315

Chuck

Chuck flips the switch that puts his Kindle to sleep, then the one that shuts off the blue-white diode of his reading lamp, which he wears on his head. It is a headlight in the literal sense, complete with an adjustable elastic band, and much more convenient and effective than any clip-on reading lamp he’s ever owned. He removes that and sets it and the Kindle on the nightstand and checks that the alarm’s turned on on his digital alarm clock.

The room’s dark now, and the ceiling fan’s gently thrumming. But even under conditions so conducive, Chuck’s mind, as usual, won’t allow nodding off. It starts working, as usual, on something, and the something in this case is how wonderful is the book he’s reading—a novel from 1915 called The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford—and how much lonelier the fact of that makes him feel.

Chuck always feels lonely. But being unable to share with anyone the sumptuous perfection of Ford’s prose or the novel’s masterfully woven story-line or the powerful insights and delightful wit the book contains aggravates his isolation to the throbbing point. Chuck simply does not know anyone who would give a rat’s ass about The Good Soldier or about Ford Madox Ford.

Or about Chuck himself, come to think of it. Which Chuck does, of course, come to think of.

Why am I here? he winds up wondering, inevitably. It is his inevitable meta-theme. He means nothing to everyone, something to no one, increasingly less to himself. He thinks about all the photo albums his image must be in—an anonymous background element in thousands of keepsake snapshots snapped by untold strangers at parks, fairs, zoos, monuments, historic and scenic points of interest, and by marginal acquaintances at social gatherings whose fringes he routinely helps populate.

“Background fodder,” Chuck mumbles, rolling onto his side. “My raison d’être.”

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