Short Folk #19: 30 and 1/2 Friends

Note: I haven’t written this one yet, and I’m really excited about the idea. I came up with it last night after a couple of hours more reading Murakami, then I slept on it, and I was still excited about it in the morning.   I imagine that it will be real similar to the “copy change” kind of poems James likes to write on Bottomless Lakes.  Very Very much influenced by Murakami. Especially if you’ve read “Wind up Bird Chronicle” you’ll realize just how much I think I’m going to borrow from it.  Speaking of Murakami, before I get to writing today’s story I want to share just a hint of why I am liking his writing so much. His chapter’s all have multiples titles, and the titles are usually vague one-line summaries of what happens in the chapter. For instance, chapter 24 of book 3 has as one of its titles “The Long Arm Reaches Out”, and yet, so far in the book we haven’t been introduced to any concept of a long arm reaching out. So the title is a clue, a tantalizing one for someone who reads with the intent that I usually do.   Somewhere in the middle of the chapter we are introduced to the concept of the long arm, it’s a metaphor that a character uses. Another clue, because we still haven’t seen any long arm reaching out.  So the reader is immediately brought back to the title of the chapter, and this, compounded with the second clue, heightens the suspense even further.  When the Long Arm finally does reach out, metaphorically and physically, it has the effect of a intense climax, because it has been so carefully set up. Yet, as you read, the setup seems effortless.

He does this all throughout the book. So the major suspense of the plot hangs at the end of the book (I think), but all throughout, these minor suspenses rise and fall and keep me (the reader) relatively enthralled. They also keep me distracted enough from the final suspenseful question that I’m sure, when (or if) it hits, it will be even more powerful. Just really good writing.

Short Folk # 19: 30 and ½ Friends. 

Charlotte called me up after we hadn’t spoken in about a month. She had in her voice an eagerness to speak with me that I recognized. Something had happened in her life and she needed perspective on it. Maybe she had had her tranquility carried away by some new boy. I kept my tranquility pretty well, and Charlotte always came by for doses of it when hers was carried away.  I could tell that’s what she wanted by the relief in her voice when I answered the phone. “Girlfriend” she had said, “We simply must have a talk and a coffee”.

I was right about the boy and the tranquility, she let it all pour out over coffee in the Cafe of a Barnes and Noble.  And I was so glad she had come to me for advice, so glad she had known that I was someone who kept extra tranquility around for just such an occasion. I had tried to tell her a couple of times before this just how good it made me feel to help people with “problems of perspective” as I liked to call it.  But everytime I tried to explain it just came out wrong, a jumbled mess of gratitude and earnestness, a vomit of gratitude and earnestness. And it was always at the end of the conversation too, after Charlotte’s crisis had passed and the solutions to her problems had formed into action plans that she was eager to leave and execute.  She always looked at me after the vomit of gratitude as if I was some strange creature, to be cherished for sure, but also protected from the banal, from any quotidian concern. 

But this time I decided to end the conversation differently. It’s not that I felt that she owed me anything. I gave much more than I got with Charlotte, that was what I was always trying to say in the effusions of gratitude. I just felt like switching it up. So before she left I asked her this:

“How often do you feel the need to speak with me” I asked, “I mean, how often in the way that we are speaking now, deeply, I guess would be the word for it.”

She looked at me like this was some kind of test. I could tell she was taking the question seriously.

“Deeply like this?” she asked “I guess about once a month. I don’t know why. I guess about once a month”

I sat and thought about that for a moment. My history with her had given me the right to muse right in the middle of conversations.

“What’s 365 divided by 12?” I said, “Can you figure that out off the top of your head?”

“In the 30’s I think, but you know I can’t stand math. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking about something random” I said.

“Well then,” she began and I knew she was moving back into the practical, into the action plans that we had put in place to bring back her tranquility. 

After she left, striding through the double doors with her plan and a new sense of purpose, I sat and did the math more carefully in my head.  365 divided by 12, I thought. Around 30 and ½.  30 and ½ friends like Charlotte and I would never have another hollow day. I sat there and thought about that for a long time. I sat and thought about how fulfilling that life would be.  I stored up tranquility for the next time Charlotte would call and I sat and thought about 30 and ½ friends for a very long time.