NINE.

    I get off the bus in Westwood and scramble across the crosswalk, the skyscrapers silvering the sky above me. This part of town feels dismal to me, worse than the glitz of Hollywood Boulevard or the peeling pale yellow of Sunset Junction. People in the bottom floor of an office building work out, strutting on machines with headphones clasped over their ears. An old man gazes up at a theatre marquee as students carrying backpacks bustle past. A neon sign advertising Fortunes Read hums dimly but no one goes inside. I avoid all this and keep to the edge of the sidewalk, swinging my arms. I distract myself with a window display before entering a small three-story brownstone, unusual for Los Angeles. It is quiet inside and smells faintly of Pine Sol and floor wax. I choose the elevator over the stairs; I love the iron grill you have to push aside and the round art deco buttons and arrow indicating the floors. I feel like I'm in a silent movie.

    I go down the hall and the bell on the door rings when I walk in.

    "Good afternoon, Pennie," Ivy says.

    "Today I'm Great Garbo."

    I’m not late to work - the library doesn't open until the middle of the day, so I can take a leisurely morning. Its not really a very practical library - we don't have any patrons, so no one ever asks me reference questions and I never have to read fairy tales to children at storytime, though I wouldn't mind. I work as a page in a privately owned magic library. I like to say 'magic library' like it's situated in a floating castle, or housing extraordinary talking books, but truly the library is a repository of old and valuable books on magic going back to the 16th century. The library takes up the entire third floor of the Book Building. Downstairs there is a book dealer who specializes in rare books and manuscripts, and on the first floor a used book shop, governed by an elderly gentleman name Ira who sits behind the counter all day with a glass of wine and a copy of Finnegan's Wake. Ivy is the librarian, although I am not sure what she does precisely - she talks on the phone a lot and stares out the window at the determined body builders catty corner to us. The library is owned by an actor who has a private income and indulges himself with the hobby of collecting rare books on magic. I hardly ever see him, though he occasionally breezes in, bringing us gifts of new items for the collection and bottles of Bordeaux from his private cellar, aged 20 years.

    I set my bag down in Ivy's office. A stuffed white rabbit leers at me from a bookshelf over her desk, holding dominion over her scattered files and stray books. I straiten a tower of books on a table, turn towards my own tasks. I can't understand why Al had been so hostile towards me. What did he mean, forgotten? How can something like that become lost? A faint memory? You repeat an action over and over, with dedication and skill, and then you lose it? You deny it, it no longer belongs to you, but why?

    I go deep into the stacks, where it is cool and the books rest quietly, snug in their leather bindings. The end pages glitter with gold and some disguise themselves: certain books on magic, like pornography, were bound with other more prudent volumes in order to avoid discovery or suspicion. Magic was not always the Las Vegas farce it is viewed as today.