We Talked About Books That Brief Ride Home

 We talked about books that brief ride home. From the passenger seat, you spoke of your fascination with a title about finance or economics. I wasn’t sure, I can’t remember. I was too busy concentrating on the road and stealing glances at your profile hunched over your phone. My heart is beating strangely as I remember it now: your excited drawl, your thin legs protruding from the slightly sunken seat, and the way your hair fell down one side of your forehead. I found myself memorizing those little details without meaning to, perhaps as someone making his way through a maze instinctively looks back and remembers where he came from.

“What about you?” you asked. “What are you reading?”

Panicked, I searched the air in front of me for the book on my nightstand. Something about a young German soldier recruited at the beginning of World War 2, and a young, blind French girl living with her great uncle and an elderly househelp, who had just died four or five chapters ago, in the walled French city of Saint Malo.

“It’s called All the Light We Cannot See,” I finally said, telling you as much about the plot.

Was I convincing? I didn’t want you to think I was making it up. I really was reading that book at the moment. Do you look down upon literary fiction, preferring the more cerebral, more practical benefits of academic non-fiction? I prayed my voice sounded casual, nonchalant but not dismissive, enough to mask the deep uncertainty and hopelessly juvenile feelings of inadequacy.

Which was weird because the years were on my side, insofar as I had more of it compared to you. I was supposed to be the one playing the self-assured, disinterested character in this charade, and yet swimming in my head were all of these thoughts of trying to impress without making it obvious. I was an awkward, acne-scarred 14-year-old doing his best impression of a dignified, put-together thirtysomething.

“We turn right here,” you said. “It’s a one-way street, and my place is on the left.”

The minutes were galloping stallions, as if life itself hinged on how fast they got to the finish line. Carefully I maneuvered the car to the side. This can’t be it. It wasn’t even 20 minutes since I made the offer to drive you home. Where was the goddamned traffic? Why wasn’t there a stalled bus blocking our view?

“Thanks again,” you said, as you looped one arm around your leather satchel, and shifting ever so slightly in your seat to signal that this ride had come to an end.

“Very welcome,” I managed to say. I reached for the hand you extended for a friendly shake. A thousand words were trying to push themselves out of my lips, but all I could manage was a toothless grin.

You opened the door and climbed out. There was a piece of paper on your seat and you reached for it, thinking it was something that fell out of your pocket.

“It’s just a parking receipt,” I said, mentally kicking myself for being so damned messy. I snuck a quick glance at the back seat, where stray dog hairs waited for the next person’s back to stick themselves into.

“Oh okay. Well, good night!” you exclaimed as you closed the passenger door and walked to your building.

I drove away lost in my own thoughts about how the evening went. That somehow, I didn't seem too eager, too creepy, too boring, too ambivalent or too obnoxious. And that somehow, in that brief ride home, through all the messed-up words, you understood what I was trying to say.