After a while things changed. One of the librarians took too much interest. I was listening to the Gorecki CD all day, from when I got there to when I had to leave, and if I managed to stay the night I listened to it till I fell asleep.
‘Hey, can I ask you a question?’
Looking up from my book, probably Rimbaud again, one of the librarians stood across the table from me. ‘Sure.’
She sat. ‘Aren’t you in school?’
‘I do PSEO.’
‘You take all your classes at college?’
I shifted in my seat. Already I wanted to leave, to run. I wanted that CD, though, that Symphony No. 3. I needed it then. “Yeah.’
‘Mhm.’ She leaned back. ‘Would you like to eat dinner with me tonight, when you’re done studying here?’
‘That’s okay. I probably need to get home.’
She smiled. ‘It’s okay.’ Her hand reached across the table, so I put mine on my lap. ‘I want to help.’ Her smile squinted her eyes but she looked pretty that way, her hair falling out of place, a few strands hanging into her face. Really pretty. I remember that. ‘My name’s Sharon.’
‘Hi.’ Rain was blowing against the window. Short pelts, barely audible through the thick glass, but why such thick glass? Who was trying to break in? Her eyes were kind. ‘My name’s Karen.’
‘Karen, Sharon, how about that?’ A slight laugh that I gave back to her. It hurt me, watching her, lying to her. And it was like I watched it, both of us, from far away. I felt so lonely watching her reach out to this poor dirty teenage girl. I could smell me from far away, the vomit and pissreek of homelessness and casual whoring. I hollowed out in front of her and I started to cry though I didn’t want to, tried hard not to. She was the same one who hugged me that other day when I cried. She smelt the same, that rosy perfume smell. Clean, soap, she was a normal lady living a life so far removed from how I was surviving those weeks, desperation in every lung and mouthful. She cooed to me rocking back and forth, watching this, I wanted to cry, but I remembered I was crying, and then I felt sick but there was nothing inside me, just a lifetime of nightmares that I wanted to awake from.
I guess I stopped crying and she stopped holding me after a while and let me alone. She told me to wait for her at closing time and she’d get me something to eat.
I sat there for an hour or two watching the rain, not reading my book, then I grabbed Symphony No. 3 and listened to it twice staring out the window. Lonely, even the rain. I thought about her, the singer to these songs of sorrow. Not the actual singer, but the figurative singer. I tried to figure out what it was that she lost and what made her so alone but all I could think of were the things that made me desperate and alone way over here where I hid from ghosts. I saw them sometimes in the library but I didn’t talk to them. They were all lost there, the ocean, their birthcanal too close for them to understand that they had left life behind. She was a ghost. Even still, it’s how that makes most sense to me. A journey through life, past death, and back to life again. It’s a cycle, perfect. The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. It was almost five by then. I put the CD player in my pocket, rolled up the headphones and put them there, too. My jacket had big deep pockets so I could get by without a bag. It wasn’t my jacket, not until I found it at some bustop. It smelt like stale smoke and cologne and rain.
No one was at the front desk, everyone busy making sure the library was back in order. I walked out and didn’t slow down when the alarm started ringing but I didn’t run because running is the best way to get caught. I put up my hood, zipped up my jacket, and walked to the bus station. When I got there, I begged until I had enough money to take a bus out of town. North this time. North because I didn’t care and it left sooner, but not till the following morning, so I slept and hid, ran and hid, slept until the bus left. I turned sixteen on the bus asleep next to a fat lady who smelt of pickles. Pickles, for god’s sake.
He’s still not here. He can’t find me. I’ve waited for months, years now. I’ll be twenty one soon but none of it matters without him. I know he can’t come back, not the way the singer came back, but even his ghost is enough. Just to see him, even the him that he is now. I’ll know him by the smell. Sometimes I think he’s here in bed beside me and then I feel the warm body there and I scream until he or she leaves. I’ve made a habit of forgetting the present because maybe it will bring back the past and the only part of the past still inside me is him. Obliterate the now and there’s only the then and the soon to be.
When I found him finally, I thought I’d never be alone again. It never occurred to me that he’d die, even after the first time. The problem is that love doesn’t die. Life would be bearable then, if the dead took everything with them, and I guess they do. But we’re left behind to hold the tattered remains.
I keep writing but nothing changes. Even the weather, perpetually perfect here. It mocks me. The sun keeps shining, the wind keeps blowing, the waves keep crashing. We did so much more, so much better when we were together.
Do you remember?
It’s the only thing I live for, the memories that I’m afraid to remember too often in case they fall apart the way toys and clothes do. I can’t let go of him but my hands grasp at air, at only the faint shadows I think are his face.
For a while I thought it was the places I went that were haunted, that I was unlucky. Years go by and I realize that the places are fine. The alleys I slept in, the houses, the motel rooms, the libraries, the buses, they weren’t haunted. Full of ghosts, maybe, but not haunted.
It’s me that’s haunted.
Haunted by everything and everyone except the one I want.