The Welder

This morning I treated myself to a short story in The Paris Review called by The Welder by Ingebord Bachmann (translated from the German by Philip Boehm and Tess Lewis). The story revolves around a utility worker named Andreas Reiter, 35 years old, whose wife has tuberculosis and whose children exist somewhere. Going back home to his home life must feel heavy for him. He hangs around in the cafe where he finds a book that gets him into reading. Books become his addiction, his way of escape almost. What struck me in the story was this section about this man seeking a third space—a liminal existence between work and home—where he can recuperate and transition.
 

The cafe was empty. Reiter had hoped to find someone with whom he could play cards or share a beer; he was looking for someone in his Nowhere, looking for some idle familiarity before heading home. Almost every evening he sought out a kind of floodplain between work and home, like the floodplain between the city and the working-class districts to the east.

Do you have spaces like that where you can read a good book and not be bothered by the cares of the world, at least for the time being?