Vic's been in the hospital after surgery for a couple days, and I visited her room last night - bringing about five books and a potted flower - for only a couple minutes.
She'd told me that I didn't have to come, of course, but she'd given me the room number. She tells me not to come, and, weighing the situation, I sometimes show up anyway. The last time I defied a direct order that I "didn't have to visit" was the day her father died.
Vic doesn't like to feel indebted, after all, even in times of crisis or weakness.
The books I brought her - when she told me that I didn't need to bring her anything - turned out to all be things that she hadn't read. I considered myself lucky for that because the girl devours books. Even if you've gotten her something that she wouldn't have picked for herself, she'll still read it - and read it quickly - because she can't not finish something she's started.
I've been reading "Empire Falls" by Richard Russo for three weeks, for instance, and Vic will likely finish all or half of the books I got her last night before I finish mine.
For the record, I bought Vic five books from decidedly different genres, and she's going to end up reading all of them. (As a bookstore clerk, buying her gifts gives me a vicarious thrill. She reads some smart stuff, and I get to feed her habit. Shopping for her makes me feel like a drug pusher.)
I'll list them to give you a basic idea of what she's able to read. The girl's a savant or something. She's supposed to be laid up for two weeks because of this surgery, and she'll finish all of these by then, I bet you.
* L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
* Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
* House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
* The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
* Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Sometimes I wonder, about my friends, if they, like me, don't communicate the way other people do. I wonder if that's why I pick them, to the degree that they're "picked."
If all the communication skills I've acquired come from flawed communication, it's my duty to fix it, I guess. But how? Where's the basis of "normal" social communication?
Last night, Beth's sister Kate called me up from the Daytona Beach airport. Her flight into Atlanta was going to be delayed, and she was afraid she might miss her connecting flight to Greenville-Spartanburg.
She wondered on the phone to me if she could get my assistance in case of a crisis. She wondered if she could stay with me at my apartment, which is currently unsuitable for visitors, or if I could drive her halfway to her parents' house in South Carolina.
I told her that I'd drive her. Then, getting off the phone with her, I secretly prayed that she'd not miss her connecting flight.
She didn't miss it. The flight got delayed.
There was no need for me to act, other than to talk to her on the phone for the duration of her wait, which I did.
It turns out that Kate, it seems, is as voracious a reader as Vic, which doesn't surprise me since Kate's a veterinarian and a mega-genius.
She told me that she once read every book in her elementary school's media center one summer as a project. Her mother, a schoolteacher, was able to get her inside it, and she worked her way through it one shelf at a time.
She got off the phone with me last night after the crisis at the airport averted, and she turned her attention to Tad Williams' "Otherland," which is a massive, four-volume book that she's halfway through.
I don't read that much or read things that deeply. And I work at a bookstore.
I have readers' envy of my friends.
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