BOOK CROSSING
He’d never seen anything like it.
Marco opened the abandoned book and fanned the pages. It was full of writing, handwritten notes crammed wherever they would fit on the pages of the paperback novel. In each twist and turn of the story someone had poured out their heart onto the margins, over the chapter ends, spilling pain into all the white spaces in a stream of consciousness and liberation. He turned the book this way and that, onto its side to make out words and sentences, some added later in bubbles or marked with asterisks or numbers as must be important.
He smiled. He frowned.
Words, odd words, sad words, more sad words, long sentences, perfect syntax, imperfect thoughts. This person had written of despair, frustration, and yes, pain. How did this person know exactly how Marco was feeling right now? Eerie in its synchronicity. No causal explanation for the coincidences of heartache. Mere quirks of time and place and chance.
He shivered to shake off the diversion and forced his thoughts back to his carefully laid out plan for the afternoon. This was no time to let distractions sneak into the equation. Plans carefully formulated in cyberspace and now safe in his backpack.
Last night he’d printed the timings from the TranksLink website in case his mobile ran out of battery and he now took the folded A4 page and placed it his pocket. He couldn’t leave it to chance, missing the connection was more than he could bear to think about. Be careful of the peak-hour traffic; don’t want to get skittled before the Story Bridge. What an anticlimax that would be, run over, life squashed out by a petrol tanker or taxi on its way to the Valley. That would stuff up everything.
It was all neatly scheduled, timed down to the last moment. Over the past few weeks his days had passed on auto-pilot, his choices would swirl around in his mind only to pop up during raw, sleepless nights. But he’d figured it out. It had all fallen into place. Finally.
There was no other way. Not a decision to be entered into lightly, but carefully, conscientiously, weighed up. Pros and cons, for and against, lists had filled his notebook, until at last he had decided there really was no other way. And now, there would be no second chance, no turning back.
By tonight he would be floating. Not metaphorically floating with happiness (but then again maybe he would, he couldn’t hazard a guess what the afterlife held) but literally, floating off the bridge into that place of ancestors and nirvana and white light and tunnels and whatever else those near-death-experience people said when they returned for another go at life.
Shit. Pity the poor sod who’d have to fish his body out of the river. If it was left too long he’d read that there would be little crustaceans clinging to him, sucking his remains for all they’re worth, gorging on his sorry carcass. They were welcome to it.
His mind was made up. Stuff the prawns, stuff the tankers and taxis. It was all for nothing anyway. Who gives a shit? All he could make out of the past few months was an ever-narrowing spiral of hopelessness, a never-ending fractal into the abyss. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to care. Least of all him. He’d got himself into this mess, now he’d get out of it.
Simple really.
Page 33, almost at the middle of Chapter 2, written sideways with green biro that clumped ink at the start of every letter:
If you feel how I feel you’d be angry too
If you’d lost what I lost you’d be lonely too
If you knew even half of what I’ve been through you’d kneel at my feet and beg my forgiveness
Beg
Beg
Beg
He knew the book wasn’t there when he sat at the bus stop. A bus full of shoppers had just left and the seats were empty of people and books, he’s sure he would have noticed. And then a while later, although how much later he couldn’t recall — mental note: must keep an eye on the time, your life depends on it — he saw it.
A lanky, red haired boy smelling slightly of cannabis but mostly of sweat had arrived at the bus stop. He turned around, his backpack sideswiping Marco’s head, grazing his cheek.
‘Hey, watch it mate,’ Marco says failing to dodge the assault.
The boy looks embarrassed and offers a meek oops or sorry or something equally meaningless before squeezing onto the bus stop seat between his group of noisy friends and Marco.
They’re all uni students. And first year at that, Marco jeers to himself. First year, what a breeze that was, all new, all a game; freedom, fun, no cares, no worries. If you’re smart you get have it all with a minimum of effort; a little study, a little cramming, a little luck. But it all runs out in the end.
And now, last semester’s results are there for everyone to see, officially displayed on the uni website. No graduation this year. He who had started out so promisingly now reduced to fail grades. Just something else crappy to add to his resumé. Come on, bring it on.
A pretty blonde girl walks up to the bus stop. She makes a performance of taking off her backpack. She flirts with the boys, midriff top revealing a tiny stud in her belly-button and, when she turns sideways, a tattoo in the small of her back. Check it out she’s saying. They all do it, flirt and tease. They don’t know they do it. They’re born with it. It comes with the DNA, the full package; smile, eyes, wiggle, laugh, and then the killer, the tears. And then you’re hooked. You’ve chased her until she catches you. And then before you know it she releases you. Like a tamed animal returned to the wild you cannot fend for yourself, you’re a sitting target for every do-good friend. Come out with us Marco they say, we can go to the coast, the tavern, the movies or putt-putt, take your mind off it, do you good mate.
