The boy picked it up with such roughness that Alan flinched on behalf of
his card.
"This isn't --" the boy began.
"It's a library card," Alan said. "They used to let me use it here."
The boy set it down on the counter again.
Mimi peered at it. "There's no name on that card," she said.
"Never needed one," he said.
He'd gotten the card from the sour-faced librarian back home, tricked
her out of it by dragging along Bradley and encouraging him to waddle
off into the shelves and start pulling down books. She'd rolled it into
her typewriter and then they'd both gone chasing after Brad, then she'd
asked him again for his name and they'd gone chasing after Brad, then
for his address, and then Brad again. Eventually, he was able to simply
snitch it out of the platen of the humming Selectric and walk out. No
one ever looked closely at it again -- not even the thoroughly
professional staffers at the Kapuskasing branch who'd let him take out a
stack of books to read in the bus station overnight while he waited for
the morning bus to Toronto.
He picked up the card again then set it down. It was the first piece of
identification he ever owned, and in some ways, the most important.
"I have to give you a new card," the mesh-back kid said. "With a bar
code. We don't take that card anymore." He picked it up and made to tear
it in half.
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