Safety Pins

Sunday 7th November

Dear Noah,

    Round-the-Clock Bookshop was mine before it was yours. It was one of the remaining stores still open after the mall was built, but even before that, its business had dwindled to that of a mere handful of customers a week. I'm not really sure how it's still standing.

    It's a tall, thin building, smudged onto the end of the high street. You have to push your way in through a peeling, forest-green door to get to the dusty rug that once said welcome. Then you'll have to wait for your eyes to adjust to the darkness, and let your lungs adapt to the heavy, musty air. From there, you have to take in the shop itself: tall shelves, stacked haphazardly with leather-and-cloth- bound books, and small desks squeezed into corners with pots of ink resting on their rough surfaces. There are also clocks. They hang from the shelves and the walls and they tick tick tick. It's like stepping into a story.

    I've never bought anything. I didn't like reading and I had a cell to tell the time, but I don't think the store was there to actually sell anything. It was for people like you—time bombs that appreciated words—so I don't mind that you made it yours.

     I went in that day after walking Mariette (I didn't see you at Madame Reena's). The bell tinkled as the door wheezed open and breathed me in. There was no one at the front desk, but there never was. The clocks told me that it was 8:12 a.m., so I navigated my way to the eighth shelf, and ran my hands along the age-soaked spines until I reached the twelfth one. I pulled it out and read the title: Pianists of Switzerland.

    You never knew about this. I don't do it anymore—can't—but I think you'd have liked to know: Whenever life gave me an apparent reason to turn my nose up at it, as youth is so accustomed to do, I would crawl through the tick tock, tick tock rhythm of printed wisdom and try to find inspiration.

    I slid Pianists of Switzerland back into its slot and headed home. I shrugged off the paint-splattered coat and sat in front of the instrument. (Did you ever hear me play the piano? I can't remember.) It's different, the way I play now. My fingers are stiff and the notes are heavy, like we're not meant to be.

    But I could play just fine then, because you were barely more than a slight itch of curiosity at the back of my mind.

    If the world were a piano, Noah, you averted my gaze to the dust between the yellowing keys. You tuned my ears to the desperate vibrations each note made: how some clashed and how harmony was impossible with a just single sound, alone and abrupt. You lifted the roof off and allowed me to see that every single note had to be hit with a hammer to make its own unique noise. If they were not hit, they never made a sound.