Michael's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

The kitchen smelled like black tea and old paper. Haydon set a white cup in front of Michael and sat across the small table with her own. She did not offer sugar. She opened the book to a page she had already marked and waited. "I told you I didn't read it," Michael said. "You did. So talk about why." He wrapped his hands around the cup. "I saw the title and thought it looked hard. I put it back on the seat and drove here anyway." "That's honest." She turned the book so he could see the cover. "Read the first paragraph out loud." He read it. The sentences were long. He stumbled twice. She didn't correct him. When he finished she asked what he thought the narrator wanted. He guessed. She pushed back. He guessed again, closer. Her mouth moved a quarter inch at the corner. Not a smile. Something before one. She refilled his cup without asking. He noticed and did not point it out. An hour went by. Then another. The tea went cold twice. Michael watched the clock over her stove tick past ten and knew he was running out of room. He had the second cup. He had her attention. He had nothing that would carry past the front porch. He tried the obvious thing first. "Same time next Thursday? With the actual group?" "My cousin runs that," Haydon said. "That's her table, not mine." He felt the door closing. He looked at the book between them and thought about the bar he used to sit in on Fridays, the stools worn smooth, the same three faces. He didn't want a stool. He wanted this table. "I'm going to read it," he said. "The whole book. By next week." "Good for you." "I want you to quiz me on it." She set her cup down. "Quiz you." "You pick the place. I'll show up. If I actually read it, you stay. If I faked it, you leave and I pay for whatever you ordered." She studied him the way she had on the porch. Longer this time. He kept his hands flat on the table so they wouldn't move. "There's a bar near my apartment," she said. "Wooden counter, lanterns out front. I go there to read on Wednesdays because nobody talks to me." "That sounds like a warning." "It is one." She wrote something on the inside cover of the book and tore the corner off. She slid the paper across. An address. A time. Wednesday, seven. "Bring the book. If you don't finish it, don't come." He folded the paper twice and put it in his pocket. She walked him to the green door and shut it behind him without a goodbye. In the car he sat with the paper flat on his knee. He had six days and roughly four hundred pages. He drove to a store still open and bought the book.