Velvet sat down in an orange 1970’s chair too ratty for a yard sale, and tried to figure out where to go. Hell, she hadn’t been in a library since her sophomore year in high school, when Miss Ardelia Ferguson had made her write a paper on salmonella. A long-haired guy in a ratty old army jacket shuffled toward the magazines—wino, looking for a place to snooze. A yuppie-looking asshole in big-butted Dockers and a ski jacket insulated with shredded twenties asked the librarians about financial statistics—she yawned, on reflex. A guy came by looking for newspapers.

Ah.

She got up and followed him to the elevators, up to the third floor. He sneaked little glances at her lace-inset blue jeans, her high-heeled red shoes, and gave her a smile small enough to have come off a chihuahua. She gave him a go-to-hell-you-asshole look. He shrugged and wandered off to the right.

Newspapers. She looked around at the shelves, the stacked papers, and started pulling things out at random. The smell of ink and cheap paper was kind of nice, after a morning of sniffing wino’s b.o.—soothing. It reminded her of Dad reading the farm reports in the morning. There was a very small difference between soothing and boring.

She found a two-day-old Dallas paper and carried it over to a chair, checked through it page by page until she found the article about the unidentified dead guy at the hotel. She checked the next day’s paper, but there was nothing. He hadn’t even been unusual enough to rate a second notice. They were calling it some kind of smoking accident, the assholes—burying it, whatever it was. She stuffed the paper back haphazardly in the slot and found the new one, today’s paper.

Nothing. She kept turning pages, checking out police reports, the occasional fashion item, dress sales. She lingered over a three-for-one on shoes.

Obituaries.

DALLAS—Burt Everard Marshall, co-owner of the Elegance Dry Cleaners chain, died suddenly Tuesday. He was 47.

Memorial service will be at 2 P.M. Friday at Faith Baptist Church in Dallas. Eternal Care Services is in charge of arrangements.

Mr. Marshall was born in Dayton, Ohio. He was a graduate of Texas A&M University.

Survivors: Wife, Sherry Marshall of Dallas: three children, son Tyler, age 17, and daughters Martha, 14, and Evelyn, 13.

“God,” Velvet whispered, and realized there were tears in her eyes. She blotted them away with a twisted old tissue, careful of her mascara. One deep breath, then another, and she folded the paper in the wrong places and put it back. “Sorry, Burt.”