Our love had been liking; our feelings had been ordinary, not Shakespearean. I still felt fondness for her – fondness, that pleasant, detached mix of admiration and sentiment, appreciation and nostalgia.
No. I can’t change. I shouldn’t change.
That’s funny. I’ve always liked Naomi’s version of me the best. I’m always much more interesting when she talks about me.
I want that. The getting younger with each step, because of anticipation, in hope and belief.
When I was old enough to read and write, my parents gave me an eraser board that I kept in my room at all times. The idea was that when frustrated, I, Lily, should write down words on the board to express my feelings instead of letting she-devil Shrilly express them through shrieking. It was supposed to be a therapeutic tool.
Driver, can you tell him that I’m sorry? I wasn’t supposed to be like this. I swear.
The Strand proudly proclaims itself as home to eighteen miles of books. I have no idea how this is calculated. Does one stack all the books on top of each other to get the eighteen miles? Or do you put them end to end, to create a bridge between Manhattan and, say, Short Hills, New Jersey, eighteen miles away? Were there eighteen miles of shelves? No one knew. We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn’t trust a bookstore, what could you trust? Whatever.
And I honestly like her about twenty times more now than I did when we were dating. But love needs to have a future.
I want to have fun. I don’t want commitment and I love you.
I KNOW! Your name is Beckham, isn’t it?
Librarians were like Mary Poppins to me. They always knew how to match a book to my mood or to whatever I was going through at the time. I could always find peace in books.” “And escape?
The world was too full of wastrels and waifs, sycophants and spies – all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect.
The drapery was so thick and the furniture so cloaked that I half expected to find Sherlock Holmes thumb-wrestling with Jane Austen in the corner. It wasn’t as dusty or smoky as one expects a parlor to be, but all the wood had the weight of card catalogs and the fabric seemed soaked in wine. Knee-high sculptures perched in corners and by the fireplace, while jacketless books crowded on shelves, peering down like old professors too tired to speak to one another.
I think it’s time to experience life outside the notebook.
What I was sure of was that the bagpipes had begun to play “Fairytale of New York” – which is basically the best Christmas song ever written.
Perhaps this was what was so unnerving about Lily at this moment – the trust that was required in what we were doing.
I didn’t want to tell Lily that I felt we’d all been duped by Plato and the idea of a soulmate. Just in case it turned out that she was mine.
Unfortunately, now that Langston has a boyfriend again, he has forgotten all about me.
So even though it doesn’t seem like anything’s changed – ” “ – things change all the time, mostly in little ways. That’s how it goes, I guess.
I’m not sure I ever even liked Tal, much less loved him, and by the way, Tal, I believe the Palestinians should have their own state.