The Brass Key and the Stone Reading Room

The Brass Key and the Stone Reading Room

I was at my local library looking for an old tax form, but the aisles kept winding deeper than the actual building could possibly go. I ran into a woman working the reference desk who looked exactly like my high school art teacher, but I knew she was also somehow my grandmother as a young woman. She handed me a heavy, unlabelled brass key and told me very calmly that my birth certificate was misfiled under the wrong phase of the moon. I took an elevator down to what should have been the basement parking lot, but it opened into a quiet, dimly lit stone reading room where everyone was whispering in rhythm. I tried to unlock one of the wooden card catalog drawers with the brass key, but the keyhole was shaped like a closed eye and wouldn't fit. I felt this intense, quiet dread that if I couldn't correct the date on the record before closing time, the address on my driver's license would stop existing.