Bookwork Orange

 Bookwork Orange 

I haven’t seen Axel in some time – I haven’t talked to him in a month – but yesterday he emailed to ask if we might meet. He is twice vaccinated and boostered. And I am vaccinated, too, also twice. I emailed back, “Yes,” and he asked if I’d be willing to meet him in his study at Grace Lutheran. Also, could I bring a bag lunch – and one for him, too? He would provide drinks, what would I like?
     I said, “Pepsi,” and he thought he could do that.

He wants to talk about Gaspar-Stephens-and-Jesus, what-do-I-think? I seldom think at all anymore, I say.
     His office looks exactly as it did the last time I was there, more than two years ago. Exactly: not a book added or subtracted from the shelves, not a book shifted from one place to another, not a paper on the mammoth desk disturbed. It tastes like the same air, only thickened by not having moved in 25 months. I’m having trouble chewing my egg-salad sandwich; it is turning to bits in my mouth without getting mushier – the thick air is turning my saliva to petroleum jelly. I begin to choke.

Axel gets up from behind the vast desk; he lumbers to the nearest window and hoists it open. “And their eyes were opened ... ,” he says. “Luke 24.” The air is disturbed like the waters in John 5. And the desk, and the books shiver and rearrange themselves. New titles appear in odd places, an orange-spined book by Patricia Churchland among the commentaries on John, another orange book, Slotterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reasoning next to The Institutes. Every other book seems to be orange or turning orange, and the papers that were on the desk hover trembling a few inches above it.
     It’s an illusion, I know. (You are no more a fan of magical realism than I am, are you, dear reader?) 

 “I think he has a point,” Axel says after he has sat back down with a sigh, after he has taken a bit of sandwich, chewed it to bits, and swallowed it, after he has sucked in a slurp of Pepsi and gargled it down. He’s talking about Gaspar. “He has a point, but it may not be the point he thinks he has,” Axel says.
     “I agree,” I say, not because I do, but maybe agreement will end the conversation before it begins. I don’t really think it will, but the thought comes to me – the hope comes to me.
     But agreement never ends a conversation with Axel. 

 11.06.21