Cover to Cover

“If all the books in the world were going to burn and you could save one of them – only one – which one would it be?”

“No! No, you can’t ask me that, it’s not fair.”

“You have to know, though. Imagine if it actually happened, you’d have to be prepared!”

“That’s ridiculous, Zack. It could never happen!”

“Okay, fine, it’s a completely fictitious situation. I still want to know which book you’d choose.”

“Why don’t you just ask me what my favorite book is? Why do you have to burn all the other books? It’s so sad…”

“Yeah, but it’s necessary. It has nothing to do with your favorite book. We pick our favorite books knowing we can read anything else and then turn back to those books we love for comfort and refreshment. The only book you can save has to be more than that…”

“I guess Jane Eyre doesn’t quite do the job, then…”

“I don’t think so.”

It is after love-making. They lie naked in the warm, wet patch of sheet, torsos exposed and cooling in the dark, hands intertwined between them, listening to each other’s whispers.

“I don’t know. It’s too hard. What would you pick?”

He hesitates, she imagines herself hearing the thought of his brain racing through titles and authors. The sound she pretends to hear is hypnotically pleasant, an energetic hum.

“I’m not sure. I think something like Ulysses would be a good choice.”

“That’s such an English Major response.” She says it in a softly mocking tone, he doesn’t take offense.

“Well, it needs to be a book you can read over and over again without getting tired. Like, you reach the end and then flip the pages back and start over…”

“Cover to cover, again and again…”

“You wouldn’t get sick of Ulysses for a while. It’s really long, and there’s a bunch of stuff you’d pick up on every time.”

“Would The Lord of the Rings count as one book, or three?”

“One, I guess. But The Lord of the Rings, really?”

“Yeah, I know. I’d probably get sick after a while… Then again, I could start Iearning Elvish!”

“True, that… There’s certainly an interactive aspect to Tolkien. Oh! What about the Bible?”

“I don’t know about the Bible… it would seem almost wrong to save it. Like, there wouldn’t be any chance of misinterpreting it if it didn’t exist.”

“Christianity would just…fall away.”

“A lot of things would fall away, Zack, if there was only one book left in the world.”

“I guess so… Homer?”

“The Iliad.”

“The Iliad it is, then.”

He yawns and stretches, inching closer to her side of the bed. She turns around and offers him her back. He pulls the covers back over them and nuzzles his face lightly in the nape of her neck. She falls asleep in his breathing.

There wasn’t anything special about this, really. It was just pillow talk. And yet neither of them had had such deep, elaborate, heartfelt pillow talk with anyone else. Amy could recall a string of lovers who brutishly rolled away and snored themselves into complacent post-coital slumber. Zack preferred not to remember the way his ex-girlfriend’s body creepily latched on to him in a sluggish embrace after he’d finally been allowed to pull out.

But together, it was different. The end of one love-making became the beginning of another, of an intellectual and emotional kind. They opened their minds and hearts, mingling their thoughts and cares, and talked each other to sleep late into the night.