I PUSHED MY WAY

I pushed my way into the house despite the ache in my arm and shoulder. I didn't like what I saw, not at first, and it didn't bode well for the rest of it. There were stacks of books and papers everywhere—on the floor, on the chair, on the table—and though the place was cluttered with them, it was also strangely empty, as if any human inhabitants had left the place in a hurry. "Professor, I called out, not bothering to make my voice very loud, because I knew that no answer would come back at me. I went directly to the bedroom where I had stayed as a child. It was cleaner than the rest of the house, by a wide margin. It had a small bed and desk along one wall, which was also the wall that contained the door that led me into the room. Two of the other three walls were outfitted with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. In my youth, they had been filled with my things, schoolbooks and storybooks, trophies, toys. Those had all been replaced by books whose spines were red leather and gold filigree. There was an unusually great number of them, and they all were titled in a language that I did not understand. Whatever light there was in the room came from a small but powerful lamp on the desk, and it reflected off the lettering on the books. The books called to me. I do not know how to describe their effect except in those terms. They had been calling to me since the day before, when I was in New York City, walking from my law office to my townhouse, carrying a cup of coffee from a new café that had opened up on my route, walking within earshot of a pair of attractive young women, one brown-haired, the other raven, who were in the midst of a heated discussion about the moral, financial, and even carnal fitness of a young man that one of them was dating. Through the thicket of street noise, I got the impression that the other one had dated him as well, because she had no shortage of opinions on everything from his family to his fashion sense. I picked up only snatches of their words for a few blocks, though they were immensely entertaining in that form: "the kind of guy who thinks a hundred is a million," "the president of the thrift store, "bed for him is like rehab." At an intersection, they stopped, and I stopped a few feet behind them, which gave me more direct access to their conversation. "It's not that I have a problem with him for you," said the raven. "It's that I have a problem with him period. Talking to him is like climbing down a ladder into a well and then hearing someone at the top of the ladder say 'Nope, no one down there," and slide a cover over the entrance." I laughed to myself. The light changed. I made to follow. Just then, I was hit as if by a bolt of lightning. I could not move. I stayed still on the corner and the women, who were no longer amusing to me, passed out of earshot. They were not amusing because I no longer truly noticed them. I did not notice the passing traffic, either, or the smell of food carts, or the warmth of the coffee cup in my hand. I had been occupied, fully, by a vision of a thick red stripe. At first it filled my entire field of thought, but I managed to pull myself back a bit to gain its edges, at which time I saw it clearly for what it was: the spine of a book. I adjusted my mental picture outward even more and saw that it was one book among many, a member of a full shelf that had similar shelves both above and below. The vantage kept retreating slightly until I recognized that it was a picture of my childhood room. It was then that I heard the professor's voice, as clearly as if he had been standing beside me. "You need to come home," he said. Then a book was in my hand, in my mind. "Start with this one," he said. "The answer is not here, but the questions may be." On the cover of the book was a triangle followed by a star followed by a circle. When I came to, there on the street, the coffee had spilled slightly and was burning the knuckle of my right index finger. I transferred the cup to my other hand and wiped my hand on my hip, after which I called the airline and bought a ticket for home. I knew before I called the professor that he would not answer. This was before I boarded the flight and met the man who claimed to know me. This was before he followed me out of the airport and tried to kill me. This was before I was hit by a car, before I saw the dead deer, before I opened the book and saw the painting of the girl who had lived with us the summer I turned eighteen: lived and then, in circumstances so mysterious I had not, in fifteen years, been able to untangle them to my satisfaction, died. The book was, by all appearances, at least a hundred years old. And yet, the image was unmistakably that of the girl--that beautiful, kind, adventurous girl. I looked in the eyes of the painting as I had done in life, and then I read on.

©2021 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas