The Book Borrower [antikvár]

Though she was pushing a baby carriage, Toby Ruben began to read a book On a gray evening in late November 1920 and the wheel of the carriage—a big, skeletal but once elegant Perego she'd found in somebody's trash—rolled into a broken place in the sidewalk. The baby, tightly wrapped in a white receiving blanket, glided compactly from carriage to sidewalk. He didn't cry. Like his mother, the baby would be troubled more by missed human connections than by practical problems; also the three-second rule held: as if he were a fallen slice of bread, Ruben snatched him up and ate him. Kissed him passionately and all over, dropping the wicked book into the carriage. She put the baby back where he belonged and picked up