A Whale of a Problem

Mark is cheating on us. He delivers the news matter-of-factly, almost under his breath, to fill an already awkward pause in conversation. None of us made it through The Book of the New Sun, but he met someone who is actually interested in stories about torturers, and now they meet to discuss every Sunday. The rendez-vous are quick and on topic.¹ There isn’t anything else going on, just sometimes it feels good to discuss a book with someone who actually read it.

It’s not surprising Mark would get his needs met elsewhere. I’ve been a semi-attentive participant in our conversations at best, too absorbed in my own thoughts to focus on plot. Angela wasn’t fond of Wolfe’s violence and dislikes prose with too much emotion besides. John meant to get to it but then his firm went to litigation.

The rate at which Mark reads never ceases to amaze me. He actually finished Infinite Jest. He made it through Ulysses. To make up for my boredom with genre, I’d sworn I would attentively read Moby Dick.

I didn’t read Moby Dick.

What I lack in accountability, I try to make up for in food and hospitality.  On the menu: Alison Roman’s caramelized shallot pasta, sheet pan ratatouille with goat cheese and olives, crackers and leafy green salad. I cleaned my parents’ rural home from top to bottom and replaced Dad’s piles of tangled wires and experimental gadgets with string lights atop wooden beams.

Mark et co. pull into the circular driveway out front.

“I didn’t read,” I admit. “But I did make the beds.”

“That’s OK,” Mark says. “I’d rather have clean sheets than your thoughts on Melville.”

I know what he means, but suddenly I feel taken aback. Does he not yearn to know how my brain cells fired — or would have fired — had they corralled themselves into focus? Emily pulls up a recipe for pineapple-ginger cocktails and puts Mark to work measuring mezcal. When everyone’s had a few glasses, we give up on whales and step outside to gaze at the stars. The crumbling driveway pavement makes for a makeshift pillow; we look up while lying down. My mind drifts to the white-tailed deer who graze in the yard adjacent and I wonder how concerned we should be about tics.

This book club is going on five years now. Almost long enough for me to call everyone in it a friend. Once, at the height of COVID, Mark suggested we all meet up outside the context of club. That we might go for a walk, or play socially-distanced croquet. Again came an awkward silence.

I don’t want to meet up if we’re not discussing a book, but I don’t want to read the book either.

It’s complicated, but we’re figuring it out.

1. I fell down a rabbit hole Googling the English-language plural of “rendez-vous” here. Wikipedia tells me that “rarely, the form rendezvouses is encountered.” Like hippopotamuseses.