Readers Creepers

Northern fern photo by Ingus.

He saw her come out of the coffee shop, carrying a paper cup of coffee with a little cardboard insulator like a tube top. Her books always had characters drinking tea. Looked like she lied, but isn't that what novelists do? Just because her characters drink tea, did that mean she had to drink tea? Just because her characters engaged in clandestine affairs, did she? Maybe. He quickened his pace to catch up to her.

"Nicole? Nicole Lanser?”

She slowed her pace, looked sideways at him suspiciously. "Yes?"

"I'm reading your latest book. I thought I recognized you from the picture on the back."

"There wasn't a picture on that one."

"Oh yeah, that's right. I know where I recognized you from. It was that article in the Star Tribune about you."

"Oh yes. I liked that picture. There's not many pictures of me that I like, but the photographer on that day caught one of the few." She took a sip of coffee. "Can I help you with something?"

"Oh no," he said. "I just wanted to say hi. And that I like your book. There's some parts I'd like to talk with you about, though. Could I maybe buy you a cup of coffee or something?"

She stopped walking, smirked and held up her paper cup. "I kind of already have one."

"Oh yeah, of course. Well maybe we could--"

"I'm sorry, but I was really headed home." She winced, realizing her mistake.

"Maybe I could walk you home! You live around here? I mean, I know the article said you lived in South Minneapolis, but I didn't know we lived so close to each other."

"I'm not really comfortable with--"

"I knew Owen," he said, and started walking.

She followed to catch up. "Pardon?"

"I traveled around with Owen in '95. Just after you broke up."

"But nobody knew we were going out."

"I did." His brow furrowed, eyes staring hard into the sidewalk as he walked slowly ahead.

"How is he? Does he still write? I've been trying to find him on the internet, but..."

"I don't know how he is." His dark eyes suddenly brightened, and a big fake smile spread on his face. "But I didn't come here to talk about Owen. Got any tea in the house?"

Nicole noticed he turned at the correct corner towards her house. "Coffee?"

"I thought so." He walked to her house, Nicole in tow.


Nicole's living room was decorated as vividly as her books. Dark red walls, a pressed-tin ceiling painted black. Fern bursting green in a bright bay window. Dark wood molding. Shelves of books tattered and worn, bought not for ambience but for reading, tearing into with a writer’s eyes, from which to learn, emulate, pilfer. She handed him a steaming cup of black Columbian. He took a sip, then understood why she went out for coffee.

"Where's your Underwood? I thought you wrote in front of the bay window on an Underwood, at an antique school desk"

"I actually write on a Mac upstairs. Fabrication for the reporter. Sounds a lot more romantic."

"Sells more books."

"Exactly."

"Owen was writing while we traveled. I did the driving most of the time. He wrote in a notepad. First it was love poems. There's nothing I hate more than unrequited love poems. Then we got into Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana. Drove mostly at night. Slept in the car in parking lots during the day."

“Why drive only at night?” she asked.

“Owen didn’t like traveling during the day. He wouldn’t say why. It was like he didn’t want to be recognized, like he was running away from something.”

“From me.”

“Probably.” He set the horrid cup of coffee on the end table and got up, browsed through the room, reading book titles, looking at artwork and photographs hanging on the walls, but really wondering what corner of the house he would find her bedroom.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he replied. He already knew where it was. Just like he knew what city to find her in, just like he new where she lived, just like he knew where she could find Owen, and it wouldn’t be on the internet.