“What are you reading?”, I ask. This only the second time I’ve seen her. I already like her. I am very nervous.
“Oh, some Conrad”, the voice confident and clear.
“Do you read much?”, she asks
“Oh, a lot. Mostly Tom Clancy shit though. Need to read more intelligent stuff”
Giggle
“I wish my brother would read more. I hate buying books just for myself. Dad & mom don’t like their money spent this way by just one child.”
“Anyway, do you mind if I read to you a few pages? I quite like doing things like this.”
********
And so we read to each other aloud. Different books. Different voices. All under the dimmed light of our bed rooms. It felt like a ritual. It felt sacred. It was. Her husky voice adding gravitas to the already tortured Flaubert. My tone-meandering utterances adding comic relief to an already funny John Mortimer. Her emerald eyes always shining. Always looking at the next sentence before the current one was finished. “You have a funny, flat nose in this light”, she said often.
“We should read aloud to our kids….someday…whenever that should happen”
“Yes, yes. We should start with A..B..C..D”
“You doofus”
********
Always an ice-cream and a smoke after the read. Strawberry and menthol.
I miss the dim light. The reading. The voice. Her.
