This Day: On Infinite Repeat
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It’s not the perfect day; it’s just a day that feels like it. I have nothing to do and nowhere to be, my alarm isn’t set, and I wake up whenever—sometime around 08:00 AM. There are coffee and filters; life is good. I putter around the house, which is one of my favourite things. I think, at about 10:00 AM, to check phone messages and email and stuff like that. I received an invitation to a used book sale from a coworker. I’ve been in love with her for a while. She may feel the same way if the kiss in the lunchroom last week is any indication.
The used book shop is in a two-story Victorian home on the outskirts, so we have a bit of a drive to get there. The old guy who owns it looks like a collector’s edition. After I stuff a bag full of Anne Rice, Stephen King, Mary Higgins-Clark and a couple of Agatha Christies (which were a total score), we get food. It’s fancy food, gluten-free, vegan stuff that you eat because the girl you like is into it. I’m not complaining—it’s actually quite good. Still, there is zero chance I’d be in this narrow, albeit sun-filled eatery of my own accord.
After lunch, we take a walk. We get a little lost in the woods looking for an old car dump, but I don’t mind, nobody is out there, and it feels like we’re the only two people on the planet. I wonder if she feels me studying her, taking in every little detail, in case the planets realign themselves and she vanishes. I try to act casual. She takes many pictures: an old wringer washer, some broken bottles, metal fenders and all manner of decomposing automotive rubble. I haven’t been this enthralled since I was eleven years old.
We head back to her place and watch a few episodes of DS9, looking for the one where Weyoun’s eyeball is pointing sideways. But we forget what we’re looking for and make out on the couch for a while. It takes an hour to say goodnight because I don’t really want to go, but this is new to me, and I’m not ready to stay either.
It’s late by the time I get home; I pour myself a glass of wine from a bottle out of my budget (way out) that a client gave me a while back. I cut myself a thick slice of Balderson’s Cheddar that I did splurge for. I sit awhile writing about the day in my journal, savouring it all. When I’m done, I have a bath and crawl into bed with a ragged copy of Agatha Christie’s Nemesis—it smells of old bookshops, which is next door to heaven if you ask me. A lot like this day.
Marsha Masseau
Creativity has been Marsha’s driving force: in writing and life. That force guides her to the depths of self-reflection. Sometimes she gets lost down there and needs to write her way back to the light.
