I lay sprawled on the table, my spine tingling from the loneliness that invades my inner ink. The Reader who picked me up this morning from the newstand on West 33rd Street donned a tweed jacket with elbow pads and a handlebar mustache. Every once in a while, he puffed on a sweet-smelling pipe, and for most of his morning commute he insisted on blowing streams of smoke between my columns. I'm not one to judge, but his breath smelled like a concoction of black licorice and expired orange juice mixed with motor oil. How does one's breath come to smell like motor oil?The Reader was middle-aged enough to have graying hair. To his credit, he had a lot of it, but I don't see his hairline lasting more than five to six more years, especially if he keeps up the coffee and pipe. (Just last week a story ran about tobacco and caffeine causing premature hair loss in men. My cousin told me about it, then that same day he was recycled. Twice.) I don't mind the recycling part. It crinkles me up inside to think about me or any of my likenesses being tossed in a tin can with wet tissues and pizza crust. I'd much rather be reunited with my extended family. The Times. The Post. Week-old Wall Streets. Hell, I don't even mind hanging with Shredded Letter Head, so long as it comes from The Financial District.
So, The Reader. At first I thought he was a store owner, the way he skimmed the headlines and avoided details. Then, on page three of the Arts & Leisure Section, moments after he pelted my midsection with a guttural hack and unleashed a dense ribbon of pipe smoke that caused my upper right corner to fold over, he paused at an article: "Shakespeare Takes Manhattan." He read the article meticulously, like he had spent the buck-fifty for this and only this. Shakespeare? Hmmm. This left me guessing. Not a store owner. Not a Wall Street Man. NYU? Good guess, but he was heading the wrong way. Then I had it. The Reader was a professor at Columbia. It was the only sensible conclusion. The elbow pads, the coffee, the pipe. The article. Then he got off at 72nd Street, which really threw me off. As he walked, he kept the article at eye level, rereading it with a slightly upturned expression. The Reader was hungry and the words were food. He twisted one end of his mustache, glancing up only to dodge an oncoming bulldog and its leash. Then he turned right and paced on for several hundred yards while reading the article for the third time.
Finally, and this word escapes my pages with exhiliration, he slowed near a bench. He sat. He closed his eyes and breathed in the morning sunlight. He pulled a notebook from inside his tweed jacket and slipped me behind the back cover. There I was, tucked between the cardboard backing of a cheap notebook and The Reader's knee. Uncapping a blue pen, The Reader flipped the notebook open to the first page and wrote these words: The city's candlelight opens the night sky. A young man, bearded, a hoop earring, dips his ink covered quill and scratches out his beginnings on parchment. This is him. The Writer.
