The Book That Kept Us There

February twelfth. I picked up the book three weeks ago at the library, not because I had a strong feeling about it, just because it was on the display table near the door and I was already there and it looked like the kind of thing I would either love or abandon by chapter two. I did not abandon it by chapter two.

I mentioned it to Simone at the end of a shift, not even a real mention, more like a stray observation about something I had read on the bus. She asked one question. I answered it. She asked a follow-up. We were standing in our coats. An hour later we were at my kitchen table with the book open between us and two mugs of tea, one of which was already cold, and neither of us had moved toward the door. That is the thing about certain books, they are not really about themselves. They open a door into three other things and then you are in all four rooms at once trying to figure out which one you were supposed to be standing in.

Simone takes custody of the book

At some point Simone took the book out of my hands and read a passage herself, which she does not do often, and I watched her read it and thought: yes, that is the exact sentence. She looked up and said something I am not going to reconstruct here because I will get it wrong, but the shape of it was right. We stayed until nearly eleven. I have a level-two session next Tuesday and I needed to sleep and she had her own commute. Eventually we both acknowledged this and she put her coat back on.

The part where neither of us has the energy to leave

The book is back on my kitchen table. I have seventeen pages left. I keep not finishing it, which I think is also a kind of answer.