Chapter 18
Chris read but the words blurred and made him look away. He slipped his glasses over his nose and tried again. He tried to concentrate on his belief that the law was the rules through which people organized their principles. His reporting parts provided a series of responses that that drove him toward reverie but then he tried to rally himself with thoughts of getting dressed. He was too easily defeated with an opening of windows and a needle on a track and a song that could put him right.
He sat in the open window with the law book on the sill and his head and knee bouncing to a beat. He could do this, it wasn’t that hard. It required more time than deep thought. Reporting parts quieted and listened to the song and inside of it all he was able to think with just a few minutes of clarity that came and went. Mose Allison cooed, “Everybody’s crying mercy but nobody knows the meaning of the word.”
Chris didn’t think about the list of callbacks that he could make. If he wanted to hear a voice. He would call and if he wanted a presence, he could make it appear. For now, there was the book and the music and the street sounds and the promise of a walk. Reporting parts had different volumes and illuminations. Anything might be turned down or faded to black. It was right to wait for what the tide brought in, inspect what it carried, sort through and move on. Dancing like figurines in compartments, reporting parts had occasional convulsive rhythms that crested and subsided.
Warren and Laureen were perfect together, particularly since he had managed to avoid the entangling loops of both of their snares. He looked back into the book and brought the print into focus. Reading and taking notes while the light faded and the street music rose in back of it.
Later he did yoga, turning the stereo off and listening to his heartbeat and the continual hum that ebbed and flowed outside of his windows. He longed for the place of silence, not the silence that he had learned to use as a weapon, not the cold and predatory place where emotions waited and sharpened, not the resistant silence, but the honey hued invitation of his breathing and the steady strong beat of his heart.
It made him light headed and that told him that he was hyperventilating and that he must slow it down even further if he was ever to develop a means of travel to reach this new and quiet place. He read and took notes and tried not to think about the lures that would cause him to wander. He picked up his guitar and began to play and for the first time ever, it was one of Ron’s songs that he heard in his heart and played through his fingers. Chris fought the nets of incompetence and felt well rendered. He breathed in New York City and thought of Laureen: slinky, smart and able to make him cry. Then he played the blues song and tried to remember the words. There were other rhythms in it and he searched for them. Just as it was feeling right, it would make him stumble, like she tried to do. It was almost uncanny.