But everything’s different. Changed. Empty.
The ache reaches up into his heart. Like a sinewy vine, its tendrils reach right into his solar plexus to strangle all feeling out of him.
He wants to vomit.
The uni bus arrives and the rowdy, flirtatious, and carefree queue and jostle, giggling like school kids. The boys move in close behind the blonde girl. Fingers are tempted to reach out to touch the tatt but cannot summon the bravado. She smiles. Wicked, disarming, queen of all she surveys.
‘Hey, you’ve left your book mate,’ Marco yells waving the book in the air as the bus pulls away.
Red hair boy is looking the other way. He hadn’t reached out to touch blondie, maybe too shy or too much red hair.
Too late now. The bus turns the corner and Marco is alone again with no love left in him only the trace of the tendrils squeezing his heart muscle until it aches. Fuck, he didn’t want to remember that.
He slams the book down on the seat.
‘Shit it’s getting late. Where’s that bus?’ he says to no one. He looks at his watch. ‘4.15. Freakin’ bus is late.’
Z had given him the watch. Not expensive. Sentimental value only, not even worth a trip to the hock shop, wouldn’t even pay a one-way bus fare to the Gabba. He takes it off and turns it over. He looks at the inscription, Z&M4eva. ‘Won’t need this,’ he says to no one within earshot. Time stands still there. No such thing as time anyway, all a device to order our lives. Conform. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, on and on spiraling this way and that. No light at the end of this tunnel. Its cheap plastic face shimmers in the afternoon sunlight. He places it under his left foot and crushes the life out of it, its innards reduced to uselessness. No such thing as time now.
‘What’s this crap he’s been reading?’ he says aloud to no one.
Floating from the Bridge. He shivers. He doesn’t believe in coincidence. Chance, luck, twists of fate, yes he could see how they could happen. It was a twist of fate that he had met Zoe in the first place, and luck when they fell in love and then chance that …
Why does it all have to hurt so much? Fall in love, fall down, trip up, stub your toe or break your heart, same difference. No more order, chaos rules.
Inside there’s a bookplate — Ex Libris: Chris Maher — Mobile 0030 812 417, neatly printed on a sticky label in fancy script with a border of leaves. Yeah bookplates, probably a crappy birthday present from a grandmother or doddery aunt when she couldn’t think of anything better. You never get what you really want.
‘… the number you have reached is turned off or not in a mobile service area …’
‘Shit, who doesn’t have message bank,’ he says to the phone. He didn’t realise he was so angry.
A tide of anxiousness was slowly rising in his chest. Will it be high tide? How long will the fall be? He’d carefully calculated the distance, 304 metres clearance for shipping. He hadn’t thought to check the tide times. Would the race to the bottom take longer at low tide? What did it matter? Shaking his head he realises the perfect symmetry of his decision. Rationale confirmed.
Floating from the Bridge, a novel written by Keiran Michael Hawes, 2015, winner of the Brill prize for a first book, should be nominated for the Man Booker, blah blah blah … a great read says Goodreads. He leafs through the pages.
Just a simple story about love and loss, sorrow and regret, all the usual drama neatly bundled into 356 pages of 10.5/12 pt. Monotype Dante with acknowledgements, no ragged pages, slightly thumb marked, cover in good condition, no age spots although the pages are starting to yellow. Left in the sun too long. Left alone to buckle and crimp. Its spine twice broken. Not great literature, not treasured or kept safe but lost, or lent, never missed. Lonely. He puts it down on the seat.
But the notes demand his attention. Insistent, they scream out to him, read me. He throws it down on the seat again. Why has this person dumped and burned all this angst?
Don’t need to read anyone else’s pain and sorrow thanks anyway, got a shit-load here, plenty to spare. Want some?
Read me!
______
Two old women, all grey hair, hand knitted cardigans and orthotic shoes walk toward the seat steering their shopping trolleys to a halt. Not the trolleys from the supermarket, but their own, one faded blue canvas bulging with old lady stuff, milk, cat food and Metamucil, and the other equally faded red tartan with a celery bunch sticking out of the top. Why do old ladies have trolleys? Someone has to help them lug it onto the bus and then off again. And they have squeaky wheels. Trolleys too. They look at him pointedly.
To move along the seat he has to pick up the book. Damn them. They look like they’d give bookplates.
He didn’t want to listen to their conversation about their grandchildren. They were grumbling about the young people these days, nothing like the good old days when children knew their place, blah, blah, blah. ‘Nothing like us, eh Edna? No, we were seen and not heard. Had the fear of God struck into us from an early age. That’s what these young ones need, fear of God.’ He didn’t want to listen.
