Bookcrossing

It’s a cold day in September. She is walking a buggy through the park at
8am. No shops are open yet, but if she stays indoors with him for another hour
she’ll go insane. In the buggy Edward is chewing on a hard biscuit attached to a
clip with a string. It’s supposed to help with teething. She breathes deeply.
The air is damp and you can smell plants. No idea what their names are.
Dave sets off for work at 7. He has a long drive to work, in Halifax. We could move
closer, but we’ve always liked it here. The schools are better here. It hasn’t rained
but the pavements are a dark shade of wet tarmac. The rhythm of the buggy is
soothing to mother and child. Is it the same Mclaren who make Formula One cars?
Ahead of her an old couple are walking along. They wear the brown and
beige waterproof coats of the old. Where do they get them from? Never seen
them in a shop. Probably years old from C&A, BHS, other long-defunct department
stores. His walking is irregular. One leg seems stiff and he’s dragging that foot
through the arc of his stride, effortfully. The woman links arms with him. Her hair
is thin, curly and grey. They are here every day. They carry food for the wild birds
and from time to time they stop and scatter some, like a story-book farmer
broadcasting seed. Or that parable. Some falls on stony ground. Some dies. They
do this every day. Faithful to the birds, linking arms as she supports him on this
walk, which must be really good for his mobility. Wonder what’s wrong with him.
Is it a false leg? He can’t be old enough to have been in the war, can he? Old men
always make her sad. Sometimes seeing them alone, in their formal dress as they
walk up to the chemist – wearing a suit and tie to do the shopping – makes her
cry.
They stop at a railing next to the water and feed ducks bread. She
overtakes them, peering into the large cuboid plasticised canvas bag the woman
carries. In it are a couple of fat-balls. She’s seen the woman tying them on to
trees. Fat balls for the wild birds in the park. Raided by squirrels too.
She glances over at the swings as if looking into her future. There’s one
child there already with a parent who, like her, has abandoned the house early
this morning. The woman stands near the climbing frame spotting the child as it
scales some netting.
She’s moving down the slope now. Letting the steepness take control of her,
her feet slapping down harder now. The slope makes it easy to peer down at

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Edward who’s soothed by the motion of the buggy and is peaceful. Someone is
running along the road at the bottom of the valley. A woman alone, wearing
headphones – an I-pod in one of those trendy arm things. There’s a bench down
there where she usually sits down. Should bring a flask. Should bring my MP3
player. Why don’t I remember? Dave’s put some new music on it. He takes a can
of lager out with him, putting it in the baby-bottle holder as he goes up-hill,
steering with one had and drinking as he goes along the flat. Probably get
arrested: drunk in charge. Half the town is a no-drinking zone anyway. But you
can’t tell him anything, of course. Another runner passes the woman from the
other direction. They nod at each other, the courtesy of people with a shared
passion. A random connection. The man stops near to her bench and puts
something down. Doesn’t look like litter. How strange! Wonder what it is?
Sophia rounds onto the flat just as the runner crosses the path she’s come
down. She looks down at the palms of her hands. Someone told her once that that
blotchiness means that you are exercising well, extremities well oxygenated or
something. All this walking: it’s good. Must weigh myself. Should give Trace a
ring. Wonder if she still goes to the gym. They have a crèche, don’t they? Or a
swim would be nice. Just once a week, perhaps. It’s nice, doing this route. You
notice things: the changes in the weather, the way the air tastes in different
months. How the trees grow.
On the bench is a ziplock bag. There’s a book inside. This is strange.
Inside the back, outside the book is a brightly coloured slip of paper. On in is
printed the legend “Book-crossers Scatter Sunshine”. The letters have been
shaded across in a sort of rainbow of pencil-crayon. It looks childlike. Sophia parks
the buggy, puts the brake on and sits down. Eddie is asleep. She opens the bag.
Sophia’s hair is a rich dark brown, curving into her jaw, shelving up towards that
pointy bit at the back of her head. Dave likes this style of bob: it accentuates her
nape. Sophia allows herself to enjoy the sound of the word “nape” with her mind’s
ear.
No-one is watching her. The bookcrosser ran past after leaving the bag
here. Sophia opens the bag and takes the book out. It’s a funny-looking book. Not
like a real book. It seems a bit home-made. The cover is un-illustrated and there’s
no blurb. The title of the book is “Read Me” - like a magic object in Alice in
Wonderland. Sophia wonders what transformation will occur if she obeys the
book’s imperative.

