She loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

She thought about her life and how lost she'd felt for most of it. She thought about the way that all truths she'd been taught to consider valuable invariably conflicted with the world as it was actually lived. How could a person be so utterly lost, yet remain living?

She remained as she had always been, amused and curious, but strangely distant, as if her own life were a book she was reading, one she might put down at any moment in order to gaze out the window at the sky.