I’ve been back in school getting my creative writing MFA, so I’ve been too tied up to post here. The semester’s just ended, so here’s a new scene.
Replacement Charge: $90.00
It seemed extreme, maybe even sadistic, to charge so much to replace a small, yellowed hardback book with a print run that numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The meaning, however, was abundantly clear: this was not a book that I was meant to lose. Yet, that was exactly what I had done. I was not particularly broke, to be sure, I was still kept afloat by the blind generosity of relatives. There was a certain indignity in it, that’s all. I’d have to walk into the library, get the attention of a clerk, and explain that I had lost the book. At which point, they would charge me the fine and send me on my way. There was always the choice to bounce, to ride into the night to avoid paying, but I had refused so many similar opportunities that I hardly even considered it. No, I did not run from my problems; I merely pushed them aside to be handled at a later date.
There was still hope, too; I could find the little book. I had no idea where I lost it, and I didn’t feel particularly eager to retrace the steps I took that sordid day, but it could show up. Stranger things have happened, and I always was a sort of pagan worshipper of coincidences. That I had not yet been saved by one was, well, just another coincidence. God truly was everywhere, and everywhen.
I still entered the library and was seated in said place exactly 58 days after the disappeared book had been checked out. I always felt some slight guilt entering the library and seeing the book return desk, but not enough guilt to stop making use of its services. And the library, for its part, never graced me with anything more than a disinterested glance or two. Perhaps the doors hissed an extra acrid note, but that was just all the more reason to keep my earbuds glued in.
I sat down by the periodicals on the second floor. It was some vestige of my original purpose; to make use of the weekly New Yorker put on display. After torturing myself to a hundred timid masterpieces that professed to encompass the impossibly wide term fiction, I had resigned myself to dustier tomes. I rarely checked anything out. I possessed the mind of an overly-excitable teen or perhaps just that of a neurotic beekeeper; I pulled and pushed on various things largely to see what would happen. When I opened a book, I usually found myself quite bored after discovering the basic premise. Don’t judge a book by its cover, is what I heard, so I gave it at least a paragraph. I dreaded the possible arrival of a book without paragraph breaks.
At this time, I had three books with me. The first was a bizarrely excitable retelling of the Franco-Prussian war. Three pages. The second was a trashy romance novel I chose only because the title had two semicolons. Two pages, and a quick flip to the end to see that, yes, the cowboy really did have a heart of gold. Three, a CIA world factbook on Bangladesh, chosen because I didn’t know Bangladesh existed. I read until I learned what exactly Bangladesh was, which involved some jumping around.
All in all, it added up to an hour or two of getting nothing done. I would need to leave soon, get food, and attempt to show my gracious relatives what progress I had made towards getting a job. But I stopped for a moment and savored the last few moments of total redundancy. I soaked in the rows of gaudy magazine covers, the distant and ever-unloved cabinets of microfilm, and the crackling _cushion of the chair opposite mine. I considered, sweetly, getting stuffed away into a shelf like I was about to do to the three uninteresting books I just pulled out. I wondered even more who would deign to ever pull me out, much less take me on loan. And if someone lost me, what price would be fair to charge for my replacement? I hoped higher than $90, but you never could be sure. As I took the narrow stairs down to the front floor, I considered myself being misplaced, left on some park bench. Perhaps some inquisitive soul would pick me up, give me a good flick through, and then toss me in the bin. I imagined a half-eaten milkshake getting dropped unceremoniously on my head and becoming a holy ground for ants. Finally, I considered myself, as I walked past those suspicious hissing front doors, being slid out a dump truck into some faraway landfill. As the austere sun met my sheltered eyes, I considered becoming a dry, milkshake-encrusted hunk of carbon. Slowly, but surely, I would be buried by heaps and heaps of other unfortunate souls, until finally, I would decompose to my barest elements and fade, happily, into oblivion.
Walking was the same thing as thinking to me. Just a fundamental aspect of existence. It wasn’t so much the movement specifically, though that certainly helped in feeling a sense of accomplishment. Really, it’s the sense of exertion, moving muscles. I walked not out of enjoyment or to improve my health, but out of pure need. It was mandatory.
Did you know, the ocean’s made of jello and the sky’s a blue whipped cream. And us, we’re just standing on some green mold that grew in-between the two. A sweet sandwich with a sick little center. Such a dessert was often seen at Hobert’s cafe, a truly horrible little place born from urban blight, malaise, and more pedestrian strains of disease. That’s where I was, one simple little Wednesday.
Daniel Hampton 