Their bus arrives. They look at him. He lugs their trolleys onto the bus. Shit.
______
got ur book, txt if u want it back cya J
Damn, why had he put in the smiley? What did he have to smile about? Force of habit. Z always used a smiley to end her messages.
He’d give this Chris Maher until the bus arrives, if no contact by then, too bad. He didn’t ask to have this book land on him. Red hair boy should be more careful with his stuff.
He looked in his backpack and checked the contents: water bottle, half full; a vaguely apologetic note he’d printed last night; mobile phone, needs topping up (no, he reminds himself, won’t need topping up), Swiss Army knife his mother had given him for his 18th, now missing the toothpick; the Titleist golf cap his father had won last year for nearest the pin; and his Spirax notebook. Now he had the novel too, damn it.
On second thought he wouldn’t take the book with him. Somehow it wouldn’t be right. Lanky, red hair boy spilling his guts on the pages doesn’t deserve to have them meet a watery end. Sodden to pulp.
Page 45, at the end of Chapter 3, written sideways with blue pen no clumps of ink, must be new:
Old souls us — forged by love, tempered by pain
Our love — strong as our love for life
This precious gift we give… each to the other
What on earth is an old soul he thought? What a crock. The realist in him cannot stand all that new age metaphysics crap. Give him good, solid facts. Like the Story Bridge, steel cantilever, engineered to excellence, over 40,000 cubic metres of concrete, 11,999 tonnes of structural steelwork, 1,625 tonnes of reinforcing steel in the concrete, modelled on the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal. He knows all about it. Studied it in second year, got a high distinction for his paper. Good, solid facts. And no safety net.
Red hair boy must believe in all that reincarnation stuff to write about it. Must be some kind of poet, Marco decides. Then before he knows it he’s sucked back into the margins.
Page 67, at the end of Chapter 7, written upside down in 2B pencil, blue pen must have given out:
Every beat of my heart beats in you
Every breath of life is lived for you
Every star shines, incandescent
… when I’m with you
He’s pulled into the book. Further. More chapter ends. More scribble. More pain. He doesn’t want to go there. It’s easier to block it all out than face it.
Read me!
Ridiculous. How can this margin scribbler know how he’s feeling? Universal suffering, is that it? Does everyone feel like this when they lose someone? The empty, hollow feeling starts in the pit of the stomach and then reaches into every corner of your being, gnawing away like rust on an old car. Impossible. The world couldn’t function if people were struck down by such loss, business would grind to a halt, buses would stop running, industry would fail, the dollar would collapse, babies wouldn’t be born let alone conceived, the world as we know it would end. But they are, they do.
The pain is too much. No one can ever really understand another’s sorrow, they say they do but that’s bullshit. Scott said he understood; that he’d been flicked off by some chick last year. Flicked off, that about says it all. And Andy said he understood, but they were just words, he’d never even had a girlfriend so how would he know. And Toby said he’d met a pretty boy at the tavern who promised to call him but never did. Maybe being gay is easier. Probably not.
And another thing, over 17,000 litres of gunmetal grey chlorinated rubber paint means the Story Bridge won’t rust. Another good solid fact.
Page 157, end of Chapter 4, notes in angry 2B:
Rot in hell…
Couldn’t say sorry, didn’t give a damn
Paid no respect, get no second chance
That’s right, no second chances. Made your bed and now you lie in it, black dog.
Shoppers start leaving the Hyperdome. The sound of roller doors rattle and echo, staff scurry around their shops taking in signboards and baskets of sale goods, stuff that’s been picked over, that nobody wants at any price. What’s a bargain anyway? Quality goods at a cheap price. Z was quality. Until she wasn’t.
And still he sits at the bus stop. Page after page, margin after margin, words and phrases reach into his mind, draw him in, take his breath, strangle his heart.
Read me!
School students have come and gone. Happy. Laughing. Loud. Eating Maccas and fries and texting so hard they’ll wear out their thumbs before they reach uni. Boys with skate boards flip and flop off the gutters. Workers wait for their bus, tired after a long day, smoking cigarettes like there’s no tomorrow. Can’t wait to get home to telly and fries. The sun glows in the late afternoon sky.
What’s a bargain anyway?
Page 286, end of Chapter 9, notes in red felt pen, feathered, leaving squiggly marks on page 287:
My life is nothing if not for your love
How can I go on, without you, without you?
