The Little Black Book

“What’s this?”

He angles his head so that he can look at her sideways through the slits of his eyes. She tries to keep her face passive and unassuming because if he detects even the slightest bit of mischief, he may decide to keep the truth of this little secret rather than share it. His eyes shine as he suddenly grins and blushes in equal measure, and she feels a delicious warmth as her interest soars all the higher for his reaction. She smiles and holds the precious object out for his scrutiny. Slowly, he nods to himself, and a shock of chocolate hair escapes from its combed cage to mingle with an eyebrow. She finds herself unwilling to resist brushing it from his face, and he leans into the caress. He takes her hand in his and blows warm air on her palm and gifts her with a lopsided grin.

“It’s a little black book.”

She scoffs at him in overdramatic disgust, declares he is criminal, and shouts that she is completely capable of knowing a ‘little black book’ when she sees one. What she does not say is that she wants to know what sublime secrets it holds: what names are held within its pages, and what stories had he shared with their owners?

While clearly avoiding the questions she hadn’t spoken aloud – the only questions that really mattered, he replies only to her spoken words in his teasing way that is designed to come across direly serious. He tells her that if she knew that the object in question was a book, why did she ask what it was?

Instead of giving him the satisfaction of rising to the bait, she snorts in his general direction, and plops herself on the curb of the sidewalk and crosses her legs. She has learned to do this without conscious thought in the narrow streets of Milan. There are many mopeds here, and she’s grown fond of her feet and would like to keep them as they are. She turns the book over in her hands and inspects the detail of the cover. It’s aged and cracked though un-torn, and there are drawings and phrases haphazardly written, filling every space. She runs her fingers along the edges, letting her skin become familiar with something that has obviously traveled and has secreted away the innermost thoughts and impressions of its owner, who has taken a seat beside her, who is watching her intently. She imagines the contents of this book to be a mirror of him - strangely at ease with the world, a cross of pristine and disheveled carelessness jumbled together in a simple and direct way, but hiding away such magnificent things.

The crinkly papers within the book have stories of their own; some are yellowed, some stick together, some have folded corners and tears. They are thick, like the weight of the memories they hold bids them so, and the pages turn one by one instead of flipping easily. Pieces of paper not belonging to the book itself stick out from the edges, on which she imagines things written in rushed inspiration, or perhaps scribbled on a napkin while at a café or on a train, all to be added later to the collection between the covers. It’s so like him to place these treasures randomly in the book seemingly without care. They can still be found when looked for, but in no sensible order.

Just to touch these things is like experiencing what it might be like to be him. To read these things, to glimpse a part of his soul; the things he finds witty or amusing, profound or simple truth, the things that shapes his mind and his feelings, all of which could influence and shape any reader trespassing its pages. She, the thief who had stolen his thoughts, would be changed because she would know what it is like to be him. She would see as he does. She would scrutinize as he does. She would love as he does.

She flipped the pages to the beginning and touched the ink of the first word on the first line. She expected it to be raised, like its wish was to reach out to her fingertips as they caressed the bends and scratchy loops that is his handwriting. She only feels the soft page, and the texture of the fibers.

She read the word, “I.” Somehow, that single word is perfect, and she smiles. The single letter which makes up an entire concept in a tiny one-letter word is a representation of him as a whole person, a crown that has been his name as he speaks. It has known his lips and before those lips, the mind inside a head with dark, wispy hair, tanned brow, and chilly eyes. It knows all he has seen, and it compels her to reach further. To learn more of what he has known.

She read the next word, and the next, and realize that as she is reading, he opens his arm and invites her to lean against him. He knows already what is written, so he sits content to hold her. He puts his chin on her head and feels her impressions through her body: her breathing, her sounds, the way she turns each page. He smells her hair, and she can feel him smile against her temple.

It surprises her when she hears the low, soft rumble of his voice, speaking the very words she’s reading softly into her ear. It makes the words on the page leap into a three-dimensional world, and the sensation thrills her. His voice and his words in her head, coming alive. His voice. His words. As he reads aloud, she follows along.

Excerpts about being a rolling stone, drifting from place to place and resisting roots. Pages about crazy stunts he’d pulled off, things that he was surprised to have survived. Lines about making his bed under a sea of stars in rain or snow, refusing to settle down or be caged by a nine to five job. Paragraphs about preferring winding roads and the things he knew and could see with his own eyes rather than stacking up regrets and tearful goodbyes. Though he had chosen that life, she could still feel loneliness and a desire for home saturating the pages. It broke her heart, so she distracted herself by concentrating on a discovery: She didn’t know he wrote lyrics, but on this page, the words are coupled with the language of music and notes of a song.

She saw him looking at a guitar a in the store window a few hours ago and suddenly, desperately needs to go back and barter for ownership of it. She has a jade necklace from her god mother the Italians seem to like, which may just be enough for the 6-string instrument. She will bring it to him; lay it down next to his feet when he is looking away so that when he turns to see it, it will be lying there as if it had always been there, where it belongs. Then he will play and she will put out her multicolored hat he thinks is ridiculous but loves because she does, and make a few extra Lire. He will sing and play, and she will dance in the streets.

She smiles and looks up at him to see if he has figured out what she’s thinking, as he has a way of doing. His eyes are closed. Has he been reciting lyrics to her from memory? Yes, she supposes so. She blows gently on his face to catch his attention and kisses his nose after he opened his eyes to gaze down at her. He grins that lopsided smirk of his and cocks his head towards the book on her lap. Curious, she looks at the page. At first, she doesn’t understand, but the arm that held her snakes around her back, then through the space between her side and arm, and his fingers lightly touch a small section of the page she had assumed was random, unrelated to the song, and therefore inspired little attention. Scribbled in the margin in rough, deliberate strokes that appear to have been overwritten several times over time in various colors of ink are the words, “Wherever I go, she is my home.”

He always said that tears exist only to live a sudden and short life, whose purpose is to die, and in their death, extinguish the pain that was the reason for the tear. And so her tear is added to his collection of thoughts and words. The stain is a testament to the tear, and a rejection to his theory of a tear’s death. This one will live forever outside of pain, right beside the words that caused it to live.

A second tear fell from her cheek and splat near the stain of the first. Briefly, she recalled his theory and almost believed it, but something warm and loving refused to let her cave in. It had been many years since that day – the day that had started a whole new life. A studio producer had seen their little street performance and offered them a $20,000 contract then and there for that song alone. Many years later, a lifetime and worlds away, money, affluence, influence, fame….

She closed the little black book, and with it, decades of memories. Placing the book in his hands, she smiled wistfully. She’d join him soon enough in whatever afterlife he had chosen, and when that finally happens, she fully expects him to peer at her with mock outrage that she had kept him waiting, and that he had so many more songs to play for her on the first guitar she’d bartered for him, and all written down in that beloved little black book.