halfway across the room, and he, blue eyes popping, face purple with stress, his sandy blond hair matted with sweat, looked up at me from beneath the ledger. All noise in the building, save the sounds of our heavy breaths, stopped immediately when our eyes met.
I said, âIâd like to help you with that, Mr. Schmelling.â
He grunted something that was probably not a word, and at first looked at me with demurral. But I wouldnât move, and slowly he assented, and slowly he began to jog the ledger higher on his back so I could get my shoulders underneath. I finally did and discovered I was correct about the weight of the book. Together we started to move, and the singing woman sang, Aaaiiieeeeeeee! and the clapping and stomping started again, and we carried the ledger together. I was immediately tired from the strain, but I never even thought of putting it down, of not carrying my share of the load. After a while, the tiredness disappeared, and it was as if we had somehow shuffled off the limitsof our selves, the limits that fatigue and fear and pain place on us in this life, and so we carried on, I never asking where we would stop, and he never telling.
FinallyâI have no idea what time it was, it was late, it was dark outside the windowsâwe came to an area of the floor that was cleared of cubicle partitions, and there we set down the book.
Smith and a couple others scurried out to open the front cover, then they turned several pages at a time, looking for one that was blank. Two of the women rolled caster-bottomed office chairs beneath Schmelling and me, and we collapsed into them. I was too tired at that point to even look at the book, and so instead I simply slumped forward with my head in my hands. I really cannot tell you what I was thinking, other than I remember the incredible fatigue and the incredible sweetness of having that ledger lifted; I felt so light, so empty. It seems to me now that at that moment, all of my thoughts had been cleared away, that my mind was indeed a clean slate, tabula rasa, like a newborn childâs, ready to be filled again with new thoughts, new ideas, new attitudes and visions, as if, from then on, everything would be new. I wasnât even sure I knew my name.
I felt a hand on the back of my neck, strong and sure, rubbing the soreness out, comforting, loving, and I knew it was Schmelling, and for a time, that was all I could think: Schmelling, Schmelling, Schmelling! All of my worries and regrets and doubts and fears, about my job, about my father, about Marcie, faded away. And I loved him, and I looked up into his face and I knew that he loved me. I put my arms around him, and we rolled our chairs together into a grasp, an embrace, a bond I knew would last as long as life, or at least until retirement age, or, who knows, maybe for all eternity.
L UBBDCK I S N OT A P LACE OF THE S PIRIT
I have thought on numerous occasions that the best thing to do about Clive is to kill him and then bury him out in the desert somewhere. Clive is problematic because he knows the following things that I wish he did not know:
           1.    Allison is not really my girlfriend.
           2.    Iâve been telling my family that Allison is my girlfriend.
           3.    I have a series of pencil drawings of Allison in various poses.
           4.    I have written a series of love songs to Jodie Foster.
Clive knows the last of these four things because one night I shared a small number of these songs with Clive, and he pretended to listen intently and honestly, only later to claim he would turn my songs over to the police. He knows about the third thing because when Iâm out at class and heâs sitting in the apartment supposedly writing a treatise about human consumption of natural
I said, âIâd like to help you with that, Mr. Schmelling.â
He grunted something that was probably not a word, and at first looked at me with demurral. But I wouldnât move, and slowly he assented, and slowly he began to jog the ledger higher on his back so I could get my shoulders underneath. I finally did and discovered I was correct about the weight of the book. Together we started to move, and the singing woman sang, Aaaiiieeeeeeee! and the clapping and stomping started again, and we carried the ledger together. I was immediately tired from the strain, but I never even thought of putting it down, of not carrying my share of the load. After a while, the tiredness disappeared, and it was as if we had somehow shuffled off the limitsof our selves, the limits that fatigue and fear and pain place on us in this life, and so we carried on, I never asking where we would stop, and he never telling.
FinallyâI have no idea what time it was, it was late, it was dark outside the windowsâwe came to an area of the floor that was cleared of cubicle partitions, and there we set down the book.
Smith and a couple others scurried out to open the front cover, then they turned several pages at a time, looking for one that was blank. Two of the women rolled caster-bottomed office chairs beneath Schmelling and me, and we collapsed into them. I was too tired at that point to even look at the book, and so instead I simply slumped forward with my head in my hands. I really cannot tell you what I was thinking, other than I remember the incredible fatigue and the incredible sweetness of having that ledger lifted; I felt so light, so empty. It seems to me now that at that moment, all of my thoughts had been cleared away, that my mind was indeed a clean slate, tabula rasa, like a newborn childâs, ready to be filled again with new thoughts, new ideas, new attitudes and visions, as if, from then on, everything would be new. I wasnât even sure I knew my name.
I felt a hand on the back of my neck, strong and sure, rubbing the soreness out, comforting, loving, and I knew it was Schmelling, and for a time, that was all I could think: Schmelling, Schmelling, Schmelling! All of my worries and regrets and doubts and fears, about my job, about my father, about Marcie, faded away. And I loved him, and I looked up into his face and I knew that he loved me. I put my arms around him, and we rolled our chairs together into a grasp, an embrace, a bond I knew would last as long as life, or at least until retirement age, or, who knows, maybe for all eternity.
L UBBDCK I S N OT A P LACE OF THE S PIRIT
I have thought on numerous occasions that the best thing to do about Clive is to kill him and then bury him out in the desert somewhere. Clive is problematic because he knows the following things that I wish he did not know:
           1.    Allison is not really my girlfriend.
           2.    Iâve been telling my family that Allison is my girlfriend.
           3.    I have a series of pencil drawings of Allison in various poses.
           4.    I have written a series of love songs to Jodie Foster.
Clive knows the last of these four things because one night I shared a small number of these songs with Clive, and he pretended to listen intently and honestly, only later to claim he would turn my songs over to the police. He knows about the third thing because when Iâm out at class and heâs sitting in the apartment supposedly writing a treatise about human consumption of natural
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