Chances Are

“You can’t do that.” 

“What?”

“What do you think? You can’t reach into the drop slot an attempt to steal a book and think no one is going to object. Is there something wrong with you?”

“I wasn’t attempting to steal a book. I went to slip a book into the slot. My watch band got caught on the door clasp and the watch fell into the book depository. I was just attempting to retrieve it.”

“You ever hear of knocking?”

That’s how it began. I wish I could tell you it had a conclusive ending, or at least an ending I could understand, but I cannot. I was embarrassed, and yet the watch meant a lot to me. I couldn’t just leave it in there. I had no idea there was anyone inside. The library wasn’t supposed to open for another couple of hours and I had to get to work.

There was something about the voice. Probably because it was coming up through the slot in the wall and also because I wasn’t expecting to be confronted about my attempt to retrieve my watch. And then being accused of attempting to steal books. I can see how it must have looked, but really, stealing books from a drop box? Seems a bit interpretive.

“What book did you drop in the box?” 

I couldn’t see what that had to do with anything, I just wanted my watch back, it was a present and it reminded me of who gave it to me. I didn’t feel like being interrogated by an invisible person I could only hear through a slot in the wall.

“I forget. I usually check out three or four books at a time and I drop one off when I’ve finished reading it, can’t remember which one.”

“What was it about?”

I began to feel like I was on some hidden camera show where they make you look more a fool than you already feel you are.

“I can’t remember. I sometimes read a whole book and never remember what it was about. More of a therapy. The repetition of reading relaxes me, if you must know. I get lost, forget. I, at times, don’t care what it is about. So much of what I read is not worth remembering anyway. What does this have to do with me getting my watch back?”

There was no sound, no voice, nothing. I assumed it was a woman’s voice I’d been hearing. It sounded like a woman’s voice, but then I’d been fooled before, and learned to never make assumptions about the invisible, as it may be all wrong and then you feel like an idiot. I thought I should attempt to right the situation if that were possible. 

“I think the book was about how to put your mind inside a bottle, or how to get it out. Kind of like when you see those ships inside a bottle and wonder how it got in there. I don’t remember much about it other than that. Can I have my watch back now?”

Still silence. “I need to get to work. Can I please have my watch?”

Nothing. I had decided to forget the whole thing and comeback when the library was open and explain my situation and what had happened. I would apologize and beg their forgiveness and get on with my life.

As I could not get a response from the invisible voice, I began to turn and head for my car when I hear behind me this familiar... “This belong to you?”

There before me was this young woman, her arm extended, my watch dangling from her fingers. I didn’t quite know what to say, and it must have been obvious, because she just smiled and indicated with the beckoning of her little finger I should take the watch. I had little choice, I took the watch from her hand and smiled in return, my attempt at an apology I suppose.

“So, you didn’t like it? The book, “Life in a Bottle?”

Then I remembered, yes that was the name of the book. I hadn’t really disliked the book; I just hadn’t really understood how someone could spend four hundred pages attempting to escape from a bottle. Seemed to me you should have been able to do that with one little slip of the fingers. But then it did give me something to do for several evenings. I didn’t know what to say, so I lied.

“I found it entertaining, but complicated.” There, the open-ended answer to a supposition, my favorite.

“You didn’t finish it did you?”

I had to admit, at least to myself, that no I hadn’t. It was one of those psychological interpretive books that after a while gives you a head ache and I get enough headaches of my own without wallowing in someone else’s. 

“You should finish it. It has the most unique ending, and it provides the answers for all the questions it asks during the journey.”

Well, that was definitive, even though I didn’t think I’d invest anymore time attempting to decipher what I may have missed the first go round.

“So, you’ve read it then? Why don’t you tell me about it and maybe I will find a reason to re-read it.”

“I haven’t just read it. I wrote it.”

That is when you feel like the cat that ate the canary and got caught, with that Garfield look on your face. 

“I could tell you what it is about, but it is the kind of story that allows everyone to take from it what they wish. At least that was my intent. I should add, it is the type of story that demands your attention. The concepts are difficult because they are the responses to problems based on emotions. And you know how tricky emotions can be.”

I felt like a complete fool, and could not decide a graceful way to extricate myself from the emotional situation I found myself in. 

“Tell you what. If you would care to enlighten me on the reasoning behind your book, I will tell you the story of the watch. It has nothing to do with bottles, but is based on emotions; some mine, some exposed by the one giving me the watch. What do you say?”

“I’d say that the book is two weeks over due and your late fees will need to be addressed before I can consider any further advise on emotional ingenuity.”

“How much do I owe? Sorry about the lateness in returning the book. I simply forgot about it until this morning when I was looking for my shoes, and looked under the bed. And there it was. The book staring at me, the bottle with an eye looking out at me.”

“That was my eye.”

“I didn’t mean to infer it was not a nice eye, it just gave me a shock that’s all. One doesn’t expect to have a captive eye looking at you from under one’s own bed. Tell you what, I will attempt reading the book, your book, again, if you promise to listen to the story of my watch.”

“What’s it about?” 

“It is about not knowing who you are, but why.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.”

“You didn’t write the book did you?” I felt something was amiss, the flippancy, her lack of presumption. Most authors would show some sign of contempt for the lack of understanding.

“Does it matter?”

“It doesn’t matter to me, but it might to you. May I suggest the next time you tell someone you wrote a book, and the eye is yours, that you remember the eye in the bottle is blue, your eyes are brown.”

“You noticed. I would in return suggest to you that mystery is essential in anything you do, as once it becomes definitive, it becomes static. Mystery allows the opposite to occur. There are no limits, no beginnings, no endings. It is what the book is about.

“You did write it then?”

“Does it matter?”