Laura’s quest to find Joe

The streets are deserted when Laura walks home. At this time of night the road is empty, and she is meandering down the street. Slow and shallow, like a big river reaching the end of a long trip to sea. Sometimes her eyes close against her will, which annoys her. She slaps herself on the forehead with a floppy arm to wake herself up. “Come on, Laura, you can do this,” she tells herself. She hears the distant roaring of a car, and she dashes of the road to safety. She miscalculates the entry point between two parked cars, and crashes into the hood of a silver Lexus SUV. She rolls onto the ground, where she lays still on the cold asphalt. The car is still far away, but she decides to stay on the ground until it has passed. Laura pulls up her legs and hugs them into her chest, partly to keep them out of sight, partly to give herself some comfort. The stars are out, which remind her of going camping on weekends with friends, before they discovered booze. Of course, back then, the stars had shined brighter.

The adrenaline that came with the fall, has cleared some of the fog in her mind. She becomes aware of the strange situation she has found herself in and snickers, but does not move from her hiding place. She looks around her, and sees a long row of parked cars, their wheels look thin under their fat bodies. Behind the wheel of the Lexus she sees something rising and falling. “Is that a heart…?” she is embarrassed by her own thought when the wind blows a page to the other side. It’s a booklet, that seems to pulse in the wind. The car passes her hiding place at high speed, and its roar vibrates through the night even after it’s long gone.

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Laura wakes up with her feet on the pillow, and her arms hugging the blanket. Her back is freezing, so she pulls the blanket over her. As she is too lazy to turn her body around, she gets the pillow with her feet and pulls it towards her. After an effort she is covered by the blanket, with her head resting on the pillow. She’s pulled out of the illusion of relaxation by her exploding bladder. She groans. After deciding there is no other way, she gets up, pees, gulps down a glass of water and returns to bed.

On the table she sees a booklet; dark purple with a little white window in the middle that says, Joe’s writing things. She has vague memories of her back on asphalt, stars in the sky and an endless row of car bellies. She drops back into bed and takes Joe’s writing things with her. Who is Joe? she wonders. She opens the booklet and starts reading the first page. Here I leave my thoughts when they start running around, so that they can have a place to rest. “Cute”, she says aloud, and flicks through the booklet. At a random page she starts reading. Today I saw Rosa again. I try to lose those expectations, and I thought I was successful at it, but, when I see her… Laura shuts the booklet. She can’t read thoughts Joe had written down in his safe space. She flicks through the booklet and sees it’s almost full. Only the last five pages are empty.

Laura remembers the time her bag was stolen in South America. She had been sprayed with mayonnaise while walking down the stairs into a metro station. Two persons had rushed to help her clean up, but moments later they were gone, together with her backpack. She had felt cheated and harassed and taken a 4-hour bath afterwards, calling and crying with her family. Anyways, the backpack had only contained a book and her journal, which had no worth to anyone but her. She remember she had written a poem in it, which she had wanted to send to a competition. At the time she had believed this poem would have kick started her writing career. She hasn’t written a single word since.

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It is Friday, and Laura doesn’t call her friend Peggy right after work. Laura works as a Solutions Analyst Supporter. Her day-to-day activities say as much as the name of her position; nothing. Most of the time she creates PowerPoints for her superiors, which they use to impress clients. Those PowerPoints are deleted after being used, or stored to copy from for future PowerPoints. The job is boring, but it pays well. Laura has had a murdering week, and would love to start drinking as soon as possible, but she has other plans for tonight.

During the week Laura had gone through the Joes in her contacts to ask them whether they had lost a journal. In total she knew three Joes. None of the Joes had lost a journal. One of them thought Laura was acting on some kind of hooking up scheme, and kept sending messages about meeting up tonight.

Five minutes after checking out at her job, Laura receives a message from Peggy. “Congratulations on surviving the week, Lu! Come and celebrate with me at Bulldozer. See you soonxxx”. She’s punctual when it comes to beer.

Besides calling the Joes in her contacts, Laura had posted on Facebook groups about having found the booklet, but no one had responded. Now the only lead she had was the place where she had found the booklet. It would be hard to find the place, and the Lexus will not be in the same place. Was the Lexus she had bumped into his? Maybe she had taken the booklet away from the obvious place for Joe to find it.

She had decided that she must have found the booklet either on 3^rd or 5^th street, as those are the only big enough streets between Dancing at Manley’s and her house that could have been the location of the events of last Saturday. Today there are no clouds, and the sun won’t set for the next couple of hours. She remembers she had been walking on the right side of the road. “Even when jaywalking I keep right,” Laura says to herself.

3^rd street is mayhem on Friday afternoon. Cars are honking and people are fuming behind the wheel, eager to get home and start the weekend. She walks down 3^rd street and up 5^th street, but nowhere she sees any point of recognition. What had she expected? Peggy calls right when she wants to give up.

