3
Although Shelling awakened with a headache and tingly fingers, the sensations faded, and he didn’t expect the day, a Friday, to differ from the routine he had established since moving to Springdale several months ago. He spent the morning pulling weeds from his vegetable garden and sitting in the shade of his back patio, where he dictated his journal into a digital recorder, as he did every morning. It wasn’t until afternoon, when he went into town for his yoga class, that he noticed the emptiness.
At the yoga center, though the door hung open and the lights were on, he found no students or teacher. He sat on the couch outside the practice space and removed his shoes and socks, then entered the practice area, a rectangular room with a golden oak floor and a wall of windows–a calming zone in which he always found freedom from the grasping tentacles of chaos that followed after everyone.
He unrolled a mat and waited, sitting cross-legged facing the windows. Cloudless and blue, the kind of day that promised much–perhaps this time, after class, he would suggest lunch to some of the others. Usually, on finishing the hour and a half sessions, he felt so exquisitely drained and limp that conversation proved difficult, and the opportunity for companionship slipped past him.
This empty room was odd though–someone, at least the teacher, should have arrived by now. He rose and walked into the closet-like office, then to the couch, where he sat reading a brochure for a weekend seminar with a visiting yogi. A few minutes later, he slipped his socks and shoes on and left. Across the parking lot, in the food co-op, he bought an avocado, some lemons, and a bag of organic potato chips. Aside from the young woman at the cash register and a man putting out produce, the store was empty.
He deposited the groceries in the trunk of his car and walked toward Main Street; while crossing the street in front of The Cook’s House (a store selling upscale kitchen items), he decided to go to the Springdale Library.
The library occupied an attractive 1920s-era brick building with wood floors and high ceilings. Several afternoons a week, Shelling would come here to sit in the magazine section and look through various newspapers. On this visit, he paused in the foyer to look at a poster advertising the performance of three short Samuel Beckett plays at the college. He had never read or performed any Beckett. Off to his left stood a table of new books; straight through led to the fiction, he knew that...but where was the drama section? He thought to ask if the library had the featured Beckett plays.
Besides programs at the college, there were a few theater groups in town. Funny, his discontent with television had colored his entire view of drama. But why not enter the theatrical life here? Though he was hesitant to reveal his past, or rely on his background to secure parts in local productions, it was ridiculous to turn away from acting altogether. Perhaps instead of acting, here in Springdale he would direct plays, explore a more artistic vision, divorced from the business that had involved him for so long.
Finding no one at the front desk, he rummaged through the new books, picking up one with a painting of a sailing ship on its cover. He flipped through the pages, then stopped. The text was not English. It so closely resembled English that at first he thought his eyes had blurred, mixing the words into random configurations. He picked up another book, and it was the same, words in a sort of near-English gibberish: “Leth free, tor mousled, ol shan vetchy,” read the line at the top of one page, opposite a strange drawing of young women and people-sized cats wearing clothes.
Shelling looked around for another library patron or employee, but found no one. At the circulation desk, he called out: “Is anyone here?” The ceiling, distant and white, mocked him. He found he couldn’t breathe, could not force air in through the knotted thing his windpipe had become. A sudden wave of heat engulfed him, a magnified exhalation, as though he had entered the exhaust vent of an immense furnace.