April 2013

The other day I was socially intercoursing with a colleague/friend. I don’t remember what about exactly, probably I was sharing an adorable story about my kids that may have highlighted my prowess as a mother and humanitarian. When I was done, I stood back to receive the praise that I so rightly earned, but my friend, not wanting to embarrass me, limited himself to a “that’s great!” and then started to retaliate with a story of his own.

I’m not sure what his story was about- a sick friend, a euthanized pet, a love interest, his job, who the hell can listen to what their friends say. Besides, you know how in every relationship one person is inherently more interesting than the other? Well, I’m sure you’re not shocked to hear that I wear that hat in many of my friendships, and therefore bring my being interesting to the relationship. This takes a lot of pressure off these people and they can just sit back and appreciate whatever I’m saying. Although it seems that many of them are overwhelmed by my generosity and are no longer comfortable taking my calls.

Anyway, he was blathering on about something and when I regained consciousness, I realized he was talking about a book that he’d read. The good thing about books is that they, with the possible exception of Moby Dick, tend to end, so I saw the light at the end of the monologue tunnel.

“That sounds great,” I said and he said “oh, I think you’ll like it.”

And then, the next day, he brought in the book for me to read.

“I’m kind of busy right now,” I started to protest, but he waved me off. It was a book for me to borrow. He didn’t need it back for a while.

I sighed.

There was nothing to do but to take.

“Thank you,” I said, making “sarcasm dripping” motions with my fingers. You’d be surprised how many people mistake that for raindrops.

I brought the book home.

I looked at it.

Clara and Mr. Tiffany looked back at me. “At the dawn of the twentieth century, Louis Comfort Tiffany wants to honor his father and the family business-” the back of the cover read. OMG. I was so not interested in reading this book.

The first few weeks passed by uneventfully. I tried to live my life the best way I knew how, continuing the course I was on before the book came into my life.

But after a while, it dawned on me. At some point, my friend would ask me about the book. Maybe not a for another week, maybe not even for a month. But eventually he would.

It would be innocent, of course. A “did you get a chance to read it?” or “what did you think?” but it would happen. And not knowing when it would happen just made me feel like it could happen at any time.

I decided to attack the situation head-on, by lying as much as possible.

“I don’t know what’s going on with me,” I mentioned casually to him one morning, “but my eyes have been killing me.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Are you ok?”

“The test results aren’t in yet,” I continued to pile it on, “but my doctor says I should avoid reading at all costs.”

He expressed sympathy and said something about eye strain, but I walked away because I’d learned a painful lesson with this one- one moment he’s talking about eye strain, the next day he brings in a book that I didn’t even know we were discussing.

After my eyes “healed”, I had to take another course.

“I seem to have developed a sudden allergy to paper,” I told him confidentially one afternoon. “Apparently books are printed on high pulp content paper and it is destroying my fingertips.”

“That is so unusual,” he said.

“Unusual but certainly true,” I agreed.

This went on for a while.

I would be plagued with ailments, he’d express sympathy.

Being something akin to a CIA-trained operative, he never once asked me about the book, which of course just escalated the whole situation.

I started to think about my options.

I could read the book, of course, but that was totally out of the question and I chalked it up to “panicked crazy talk.”

I could read a synopsis of it on Amazon, tell my friend that I loved it and that I, like Corrine H. Smith, a top 100 Amazon reviewer, believed that at its core, this book is about an artistic woman who seeks value in her life and in her work. This was tricky, because what if, God forbid, there was some kind of a sequel situation going on. How many Amazon reviews would I have to read?

I could leave NYC behind and move. This was a definite possibility, but involved packing and boxes and worse of all, talking about packing and boxes.

I could kill my friend. There were no obvious drawbacks to this, so I decided to keep that plan in my back pocket.

Finally I settled on this new-fangled idea of “honesty.”

“I don’t want to read this book,” I told him “I really tried,” I lied, because too much truth all at once is dangerous, “but I just can’t get into it. I’m sure it’s my fault. Please forgive me.”

He laughed.

“Oh, I don’t care,” he said. “It’s not as though I’d written it.”

We laughed together, merrily, I suppose, but I haven’t had a moment’s peace since.

Because what if he’s writing a book?

How will I ever get out of reading that load?

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