courthouse and capitol until they arrived at the vast mansions with stone balconies and widow’s walks. Luz pulled the chain and exited through the rear. Against the cold wind, she walked for several sandstone blocks, arriving at the Rose Dixon Library just before noon. The building was constructed with beige bricks and red Spanish shingles while marble lions adorned the dead garden. Those lions scared Luz with their white eyes, as if warning her to stay away from their kingdom.

Inside the library, Luz stomped sleet from her boots and studied the expansive hall, the waxed floors. An orb of sunlight, constantly shifting just out of step, beamed down from the stained glass windows. The room smelled vaguely of incense, and Luz tilted her face to the high ceiling, where a mural depicted a gathering of bears with tint-black snouts and padded paws. They danced on a table piled with meats, and beneath them were the words: THE WORLD IS SO FULL OF A NUMBER OF THINGS, I’M SURE WE SHOULD ALL BE AS HAPPY AS KINGS

At the front, behind a wide oak desk, a busty librarian sat beneath the light of a lime-green lamp. She had copper hair with a pencil behind her right ear, and was reading a copy of the Rocky Mountain News. She shuffled sections with her arms waving like an accordion player’s before settling on a page. She set the paper down and smoothed the center fold with both hands. It was a crossword puzzle, and the librarian vigorously worked the first lines as Luz, with trepidation, approached her post.

“May I help you?” the librarian asked, keeping her face to the paper.

“I’m looking for the community board,” said Luz. “For jobs and such.”

The librarian sighed. She dropped her pencil onto the paper and searched behind Luz. There was another librarian, an older man with a melon of a stomach. He had a thin mustache and striped suspenders. He cleaned a stack of leather-bound books with an orange cloth.

“Excuse me,” Luz said, her voice louder this time and seeming to come from somewhere lower than her throat, a place closer to her heart. “The community board?”

The librarian looked straight at Luz. She had a blank face with an unflinching mouth. “Do wait here,” she said, and rose from her seat, her heels click-clacking as she walked across the shining floor. Patrons glanced up from their reading materials. A white-haired woman stared at Luz. She had glasses hanging around her neck by a string of pearls. There was a dog in her lap, some sort of purebred with a ratlike face, and it looked at Luz, too. They let dogs in here?

The librarian approached the older man cleaning books. He stopped his task and leaned down as the librarian whispered something in his ear. The older librarian nodded, draping his orange cloth over his left shoulder. He then walked over to Luz. He had watery blue eyes with gobs of sleep in each corner. His mustache fluttered like curtains as he spoke. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have a community board.”

Luz felt disoriented. She looked around, keeping her body rigid. She squinted and pointed past the man’s shoulder to a corkboard near the water fountain. Flyers for concerts and dances had been posted with pushpins. “What’s that there?” she asked.

The man didn’t turn around to look. He scratched his neck beneath his yellowing collar. “I apologize, again, but we don’t have a community board for you.”

“But that’s a community board, isn’t it? That’s all I needed to know, thank you,” Luz said, beginning to walk over.

“It’s a community board for our other guests,” he said, quickly holding out a hand, halting her.

“It’s not in Spanish,” blurted the other librarian, who now stood beside the man, fixing the thin belt around her lilac sweater. She’d spoken as if delivering a Sunday sermon.

Luz felt heat on her skin, from her face to her feet, an ugly rising fire. For a moment, she stepped outside of herself and pictured Lizette in the library, her vast personality swarming the stacks. I’m speaking to you in English, ain’t I? Luz thought to holler.

“If you don’t have any more questions,” said the older librarian, “kindly be on your way.”

Luz stood there for a moment. The other patrons watched, their faces beaming with something like pity or hatred or minor inconvenience. There were many places she had been told she wasn’t allowed. Denver Dry Goods, Elitch Gardens, over the dead in Cheesman Park, and now, here, some rich neighborhood’s library.

“I just need to look for jobs,” she said.

“We have our own people who need jobs. I suggest you try your own neighborhood.”

But my neighborhood doesn’t have a library. Luz thought this, but didn’t say it, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of knowing they had more than she did.



* * *



—

“I’m sick of those goddamn people,” said Lizette, tearing a dinner roll to pieces in a pink booth. Though it was midwinter, she was dressed in a bright yellow dress with a fuchsia ribbon tied in a small bow around her neck. The ribbon, Luz realized, had come wrapped around a jar of jam. Large fake pearls were clipped to each of her ears and they bobbed as Lizette spoke with a full mouth. She sat alongside Alfonso. Three blocks north of the Rose Dixon Library was the Park Lane Hotel, where Alfonso worked as a waiter. Lizette usually joined him for the free employee meal. It was no problem she didn’t work there herself, so long as they shared the plate. The dining room wouldn’t open for another hour. They all three sat beneath crystal chandeliers as other waiters pushed in and out of the kitchen’s swinging doors.