The Shame of Lolita

Last week I looked for Lolita on the shelf at the public library.

I had also looked the week before. And a few weeks before that.

It was never there.

I began to wonder if maybe the Wake County Public Library system just didn't have any copies. I wondered if it were banned or something. So I went online and found that the library did, indeed, have copies of Lolita. Not very many. Some are lost and some are checked out to book clubs, but there were a few floating around the system. I placed a hold on one.

During lunch today I went to pick up the Lolita they were holding for me. Claiming it from the hold shelf, I handed it to the lady behind the desk, along with my library card. In the time it took me to put my card back in my wallet, she had checked the book out. It was when I reached for Lolita that I noticed the look she was giving me.

I'm still not sure what the look meant, but it was no longer the friendly, quiet, library-lady smile I'd gotten from her when I first walked up. My first instinct was to interpret her look as disapproving, maybe even offended. Later, I thought that maybe she was looking at me thinking, "Poor thing, she probably doesn't even know what it's about."

Whatever she was thinking, she wasn't happy with me.