A rainy afternoon in Long Beach, in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It does not rain very often. But it seems I have brought the rain from home in my suitcase. When I opened my suitcase, the rain just flew out, a mist of water just hanging in the air, hardly falling at all. I am strolling aimlessly in the streets of Long Beach. Just killing time, as it were. Then I spot a warehouse of sorts, beside a parking lot. ACRES OF BOOKS, it says. Just what I was looking for, I think to myself. It is a way of speaking, of course; I was not looking for anything. But it will do the job.

I used to spend afternoons in bookstores when I first came to America. I knew quite a few. I skimmed the shelves, very carefully. I am a maniac. I bought secondhand science-fiction and detective stories that I could never have found at home. Some I knew about, some I did not. Out of curiosity, or because of the title, or the back page, or just because the name of the author was intriguing. Then, of course, the magic was lost when online platforms began to appear. Because I could find there all the books that I wished. I kept visiting my favorite bookshops when I had the chance. It was purely nostalgic. I only bought a book or two, not for reading but as souvenirs. And then I stopped. Not that I decided to, but I always had something else to do. You can't live in the past for too long, can you?

I would not have bothered about the acres of books, if it had not been raining. As I said, it almost never rains in Long Beach. The shop was closed, and had been closed for a long time, a decade at least. There was a bus stop just beside, which took part in the desolation of the place. It was new, with a screen, a bench, and a shelter for the rain. There was just one man sitting. The whole scene would have taken a completely different meaning if he had been reading. I would have considered it an act of resistance against … against ..., well, … it is hard to say … against the order of things, maybe. In any case, he was not reading. He was speaking on his phone, in a low voice, as one does in churches or cemeteries.

I lingered there for a while, taking pictures. Then I walked away. I found a coffee shop. There was WiFi, I had my phone. I could kill the afternoon after all.