time has me hooked. You could have fun with a book like this. I have the feeling that this book might contain everything in the world. So I lean my head and shoulder against the warm glass of the shop window and read.
riverrun, past Eve and Adamâs, from swerve of shore to bend of bay â¦
Michael comes up to the window and waves at me, but IÂ am barely conscious of him, only of a darkness on the other side of the glass.
And then he appears next to me, though I am still so taken by the book that Iâm only aware of the toggles of his coat at eye level, and the faint odour of mothballs. He is wearing his fatherâs black duffle coat from thirty years ago, and a button that says, DONâT PANIC .
âHave you found something?â he whispers.
I check in my purse. âDâyou have five dollars?â And he rummages in his trousers.
We take the book up to the front, where a tall man with glasses and a myopic gaze sits like a bear in a cave behind a huge desk covered with books and papers. The book is eleven dollars, but he charges only ten, and I give the remaining dollar to Michael when we get outside. We go to the park behind the shopping centre and throw ourselves on the ground. I open the book.
riverrun â¦
Chapter Two
I F THERE WAS a time before Michael, Iâve forgotten it. No, that isnât exactlytrue, but it seems my life proper only started once I met him.
We were eleven, and at an educational weekend for gifted children, though not in the same group most of the time. We happened to sit near each other at lunch out under the trees, neither of us used to feeling at ease with others. I liked his pale face and floppy fair hair, his big glasses, and the neatly practical way he consumed his lunch. He was one of those fearsomely bright children who made me feel blessedly average.
Was it then, or a bit later (surely it was later) that he said to me, âAnyway, everyoneâs different in their own little way.â
The words had a kind of confidence, and were said brightly and lightly, but they held hurt and uncertainty, and a hidden story of not belonging. Hearing them, I almost wanted to cry, because they held out a kind of hope to me. I had always been different, without really knowing why. I only knew that I would never fit in.
We became friends. It turned out that though we went to different schools, we lived only streets apart. This meant we were almost neighbours, though as I pointed out to Michael, âstreets apartâ also meant to be far removed from something.
I loved going down the deserted suburban streets with their avenues of trees to his house, because I knew when I got there thereâd be companionship, and interesting conversations. Iâd go round the back, knock on his window, and clamber in. It was easier than going to the front door, because I didnât have to encounter his parents, who took far too much interest in me. They were the kind of people who needed to know everything, and Michael and I most emphatically didnât want to tell them, though we didnât get up to anything much.
In many ways he and I didnât speak the same language. IÂ had to translate his scientific way of looking at the world into my metaphorical one. He knew things that I could never even begin to understand. And yet it was as though we were two sides to the same coin, different, yet welded together.
On the day of Finnegans Wake we stretched out on the grass in the park in perfect ease. It was thin, wiry grass like a threadbare carpet, and the earth showed through. Fallen leaves lay everywhere, brown, crunchy ones from the year before, and newer drifts of wine-red ones. The ground was cool; it was not quite winter, but everything spoke of it â the pale, thin sunlight, and the sulphur-crested cockatoos that screeched at the top of the tall pine trees, and the icy fragrance of trodden leaves that made your nostrils thrill and contract.
âShow me
riverrun, past Eve and Adamâs, from swerve of shore to bend of bay â¦
Michael comes up to the window and waves at me, but IÂ am barely conscious of him, only of a darkness on the other side of the glass.
And then he appears next to me, though I am still so taken by the book that Iâm only aware of the toggles of his coat at eye level, and the faint odour of mothballs. He is wearing his fatherâs black duffle coat from thirty years ago, and a button that says, DONâT PANIC .
âHave you found something?â he whispers.
I check in my purse. âDâyou have five dollars?â And he rummages in his trousers.
We take the book up to the front, where a tall man with glasses and a myopic gaze sits like a bear in a cave behind a huge desk covered with books and papers. The book is eleven dollars, but he charges only ten, and I give the remaining dollar to Michael when we get outside. We go to the park behind the shopping centre and throw ourselves on the ground. I open the book.
riverrun â¦
Chapter Two
I F THERE WAS a time before Michael, Iâve forgotten it. No, that isnât exactlytrue, but it seems my life proper only started once I met him.
We were eleven, and at an educational weekend for gifted children, though not in the same group most of the time. We happened to sit near each other at lunch out under the trees, neither of us used to feeling at ease with others. I liked his pale face and floppy fair hair, his big glasses, and the neatly practical way he consumed his lunch. He was one of those fearsomely bright children who made me feel blessedly average.
Was it then, or a bit later (surely it was later) that he said to me, âAnyway, everyoneâs different in their own little way.â
The words had a kind of confidence, and were said brightly and lightly, but they held hurt and uncertainty, and a hidden story of not belonging. Hearing them, I almost wanted to cry, because they held out a kind of hope to me. I had always been different, without really knowing why. I only knew that I would never fit in.
We became friends. It turned out that though we went to different schools, we lived only streets apart. This meant we were almost neighbours, though as I pointed out to Michael, âstreets apartâ also meant to be far removed from something.
I loved going down the deserted suburban streets with their avenues of trees to his house, because I knew when I got there thereâd be companionship, and interesting conversations. Iâd go round the back, knock on his window, and clamber in. It was easier than going to the front door, because I didnât have to encounter his parents, who took far too much interest in me. They were the kind of people who needed to know everything, and Michael and I most emphatically didnât want to tell them, though we didnât get up to anything much.
In many ways he and I didnât speak the same language. IÂ had to translate his scientific way of looking at the world into my metaphorical one. He knew things that I could never even begin to understand. And yet it was as though we were two sides to the same coin, different, yet welded together.
On the day of Finnegans Wake we stretched out on the grass in the park in perfect ease. It was thin, wiry grass like a threadbare carpet, and the earth showed through. Fallen leaves lay everywhere, brown, crunchy ones from the year before, and newer drifts of wine-red ones. The ground was cool; it was not quite winter, but everything spoke of it â the pale, thin sunlight, and the sulphur-crested cockatoos that screeched at the top of the tall pine trees, and the icy fragrance of trodden leaves that made your nostrils thrill and contract.
âShow me
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