Tears flood my soul
I’m drowning
Without you, without you
Drowning? Was red hair boy drowning? He looked happy enough. Marco shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know anything anymore. He thought he knew Z. How can red hair boy laugh like that if he’s drowning? In tears, flooding his soul? C’mon, really?
Marco had shed tears, floods of them. And now he couldn’t go on. He didn’t have a tear left. He was bone dry.
Read me!
Page after page he was sucked in, consumed by the anguish and sadness crowded into the borders and edges until he realised that red hair boy was as desperate as him. Here was someone who had poured out their sorrow onto the pages, cramming each emotion, thought, and word right to the edges. Spilling over, splashing him with his tears. Sodden to pulp.
Page 483, end of Chapter 12, written with blue biro and then pencil
Our love has made me sweeter
This ache has made me braver
My pain has made me stronger
My life will go on, without you, without you …
This was different. The mood has changed. Now the margin crammer was writing of pain purging their demons. Here was someone who had come to grips with the meaning of loss — a brave soul, someone who chose life rather than end it. Courage.
Don’t do it.
Red hair boy had moved on.
______
Marco closed the book. And he closed his eyes.
It wasn’t always like this. He wasn’t always in such misery. He had been happy. They had been happy. Together.
It all changed last semester. He didn’t want to remember but the notes had conspired to bring it all floating back to the surface ready to be looked at, analysed, deconstructed.
She’d walked into class at the start of second semester. New. From Adelaide. Transferred from the Uni of SA moved to Brisbane along with her parents, father some big shot computer crime expert. July 5thth, 9.15am, he’d marked the day and time in his notebook, so he’d never forget.
They were to share a business writing class as an elective. She had a nice turn of phrase.
At first she ignored him. Then he said something funny and she laughed. She looked at him and that was it. It was on.
And then the next year April 18th, 2.30pm, he would never forget. He’d marked the day and time. Adam walked into class. He was new. At first she ignored him. Then he said something funny and she laughed. She looked at Adam and that was it. It was off.
287 days, five hours and 15 minutes. He had known every little anniversary, one month together, six weeks in minutes, three months in seconds, he had sent her a text to mark each one.
_____
His mobile phone rings. Marco jumps. Shit.
A voice is on the other end. A voice he does not know. Friendly, inquisitive, not Z’s voice.
‘Hello, hi yes I have your book,’ Marco replies, ‘were you at the Hyperdome bus stop an hour ago?’
‘No, not me, how do you know it’s mine?’
‘It has the name Chris Maher on it. I take it that’s you?’
‘Yeah that’s me. Which book is it?’
‘Floating from the Bridge … lots of hand written notes—’
‘That’s my book’, Chris interrupts, ‘Iost it about six months ago’.
‘A boy from uni left it here at the #555 bus stop, but …,’ he had to say it, the voice was most definitely feminine, ‘… you sound like a girl.’
‘Yep certainly was the last time I looked.’ Her laughter rang out over the phone, happy, carefree, relaxed.
Now Marco was speechless, he had convinced himself red hair boy had written the notes. He couldn’t help himself, he had to know.
‘Umm, those comments, the stuff in the margins. Well, they’re pretty miserable in places, they sound like you might have considered doing something drastic.’
Her voice was clear and had a musical tone to it. It sounded strong, almost challenging. ‘Yes I was desperate, I’d given up a lot to be with my boyfriend and then he dumped me.’
Marco shivered. He didn’t believe in coincidence.
‘Oh, ok, do you want the book back?’
He couldn’t believe what he was saying; what about his plans for this evening, what about the bridge?
‘Oh, that would be great. This is embarrassing, there’s so much of me in those margins. If you’re still at the bus stop I can be there in ten minutes.’
He waits for her.
He misses the bus.
______
Suddenly he feels awkward. He knows so much about her. He’s even more uncomfortable when he sees her walking towards him.
‘Hi, I’ve seen you at uni,’ he says.
Chris sits down beside him, her eyes on the book.
‘I’ve seen you too’, she answers. She looks straight at him. She smiles.
A silence surrounds them. Awkward. A tendril loosens. She tucks it behind her ear.
‘I feel a bit funny, I feel like I know you. Do you write poetry?’ he asks then wishes he hadn’t. It sounded so dumb.
‘I try to, what about you?’
‘I try to write lyrics, they get me into trouble. I spend more time writing songs than studying engineering — and I have the grades to prove it.’
She smiles.
She’s not blonde, she’s not flirtatious, she’s not wearing a midriff top.
She looks at him, no words are needed.
The sun moves low on the horizon and the street lights come on. Everyone has moved on, gone home. Only the two of them are left at the bus stop. In the distance, flights of lorikeets call out noisily on their way to their roosts for the night. Thunder clouds gather in the west casting an eerie green tinge over the early evening sky.
