I Was Here(8)

             Meg and I have shared beds, cots, sleeping bags, without a problem since we were little. But the night of my visit, I’d lain in bed awake next to a soundly sleeping Meg. She was snoring slightly and I kept kicking her, like it was her snoring that was keeping me awake. When we got up Sunday morning, something mean and hard had taken root in my belly, and I felt myself itching for a fight. But the last thing I’d wanted to do was fight with Meg. She hadn’t done anything. She was my best friend. So I’d left early. And not because of any sore throat.

             I go back downstairs. The music has changed from Phish to something a little more rocking, The Black Keys, I think. Which is better, if a strange turn. There’s a group of people sitting on a purple velour couch, divvying up a pizza and a twelve-pack. Tree is with them, so I walk on by, ignoring them, ignoring the smell of pizza that makes my stomach gurgle because I haven’t eaten anything except for a Little Debbie snack cake on the bus.

             Outside, it’s misting. I walk a ways until I get to a stretch of diners. I sit down at one and order a coffee, and when the waitress gives me a dirty look, I get an anytime $2.99 breakfast and figure that this earns me the right to camp here for the night.

             After a few hours and four or five refills, she mostly leaves me be. I take out my book, wishing I’d brought some page- turnery thriller. But Mrs. Banks, the town librarian, has me on a Central European author kick these days. She goes through phases like that with me. Has done ever since I was twelve and she spotted me reading a Jackie Collins novel at Tricia’s bar where I sometimes had to hang out when Tricia worked. Mrs. Banks asked what else I liked to read, and I rattled off a few titles, mostly paperbacks Tricia had brought home from the break room. “You’re quite a reader,” Mrs. Banks said, and then she invited me to come to the library the following week. When I did, she got me signed up for a card and loaned me copies of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. “When you finish, tell me if you like them, and I’ll get you something else.”

             I read them in three days. I’d liked Jane Eyre best, even though I hated Mr. Rochester and wished he’d died in the fire. Mrs. Banks had smiled at that, then handed me Persuasion and Wuthering Heights. I tore through those in a few days. From that point on, I would go into the library at least once a week to see what books she had for me. It seemed amazing that our tiny branch had such an endless stock of books, and it was years later that I’d learned that Mrs. Banks was special-ordering books through interlibrary loan that she thought I’d like.

             But tonight the contemplative Milan Kundera she gave me is making my eyelids heavy. Every time they flutter closed, that waitress, as if possessing radar, comes by to refill my coffee even though I haven’t touched it since the last refill.

             I hold out until about five in the morning and then pay my bill and leave a big tip because I’m not sure if the waitress was being rude by not letting me sleep or if she was keeping me from getting kicked out. I wander around the campus until the library opens at seven, and then I find a quiet corner and fall asleep for a few hours.

             When I make my way back to Meg’s house, a guy and a girl are drinking coffee on the porch.

             “Hey,” the guy says. “Cody, right?”

             “Yeah.”

             “Richard,” he says.

             “Right. We met before,” I say. He doesn’t seem to remember. He was probably too stoned.

             “I’m Alice,” the girl says. I remember Meg mentioning a new roommate moving in for the winter term, taking the place of some other girl who transferred out after one semester.

             “Where’d you go?” he asks.

             “I stayed in a motel,” I lie.

             “Not the Starline!” Alice asks in alarm.