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 Are you reading me? Before radio, before telephones, there was this low-
tech telepathy. I write and you read my mind. In return I have a glimpse of the
thoughts in your mind – mostly guess-work but there’s some hope I’ll be right
about how you’ll react to my words. I might have written in another language. I
might be dead, but in this encounter we are intimates.

Sophia reads. In the morning sunshine, her hair is shiny. She crosses her
feet at the ankles and reaches out with one hand to rock the buggy gently, but
Eddie is out like a light. The light is dappled by its path through the leaves of the
tree near which the bench is sited. Sophia’s mouth is slightly open and the tip of
he tongue rests lightly behind her top front teeth. Now she draws her hand back
from the buggy and her shoulders relax as she takes a deeper breath and settles
herself on the bench. Now the book is resting on her lap, cradled comfortably in
both hands and she gives herself up to it.
In the story, a boy and a girl are flirting.

I don’t know why we are doing this. No actual kissing. She moves her lips
over mine, touching but not softening or opening into a kiss. This is torture. But
we’re not ready yet. I smell her skin. Warm clothes on a cold day. Autumn; she
smells like September afternoons. Gold, cold, clean days, walking out into fallen
leaves.

Sophia notices the wide spread of the book, her thumbs on the margins.
Sophia allows herself to feel the excitement of a first kiss. On page 7, the two
characters are kissing goodnight.

She’s wearing a red dress. They’re on the drive of a house. It’s not her
parents’ place – she’s a lodger here. It’s a hot summer evening. The fact that they
have been for a meal in a restaurant, that they are saying goodnight on a
doorstep, all this makes this moment suddenly significant.

Sophia imagines the scene, which could so easily have been from her own life,
years ago. The thrill of a kiss when a kiss is as far as things are going, for now.

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 She likes to kiss in pubs. It’s quite early and we meet in a pub in town. I buy
pints of dark beer. She leans across and kisses me hard on the mouth. I close my
eyes, because I am self-conscious. Now the bitter is starting to work and I don’t
care. It’s wonderful. I really don’t care who sees. I can smell her foundation , tiny
particles dislodged by the friction of this kiss. I sniff it in. This is her smell: a
mixture of her body’s signature and the make-up she uses. It’s unique. I’d know
her in seconds anywhere. When I think of her it’s in the act of kissing blindly in
public.

Sophia moves her left thumb into the centre of the book, pinching the spine
so the book stayed open. She touches her mouth. She’s thinking about kissing for
the first time in years. In the story the boy is staying the night at his girlfriend’s
house for the first time.

Her mother doesn’t allow boys in her room, so you sleep on the sofa. It’s
hard to get to sleep. It’s a strange room. The smells of her mother’s cooking, her
scent and the cleaning products she uses. Like a patina left on the surface of
everything – the deposit left by their lives on the fabric of the rooms. But in the
night she comes to you. It’s dark, so dark in the living room. You can’t say
anything, for fear of waking her mother. For a moment you’re disorientated.
What’s this? Who is this? The curtains are heavy, dark, totally opaque. Your eyes
don’t adjust. You feel her hair on your face. For seconds you are unsure – is this
some bedroom farce where the girl visits the wrong room? No – and you feel the
shock of it again – she is going out with me. She bends low to kiss you. The smell
of her skin is unmistakeable. It has an automatic effect on you. You wonder for a
moment if you are subjects in some strange experiment. But then there’s nothing
to think about except her lips on yours. You feel the roundness of her nostrils
against your face. In your mind’s eyes you are re-constructing this invisible scene.
The kiss in the dark. The fatness of her lips, the texture of them registering
against yours is synaesthesia. This visit from a succubus.