‘You know’, he whispers, ‘your notes really helped me this afternoon.’
She nods her head. She knows when to be quiet.
‘This book saved my life Chris,’ he says holding it up. ‘Not the story, that’s just about a couple caught in a flood, anyway you know all that. It was your notes. They saved me.’
He knew if anyone in the world would understand she would. She knew the pain, and she had expressed it exactly how he had felt it. First the disbelief, it wasn’t true, it was a bad dream. Then the anger. Bitterness. Life could not go on. Friends had worried about him, tried consoling him. He couldn’t tell his parents, the pain was too raw. He’d told himself that everyone goes through it. But this was different. This was happening to him.
But Chris’s words said it all. She knew. She’d passed through the fire and extinguished the flames of anger, sorrow, disappointment. And now she had moved on.
‘Why did you write in the book?’
She smiles. She looks unsure. Should she explain? To write about her pain was one thing, anonymous words in a paperback novel. To talk about them was something altogether different. She took the book from his hands and leafed through the pages, her notes calligraphic reminders of her past. It was all there, pain, sorrow, anger, regret, and finally release.
‘It started the afternoon we broke up. It was all I had in my backpack. I started writing the bitter stuff on the pages where there was enough white space. And then it got to be a habit. Every time I’d feel sad or mad or glad I’d write it in the book.’
Cathartic. That was it. She written about her pain and relieved it and moved on. And now he’d read it. Now he could move on.
‘And then you lost it?’
‘A friend of mine picked it up one day and read the notes. Nicky had just had a break up and asked if she could borrow it. Then she misplaced it.’
‘You must have missed it. Sort of like an old friend.’
‘To be honest, I don’t care about the book but some of that stuff is close to the bone and I’m embarrassed so many people seem to have read it when it was personal.’
‘Don’t think like that Chris. It’s a lifesaver, literally.’
‘How did you get it?’
‘A red haired boy left it here earlier.’
‘Tall and lanky?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh my God, that’s Nicky’s younger brother. So he had it all this time.’
She looks down. A pink tinge creeps up her neck towards her cheeks.
‘Seems like your words had spoken to him too,’ Marco whispered. ‘Like a comforting caress, easing his hurt.’
He knew now he had to tell her how much her notes had helped him. He started slowly, his voice quiet. He couldn’t look at her.
‘I met Zoe in lectures. We went out for almost a year. I’d never felt like that about any girl. She was different.’ He couldn’t look at Chris. He hesitated. ‘Then she got pregnant. I was over the moon, I thought she would be too. I knew it would be tough but we’re both 21, love will find a way. I’d never thought about kids but this just seemed right.’
He stopped and looked up at Chris. She said nothing.
He hesitated. ‘She got rid of it and told me later. But everything had changed. And then she moved on, started going out with another guy.’
Chris nodded her head. ‘So you lost not only your girlfriend but also a child. Double heartache. You know she probably couldn’t face continuing the relationship, nothing could ever be the same.’
He looked at her. So that was it. He’d never thought of asking a girl for her take on the whole sorry mess. He shrugged his shoulders and continued, ‘yeah, you’re probably right about that. And now my career is stuffed too. If I can’t get back on track with my degree I may as well throw it all out the window.’
‘Mmm I can see how you might want to finish everything.’
He looks straight at her. ‘But I missed the bus,’ he says.
‘Will there be another one?’ she asks looking at her watch.
‘Not tonight.’
She smiles. The silences are no longer awkward.
‘Just as well the bookplate was inside,’ Marco said putting it down on the seat. He picks up his backpack and stands up.
‘Yeah, my old aunty gave me those bookplates for Christmas. I have quite a few sets now.’
He smiles.
_____
‘Excuse me, excuse me, you’ve left your book,’ the middle-aged woman calls out waving the book at the young couple in the distance. Neither of them turns. They keep on walking. They don’t hear her. They’re talking. Laughing.
She sits down at the bus stop and lights a cigarette, her first after a shit of a day working in the freezer section of the supermarket. Frozen peas equals frozen life, the staff tease her. Now she was on her way home.
Home, that’s a laugh, empty house, empty bed, empty life. What’s the point of anything when you’re alone and lonely, heart broken, days drifting by in a sea of pain? Who would care if she ended it tonight? Who would understand that she could drain a bottle of vodka and take one too many sleeping pills? What’s the point of anything at all?
She put the book on the seat. It’s just some crappy paperback novel. Geez these young people read some trash, they don’t have a care in the world.
She lights another cigarette. The bus is late.
She picks it up. Floating from the Bridge plus scribbles in the margins.
Read me!