How Hot Does a Book Burn?
And more important questions from a book signing
I awake with a start, a shiver of apprehension. The morning outside is cold and gray. I tug the electric blanket to my nose and he enters my thoughts uninvited. A slight man, face full of stubble and pants three sizes too big cinched around his waist, asking me a question.
“Is this you?”
He’d come from behind us, up the old staircase on silent feet: A young man, his clothes ratty and his hair wild beneath the wool hat. He crossed my peripheral vision while I was engrossed in the perky librarian’s history of the old building. I’d asked about the age and peculiarities, completely enamored with the old bookshelves, irregular in size and depth, the heavily waxed floors, and the 1930s bathtub in the staff restroom where I’d washed my hands. The smell of history was rich and vibrant.
While life bustled around us, patrons milling about and authors hawking their wares, death lurked in the corners. I could feel it as sure as the nerves deep in my belly. The original inhabitant, a librarian, had, in fact, lived in the large rooms. She bathed in the cast iron tub and died in her bed a floor below us. I nodded my head, imagining the grandeur of living in this mausoleum of literary heroes.
Movement tore my gaze away and I locked eyes with the young man. Beneath the dusty vestiges of last night’s shelter, I guessed him to be in his late twenties, younger than my children. He wore thick socks, the kind sold in cheap bundles at the local Army-Navy surplus. Pants big enough to wrap two of him in barely hung on a pair of slender hips, beneath a ratty boxer waistband. Above it, hung an equally oversized flannel, ill-fitting on his skeletal frame. His feet, thick socks and all, were tucked into flimsy flip-flops. He crossed his arms protectively across his chest, a steaming styrofoam cup grasped in one rough-knuckled hand.
He stopped before my table and stared at me. Neither of us said a word. The librarian moved away to speak with someone else. Is he homeless? Hungry? Should I say something?
“She lived and died here,” I overheard the librarian tell another author, their table draped with signs proclaiming dreams come true. We were all there to peddle those dreams, to sell them for ten dollars a pop, hoping to make it big, to get rich, to die venerated as an artist.
He tapped the table with his finger, a discolored nail landing twice in the middle of my printed face on the shiny bookmark. The awkward silence stretched painfully long into an unspoken stand-off.
“You can take one,” my husband said suddenly, having ceased his lecture about bookselling for the moment.
The man’s eyes never wavered from mine and his lips never moved. He ignored my husband and tapped my photo once more with purpose. I nodded, unsure of what I was agreeing to but my guard had risen in the intensity of his aquamarine stare, bright and clear in juxtaposition with his drab clothes and dusty skin.
“Is this you?” he asked. I didn’t answer, suddenly wary. “Is… this… you? Your real name?” he repeated, his voice soft but surprisingly commanding.
I glanced down at the gray grocery bag hanging on his arm. Inside were blank sheets of paper, pamphlets, half a dozen copies of a book being handed out for free. I wondered if the books acted as a tether to his humanity or were simply fuel for warmth. I was struck by the fact that my own book, thousands of dollars in the making, might provide ten minutes of life-sustaining heat. In the proceeding millisecond, I realized I didn’t care. Not for the first time, I could see how painfully thin the boundary was between his reality and mine.
“Y-yes,” I stammered. The young man fell quiet again as he took a sip of coffee, his gaze strong and penetrating. He made a noise in his throat before moving on and I expelled a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Inside the hulking structure, with its wax floors and radiators expelling heat from their skeletal ribcages, I shivered.
In the bathroom mirror, I stared at the woman before me. I replayed my husband’s lecture, scolding me for my silence when strangers picked up my book and indicated interest. I barely managed a hello to each new face before retreating into shyness. I have trouble talking about my book, my story. I’ve long since realized I didn’t really want to share it. I did it out of a sense of duty to the ghosts bumbling around in my memories and to validate my claims of authorhood.
Then I saw her, the girl with bloody sweatpants and hollow cheeks, the sad eyes in too-big clothes that barely concealed her secrets. It’s hard to believe we both exist, a juxtaposition as equally poignant as that of the unhoused man in the grandiose mansion library. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, counting. One. Two. Three. I open my eyes and she’s gone.
Seated once again behind my table, I donned my mask, the smile that was supposed to be inviting but not intimidating. I sold a copy of my soul for $10, only nine-something after fees. I searched the room and found the young man’s eyes once more. They felt hauntingly familiar: A laughing turquoise smiling back from school pictures in a clean collared polo. Big blonde curls once lovingly ran through a mother’s fingers as they watched TV. Beneath the dirty and weary hardness in his eyes, he was someone’s child, someone’s dream.
I watched him return to the table of the older gentleman with the free books.
“My son wrote them,” he explained, his voice spreading through the room in a low hum. “He died. His wife found them in the storage and I said I’d take them, deal with them.”
The young man took another handful of copies and dropped them in the full bag on his arm.
“Tinder?” my husband murmured and I nodded, having had the same thought.
The event ended and the authors shook hands. I folded my banner and tablecloth neatly while the man with the free books told my affable husband the story about the author, his son, his death, his life, and the legacy of the books left behind. My husband has no problem telling stories, listening without his thoughts derailing into story ideas and undercurrents of human emotion in their extremes.
“I just give ’em out for free,” he elucidated, his voice a whistle between crooked and crumbling teeth. “His wife found them and I said I’d get rid of them. I figured I’d burn them if nothing else.” They both chuckled, then fell silent realizing the strange dichotomy of laughter and pain.
My eyes sought the young man, having decided to give him a copy of my book and the rest of my snacks. I came up empty. Once again, beneath the chill of impending cold, I sensed the death amongst us, sprinkled into our stories like punctuations of inevitability.
I packed up my things and hauled them to the car. I tossed half a bag of popcorn and the candy wrappers in the garbage. I wonder if that’s all he’ll eat today, the thought screamed. I cranked up the heat and turned on the seat warmers, relaxing my aching limbs. How hot does a book burn anyway? I shook off the dark contemplation and finished the day’s chores, filling my belly and then collapsing in bed with a screaming migraine and heavy limbs. Sleeping on the ground is hard, cold ground is harder. Dammit.
Sleep was elusive, but I managed a few hours before dreams awoke me feeling unsettled. Staring at the ceiling now, I realize I haven’t written anything worth sharing in months. Pages of unshared text live in digital folders on my laptop, unworthy and unwilling to become more. But suddenly, despite the early hour and my lingering exhaustion, I need to write this down, on my computer, in my phone, with a pen on the back of a receipt. I need to remember the cold, the loneliness, the cloak of invisibility that the disadvantaged cast in the presence of others more fortunate. I need to remember the young man with the dirty clothes and turquoise eyes. I need to do it for him, for me, for the people that somewhere, some time loved him.
The afternoon before, a woman had stopped me as I was packing up and asked me what my book was about. I told her, “It’s a hard read with a somewhat happy ending.”
She’d scoffed. “I read to escape, I don’t want to be reminded of heavy things.” My heart fell, but I nodded politely with a half-hearted smile. I’ve heard that before. Thousands of people prefer bubblegum pop about school dances and souped-up coupes over the musical protests of balladeers like Bob Dylan or John Lennon. They want respite while I yearn to capture the truth in all its painful, shitty glory.
In the dank grayness of morning, I can still see him so clearly. I hear him ask again, “Is this you?” His gaze begs me to see him, to tell him the truth, to remember him when others pass by without notice or care.