The First Line literary journal issued a challenge to write a story starting with this sentence: "The Simmons public library was a melting pot of the haves and have-nots, a mixture of homeless people and the wealthy older residents of the nearby neighborhood."
Mine was one of those chosen for publication, among a group of great stories. "Checking Out" is a departure for me, darker and stranger than my usual writing, informed by the darkness and strangeness of our times. Also by one of my favorite old Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by some lovely tarot cards from 1910 I found online, and by these lines from a Charles Simic poem:
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
I'm pleased to have had this story published.
Image: Old Woman Reading (After Rembrandt Van Rijn), by John Graham Gilbert
