Page four. Billy looked up from his book, glanced around the coffee shop. He peered at the faces of the other patrons, averting his gaze from each just before it became impolite. His eyes bounced about until eventually they ran out of faces and found their way to the television screen above the counter.

The news was on; a pretty young woman with pretty young hair was dictating from a teleprompter, something about a war, as the news ticker below flashed a brief sentence about the warming of the planet, the melting of the glaciers. Billy looked out the coffee shop window at the stream of pedestrians flowing by. One young man, chatting on a cell phone, carried a water bottle, half-empty. His body needed water to keep moving; so did Billy’s; so did everyone’s.

The stereo in the coffee shop changed songs; coffee shops, being public places, aren’t aloud to be silent. Billy recognized the new tune, and he recognized that the old man sitting near him did too, even though the man hadn’t said anything at all. Billy was happy to have recognized the piece — it was an old Bill Evans recording. Same name. Music is always there to make people happy, Billy thought to himself.

He thought of talking to the old man, but decided against it; Billy didn’t have any ammunition for a conversation. He read lots of books, but no one talks about books anymore. The couple behind him was talking about the weather. Just as Billy’s gaze returned to his book, a barista came by his table, took his empty mug and told him they would be closing in ten minutes. By they, of course, she meant the coffee shop. So as not to appear impolite, Billy took up his book and left as the pretty young woman with pretty young hair talked about another war and the news ticker came full circle. Billy walked down the street to the corner, where he waited for the pedestrian light to change. There was a liquor shop on the corner, and Billy watched for a moment as groups of people entered, thinned their pocketbooks, and exited happier than before. The walk signal turned from red to green.

His thoughts carried him down the sidewalk, until he came to his destination and sat himself down on a park bench where he continued reading. He lit a cigarette; his eyes bounced from word to word as the smoke struggled with the chemicals in his brain as his brain struggled with the words in the book. People ventured glances as they passed, but only until they became impolite. Billy, not noticing, read on, preoccupied all the while with the flame between his fingers. He was missing words — he thought about throwing the cigarette away in order to better concentrate, but his hand wouldn’t make the motion. The flame withered and died as Billy read and read and read, until the sky began to come full circle and the book ran out of words to give him. He pocketed the novel and started home, passing first the dim lights of a restaurant, then the dimmer lights of a library and of a record shop; dimmer still were the lights of a storefront television where a pretty young woman with pretty young hair was saying something about a war or global warming, until he reached the dimmest lights of his own home. Lying down to bed, emptying his head and hoping to fall asleep, he found one thought that wouldn’t come unstuck. It was a block of words from the book, and it was on repeat.

Over the years, people I’ve met have often asked me what I’m working on, and I’ve usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.

I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, “Is it an anti-war book?”

“Yes,” I said. “I guess.”

“You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?”

“No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?”

“I say, ‘Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?’”

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.

And even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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One Response:

Brian Holder

Oct 28th at 9:05 pm

Change does not equal same.

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