Awake

The alarm buzzes with annoying clarity and I open my eyes. I reach over my pillow and turn it off with a sigh. I pull my covers up over my head and wish for the dream to return.

Trying hard to hold on to the fading memory of the Lamplighter, I remember the look in his eyes as we found each other. Never before has he looked at me, never has he noticed me. Then I remember the Constable.

I’ve been having this dream for decades, never has the Constable been so menacing. I sit up at the memory and hold my knees against my chest. Plagued, as a child, with night terrors, this was the closest thing to one that I had had for years. In past dreams that became terrors, I would force myself awake as a way to end it. This one was different though, he saved me. The terror ended with the Lamplighter. How did he do it?

The question rolls around my head until the unmistakable feeling of a paw against my leg yanks me back into the here and now.

I lay back and let Chaucer, my black ball of feline fluff, crawl onto my stomach. She makes her way across my ribs then holds her ground just above my bladder. It’s time to get up, she evokes with a flick of her tail. I shake the last of sleep from my head and start my day, with those eyes, the determined and sincere eyes of the Lamplighter, fresh in my mind.

I snap and crack as I stand. The warmth from under my sheets tempts me to crawl back in, but Chaucer’s cry for food and the wretched taste of morning breath keeps my momentum going forward.

“Another day, another book,” I say, pouring the black slick some food, and then run my hand along her back. I press start on the coffeemaker and wait, daydreaming of the Lamplighter. After some hot coffee and the crossword, I’m ready for work.

Grabbing the heaviest scarf I find by my front door, I stop and listen to the light rain outside. Early spring is beautiful in this part of the country but it’s wet, get inside your bones wet. It’s also a nice departure from the desert, where I spent my youth. The savings alone on lotion is worth the move.

Landing here in the Northwest was perfect. The weather suits me and the job I found was serendipitous. My passion is and always will be books. Moreover, this tiny little coastal town was in desperate need of a new librarian. The Library I work at is quaint, small but filled with all of my oldest friends, shelves of them. It’s perfect.

I head out my door and take a deep breath, admiring the tiny green leaves popping from branches above my head and the explosion of cherry blossoms all over the road, as if the trees had celebrated the New Year while I slept.

The smell is so pure, so rejuvenating. It reminds me of why I love it here so much. The rain isn’t heavy and I decide to walk the mile or so to the Library. The walk is brilliant, hills of blooming forest on one side and cliffs to the ocean on the other. The sounds of wet fallen blooms under my feet and the distant waves crashing below supply my morning soundtrack.

The Library appears suddenly through the dense forest on the other side of the bridge that connects the neighborhood to the main town. The Library, a hidden treasure of literary fortune, my home. The pavement ends, gravel takes its place lining the winding descent down a tree-lined road. After crossing a small footbridge of wrought iron and wood, the road narrows and the trees thin, toward the front doors of the Library. If you keep walking towards the parking lot, the backside of the Library faces one of the main roads of the town and my favorite bar, Writer’s Block.

When it comes to libraries this one is my favorite. The dark brick exterior, the beveled windows, the tiny parking lot, everything about it is ideal, charming. Inside the quiet is tangible and the smell is intoxicating. I wish I could bottle that smell, I’d wear it every day. The aroma of old paper, must and dust, it all takes me to a very lovely, personal place where stories come alive in my mind and characters speak to me.

Maybe it’s my upbringing. As a single child, my only friends growing up were fictional; from Atrayu to Zeaphod, I’ve never really had the chance to feel particularly lonely because all I have to do to visit a friend is open the cover of any book from any shelf in any library.

Then, there’s Olive, my best friend, my confidante, my loony bird. She works with me here at the Library and she understands me. Olive never judges my ability to scrap a night out on the town for a good book and a nice bottle of wine. However, Olive Fisher is the only one who can tear me away from myself and show me there is more out there than words, which is quite an accomplishment.

“Morning Olive,” I say, trying to be cheerful without my proper cup of coffee.

I take my scarf and place it on a hook by Olive and the coffee pot.

“Hot!” she says.

I look over and see steaming coffee dripping down her arm and the startled look on her face. I hand her a towel, stifling a laugh. She takes it and that’s when I notice the headphones in her ears.

“Really, Olive, you should consider a lower volume!” I yell to her.

I can’t help but laugh harder as I help her clean the mess.

“Well, Tild, you know it’s not a proper morning until I spill something,” she yells back, refusing to take her headphones out.

“How very true…then this must be a very proper day indeed,” I say, pulling her headphones from her ears.

Olive is a child of the 60’s, old enough to be my mother, but never straying far from her adolescent roots. Her love of music and movies never leaves room for a lull in conversation. Once, on the topic of decade depiction at Writer’s Block she came up with a profound discovery that, “the 60’s were the 50’s coming to a bursting point. The 70’s were the recovery.” When I asked her about the 80’s, her reply was, “I can’t remember.” That’s Olive, a woman who’s lived a million lives and loves to remember them over martinis on a Saturday night.