“Hey, Lu, what’s up? I’m waiting for you!” she says. Her voice betrays she has had a couple of beers. Laura explains the situation.

“What an adventure! But why don’t you just read the booklet to find out more about him if you want to find him?” Peggy asks.

“It doesn’t feel right to read his personal thoughts. It’s intrusive and strangely intimate,” Laura says. “But maybe you are right. Do you feel like helping me?”

“Alright. It will be good for me to get some sun. Besides, Christian cannot stop bragging about this stupid deal that he landed. I’ll meet you at the riverside.”

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“Here I leave my thoughts when they start running around, so that they can have a place to rest,” Peggy reads aloud. “What a crybaby.”

“I think it’s cute,” Laura says. Peggy frowns at Laura, but doesn’t say anything. They are sitting on a bench in the park around the riverside with two pints of beer that Peggy had brought from a convenient store, safely stored in little paper bags. Laura felt like she was at high school again, when Peggy and she would steal beers from the fridge of Peggy’s father and drink them at the lake behind their house. The river was calm, and the sun was warming their faces.

“Well, where do we start?” Peggy flicks through the booklet. As Laura doesn’t respond, she returns to the beginning and starts reading out loud.

March 22, White label

I’m having my morning coffee at White label. The drizzle outside makes it inside even more cozy. Yesterday, I got drunk again. After we had a beer at some shitty bar called Bulldozer…

“This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Peggy says.

Laura laughs. “Read on.”

After we had a beer at some shitty bar called Bulldozer, Alexis and me walked to the South side where Lucas was throwing a party. It was cold outside, but the walk was quite pleasant. However, walking along the river, my mind kept wandering to…

Laura snatches the book from Peggy’s hands.

“Aah, come on! It was just getting juicy,” Peggy says.

“I think we know enough. The 22^nd of March was a Saturday. He went partying and in the morning he had his coffee at White label. Tomorrow, I’ll do the same.”

“Sure, miss respecting privacy. You go find prince charming tomorrow, but tonight we party!” Peggy says. She jumps up from the bench, and starts walking. Laura puts the booklet in her bag, and stands up to follow her friend.

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It is summer, and Laura is at the lake in France where her family went camping when she was young. Birds are chirping, and the leave whisper in a cooling breeze. She sits against a tree, drying from a dip in the lake. Next to her sits Joe, who has the physical aspects of Wesley, the sweetness of Dorian and the playfulness of Leroy. He’s perfect. He looks at her, and offers her a gift. It’s a booklet, with her name on it.

When she awakes, she is disoriented. Laura hadn’t wanted to drink so much, but Christian had been inviting them for tequila shots all night to celebrate his deal, and she hadn’t been able to refuse the convincing arguments of Peggy. Peggy’s voice at Bulldozer followed a long crescendo through the night, and the further through it, the more convincing it became. In the end, Peggy went home with Christian, which she’ll probably regret today.

Laura woke up early to be sure to meet Joe. In the shower she dozed off while leaning against the side, but she leaves the house fresh a bit before 10. White label is only 5 minutes from her house, and she arrives to an almost empty café. She orders a large coffee and a brownie and sits down at a table in the middle of the space, with a clear view of the door. The café has large windows that give a good view of the car-free street. The walls are painted salmon pink, and decorated with pleasant art work that is wokeness-asserting, but not controversial. Lush plants are in the corners and next to the counter. The waitress looks tired and hungover behind a mask of powder and smiles. I should have brought a book, Laura thinks.

People come in and leave. Laura orders another coffee, reads the headline of the local newspaper, illegal immigrant caught stealing three loafs of bread, and decides to return to people watching. The door opens, and the waitress says, “hi Joe!” Laura’s eyes open wide, and her heart start pounding. It takes her half a minute to look into the direction of the man that has just entered. When she does, she sees a sluggish elderly man walk in. Her dream of a romantic beginning of a loving relationship is shattered. Fucking hell, she thinks, while standing up.

“Hi, is this yours?” Laura asks.

Joe turns around, and looks at the booklet. A broad smile appears on his face. He takes the booklet and opens it. As someone who knows the treasure he holds well, he opens the book at a designated page and starts reading a poem, there. Laura waits for what comes next, surprised that Joe hasn’t said anything. His lip quivers, and a tear appears at the corner of his eye.

“Yes, it is,” he says. He looks up, and embraces Laura. “Thank you.”

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On her way home, Laura passes a convenience store, and buys herself an ocher booklet. When she gets home, she opens it on the first page and writes, This is Laura’s booklet, in which her thoughts are planted and tended to, so her mind can bloom once again. Instead of the Joe she had dreamed of, she got a new way to dream.