Nothing At All

- Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes



My feet carried me to the library all by themselves.

Nice out today, the doorman said as I left Wilshire. He was right. Blue skies and warm weather forced me out of my customary sweatshirt.

On the way there I passed an odd woman on the sidewalk. Something told me she was the one, the one who'd taken the two. And yet, my feet kept going, unperturbed.

What kind of January is this? I said to the librarian when I entered. An attempt at casual conversation.

She stared at me, squinted one eye. Maybe she was contemplating ordering me out of the library again. Maybe she wasn't used to being asked about the weather.

The kind that kills, she said.

What?

Plants. Kills plants. They'll all thinks it's Spring, and sprout out of their little hiding places and then, sooner than you can say Thanatos, it'll be cold and they'll die. They'll freeze, and whither, and die cold, lonely little deaths.

Without further comment, she returned to shuffling a stack of papers on her desk. Paperwork, I supposed, though she didn't seem to be making any move to do anything with it other than shuffle it round and round until the end of the world.

I spent the next few hours aimlessly wandering the library. No research project today; not on water molecules or numbers or any other ephemera. Just picking books at random from the shelves, examining covers, author names, trying to pick something to read. They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but you don't really have any other choice.

Eventually I settled on one with a blurry image of someone's face on the cover. He was wearing glasses, but where the eye should have been, instead there were the waves of the ocean. Finding a warm corner to sit in, I began to read. It was a story about a Japanese kid. He was running away from home. I read and read.

At first I promised myself I'd go back to work on my project after a few hours, but I couldn't draw myself away from the book. I couldn't draw myself away from not doing anything. I smiled, stretched, inhaled the book smell, and gave in to temptation.

As the pages and hours crept by I could feel the heat slowly pulling down my eyelids . . . I fell asleep . . . and dreamed of nothing at all.