“So, anything interesting happen to you in the last two days?” Olive asks, knowing the coming answer.

“A dream…” I say, looking over at her.

Visibly impressed that the answer had not been “a new book,” Olive raises an eyebrow and says, “Oh Tild, I haven’t heard that in a fortnight!”

The three things Olive loves most are big words, giving me a hard time and martinis, not always in that order.

“But Olive, this one was pretty cool. Trust me.”

With a roll of her eyes, Olive gives me the okay to proceed. I wrinkle my nose at her and begin.

“Well…”

“Let me guess, the Lamplighter?” Olive interjects.

“Actually yes, and will you shut up, it’s not what you think. Let me finish.”

“Alright then, this better be good,” she says, finishing putting cream in her now clean cup of coffee.

“He intervened Olive. He wasn’t just in the background. He stopped a night terror from taking over. It was incredible.”

“Okay, I’ll bite, because I’m your friend… Did you speak to him?” Olive asks.

“No, he evaporated before I had a chance. Olive, he just vanished from my sight. Right there, in front of me; oil smell and all, took it all with him.”

I watch the thought form behind her eyes. Olive has listened to me prattle on about this Lamplighter since we became friends. Well, since I started to dream again after leaving the desert. It just seems to be the safest thing I can do for myself; fall in love with a man who couldn’t possibly exist. The perfect relationship.

“Honey…”

“What?”

“Oh Tild, hon, you really need to get laid.”

“Olive, seriously? Sometimes I wonder why I’m friends with you,” I say, shaking my fist at her.

“Me too hon, me too.” Olive says, ducking my waving fist.

I grab my cup of coffee and leave the room. The quiet surrounds me; I relish the silence. Olive’s words ring in my ears, breaking the silence as I grab a new book out of a crate to catalogue and later shelve.

Maybe I did need to get laid…Oh who am I kidding? It’s been three years since the last time I let someone break my heart. I gave up. That last one broke not just my heart but also my spirit and my trust in myself. It was before I moved, just after college. The way it ended, the ugliness of it was the catalyst for my decision to leave the desert. I stopped dreaming after that breakup. Just like that, nothing…not until I moved here. I hate him for breaking me, but I hate myself more for letting him.

There’s a sort of safety in being single. Now, when I crave romance I can find one, more ideal than anything I have ever encountered or will encounter in reality, in literature. I find solace in Austen and Bronte. I see no need to hang myself out on a limb on the slight chance that a real man may come “save” me. Give me Mr. Darcy any time and that will get me through a cold Northwestern night.

“So Tild, come to Writer’s with me tonight?” Olive’s blond spikes accentuate the question, and startle me out of my silent world.

“Nah, I feel more like…”

“Going home and reading?” Olive asks, “Whatever Tild, I’ve heard it before and I don’t buy it. You’re coming with me. Besides, Harrison has been asking about you…” The implication in Olive’s voice is very familiar.

“Harrison doesn’t care if I come in there or not, and you’re meddling.”

A flash of Writer’s Block’s barman fills my head and I have to shake it off.

“No, really, last night he asked why he hadn’t seen you in a while,” Olive grins at me.

I wouldn’t let her see it, but this stirs something inside me.

“And what did you tell him?”

“That you were having a very intense, all-consuming affair...”

“Olive!”

“With the written word, you didn’t let me finish.” Olive says, shoving a book into my hand to shelve.

I can’t very well call her a liar. For the last few months, I’ve sequestered myself away in my little house, in my soft chair and read as if I’d be blind tomorrow. I can’t help it; books, their stories, their characters and environments…the words make my life just that much more bearable.

“Thanks Olive.” I say, pushing the book cart into her hip.

“Ouch. Really Tild, you have got to get out more. And before you can use it as an excuse, no the Library doesn’t count.”

Olive’s right and I do owe her a drink for listening to my recounting of last night’s Lamplighter dream, as well as every Lamplighter dream I’ve had since she and I became friends some 3 years ago.

The memory of how we met washes over me. It was the night before my first day at the new Library. I was nervous and couldn’t sleep. I had barely moved into my new home and scarcely had a box of baking soda in the fridge. I needed a nightcap. I was carried into Writer’s Block for the first time with a gust of wind. I remember this woman with crazy spiked blonde hair, laughing with the bartender about something he had said. The laughter quieted as I took the seat, one away from hers. I remember being very aware of her eyes on me. Not wanting to be rude, I turn and smile, and then the barman, Harrison, asked what I would like. I tell him a Ketel One martini, dry with one olive. That’s all it took. Olive was on me with friendship from there on. Never once that night did she mention that she worked at the Library. I remember the rush of relief when I walked into the Library the next morning and seeing her smiling face greeting me. Best friends for life.

Taking a breath and giving Olive a stern glare, I accept, “fine, you win. But drinks are on me.”

“I do win and I won’t argue. I do deserve it, or so says my overinflated sense of self importance,” Olive says, skipping back to the stacks.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3: Drunk