The city library closed its doors to the public at nine, but for Sal the work was only beginning. He was the night librarian — the one who reshelved the day’s chaos, repaired cracked spines, and walked the silent aisles while the rest of the city slept. For twenty-two years the stacks had been his alone after dark. He knew the building’s every creak, the way moonlight fell through the high windows onto the reading tables, the particular hush that settled over ten thousand books at midnight. People imagined it lonely work. Sal thought it the opposite — he was surrounded, he liked to say, by the best company in […]