Safe Haven

The sun set over the tall buildings. The day had turned beautiful just when you'd given up under the rainy clouds, and now Washington Square park was full of mumbles, a guitar solo, old men reading newspapers. I pushed through the college kid crowds and walked up Broadway in its noisy traffic bustle, to slip through the doors of the silent sea of the Strand.
From the craziness, it's a whole other world. It can be crowded and still so calm. Mazes of books, that old hardback smell. I ran my fingers along the used copies. Upstairs there was a reading, people drinking something bubbly in plastic glasses and nibbling on pretzels and pretense. I roamed around the ground floor and in an obscure corner found a biography on Hunter S. Thompson; I leaned against an ancient radiator and sank into the foreword. For a moment, I was all alone in that bookstore; I saw no one, heard no one, it was many twists and turns before I was out in the open space of the store again.
Slowly I trickled downstairs, where even fewer people milled about in the review copies. The basement of the Strand is like a cavern, a catacomb under the notre dame, that underground scent in the lighting. Fans instead of ventilation. I followed the old philosophers to the far wall and ended up in the A:s of Psychology. Remembering dear feelings for a W, I repeated my ABCs silently in my head, following row after row of books. By the time I got to the end of the alphabet, I was in the tiniest corner of the store, with barely room to move around. No fans got here, and it was still, the air warm and soft. As I stood there, one of the green trains ran by on the other side of the wall (below? nearby? there was no way of telling) and made the floor, the books, tremble slightly.

And at that moment, I was softly washed over by such a feeling of comfort and serenity. In this small, tight space, so humbly lit and protected from everything, rocked by the lullaby of underground railroads, I felt at peace. I thought, this is the magic, of the Strand. Firmly holding on to Sylvia Plath, I stepped out into the Manhattan night, and smiled.