But how? He’s big on empathy, thinks he knows what she’s going through, and so he invites himself over. She serves him sandwiches in the car where she lives. He’s too big for the passenger seat and she asks him how he manages to live in a tent on campus. She’s thinking maybe he does know what she’s going through. He wonders how she knew about the tent. She doesn’t seem the gossipy type. He’s beginning to think she’s too smart for him, putting him on the defensive like that. For me, the hardest part is keeping my books safe. Where do you keep yours? He glances at the back seat, layered with what might be books inside a stack of black garment bags. She shakes her head to let him know he’s on the wrong track. She gets out of the car, he follows her, she opens the trunk and shows him the library─ milk crates full of the printouts of banned and burned books. You’ve got all the greatest hits, he says admiringly. She likes a man who appreciates the right stuff, and lets him riffle through her treasures. He picks up one sheaf that does not look like the others. No! She grabs at it but it fans out and invoices from hospitals, begging letters to old lovers, her parents and God all scatter. Records of what she had and what she lost. Events it might take her years to tell this man about. But for now, as he runs after the bits and pieces of her old life, he’s chasing a redbird pinching something indecipherable in its beak. And then he’s bringing her back a crumpled bouquet, paper petals blossoming, just waiting to be rearranged.