The next kiss is in a different house. Sophia wedges the book’s spine more
firmly into her lap.

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 They are lying on the carpet. Light streams in aslant through the patio
windows. He feels the weight of her, the heat. The beams of the sun make her
hair iridescent. The light and warmth excite molecules of perfume, her own
smells, the oils in her skin become airborne. He can see capillary veins in her
ears. Her clothes are black. Her hair black. He looks up and sees her dark eyes,
unreadable against the washed out background of blinding window-light. He
breathes her in, feels her pressing him down into the floor. Every part of her
penetrating him utterly. She takes part of his lip between her teeth.

Sophia checks her watch, continues. A few pages later, they’re in bed.

It works by touch alone. She’s wearing something rough to the touch, like
winceyette. Too scared to open his eyes. There was a wordless invitation. He had
been sleeping on the floor beside her; now he’s fully awake in her arms, exploring
the way her nightgown opens at the front. The feel of her torso. There’s an
impossible trade-off. To be totally present is to risk losing some detail to the
oblivion of amnesia. To hover above, observing and recording is to be a tourist in
his own life. A man who sees everything through the lens of a camera. Never to
experience the fine hairs above her top lip, now slicked with sweat, now kissed
smoother still, because too busy recording the experience. His mind slipped away
as he gave into the moment and the unreflectiveness of his flesh.

Sophia reads on, about what happens the next day. She looks down self-
consciously at the dark hairs along her forearm.

Under the table. What are we doing here? I can smell the grill, days-worth of
toast. That window looks down into a yard, across to a magic shop. We’re
between the pale wooden legs of the square kitchen table, topped with an orange
oilcloth. Sudden urge to kiss took them to the floor. What are we doing here? Like
lovers sheltering from an earthquake. Should be in a door jamb. Sheltering from a
falling bomb. Like lovers. Sorry. Fudge-mouth. Kissing that sludgy sweetness.
Licking the grainy crystals off her teeth. Soft chewed bits down round her gums
rooted out with my tongue. Take it down into my mouth. Sticky sweet lips her hair
gets in her mouth gummed up with sugary saliva and fudge juice.

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 Time has passed, Eddie is blowing a small bubble in his spit. He stirs
slightly, still asleep. Sophia looks around, feeling somehow guilty. Reading is a
guilty pleasure in which she retreats from the world into silent communion. Dave
makes her feel guilty about reading – always wanting to watch comedy DVDs that
are never funny after the first time. Inside the book there’s a sticker explaining
how bookcrossing works. “Take me,” adds a handwritten note. Sophia slips the
colourful slip of paper she first noticed inside the book to mark her place and
slides the book back into its ziplock bag. She pops the whole package between
some folds in her buggy’s hood and moves off.
Sophia turns the buggy back up the slope towards home. She feels her leg
muscles working against the gradient, slight dampness in the small of her back.
She notices the light scintillating a loose strand of hair. She sweeps it back over
her ear and leans into the steepness. Dave doesn’t like to kiss.

Sophia feeds Eddie and puts him on the floor with some toys. She puts the
TV on, the familiar chatter of Cbeebies presenters saying that Balamory is coming
on next. At the computer she finds the website mentioned inside her book and
registers that she has found it. There’s an option to leave some feedback. Without
pausing to consider where this chain of actions might lead, Sophia composes a
response. “I have just found this book. I had never heard of it. It’s good; I like it.”
Only after submitting the form does Sophia remember the man - a man running
who left the book carefully sealed in a zip-lock bag to protect it from the elements
until its random recipient might find it. She smiles then, to think about a man
leaving a book about kissing for a stranger to find. She’s got ironing to do, she
notices. Before starting she puts the book in her shopping bag, folds the buggy up
neatly.

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