Librarian Louisa Greene has lived a quiet life among the muted bookstacks of her working days. Now she is retired she wonders what her legacy might be and what to do with all the thoughts she never spoke into her quiet world. In this gently satirical flash fiction novella, the character LG, a single childless woman of a certain age, finds the courage to share with you the reader, all the things she thought, but never dared say. She hopes it might encourage you to do the same.
3.
Since retirement Louisa Greene has realised she is a bit short on friends. Those she had in days gone by seem to have drifted off or only popped up once in a blue moon. And work friends, she now understands, were just that. She was relieved there was no overlap into their personal lives, no exchange of addresses and promises to catch up for coffee as she walked out the door on her last day. Not that she didn’t like her work mates or get on well with them, it’s just that she didn’t want to mix things up and now she was moving on to a new stage of life, she wanted a clean slate.
Louisa Greene has made an effort to get some new friends by joining a local choir, the Teacup Tinklers, a cheery bunch of ladies and gents who in a bid to attract attention in the highly competitive community singing scene, wear colourful tea cosies on their heads as they open their mouths wide in song. Hermoine Harris of the TTs has made several overtures to LG, always standing beside her, offering to share her music when LG forgets to bring her own, telling her how much she wants to be her friend. Just back off LG wants to say. Get out of my face. But of course, instead she just smiles, nods and carries on singing.
But her most interesting new friend by far is Frank, a gentleman close to her own age (perhaps even a little younger) who loves to read and paint. Since bumping into each other in a local second hand bookshop cafe, they have been conducting a most intense and satisfying friendship.
Clever with words, with a touch of an ageing Peter O’Toole crossed with a craggy, skinny, Samuel Beckett, how could LG not be intrigued?
Frank was going on to the girl behind the counter about what a crime it was that all his favorite libraries were throwing out their books — when I walk in there now all I see are empty shelves, empty shelves! What’s next? Supermarkets without food? Mothers without babies?
That’s why I took early redundancy, said Louisa Greene, shyly fiddling with the magazines near the till as she turned her determined gaze on him. She had his attention, and in that moment Frank knew he had found an ally.
They immediately struck up a non-stop conversation, about books of course, which moved from the counter to the cafe to the street and when it was time to say goodbye they exchanged phone numbers.
Turns out Frank lives in a small apartment a few streets away, which like Louisa’s is filled with books. Frank said he didn’t know he how came to have had so many, hadn’t he just done a cull and sent half of them off to the Cat Protection Society Op Shop? Louisa didn’t doubt his claim but suspected he was also buying them back at the rate of one a day, discovering them anew, forgetting he ever owned them in the first place.
The trouble with Frank, Louisa Greene realised as she got to to know him a little better is
he’s a floozy
He doesn’t just flirt with every being he meets, including your cat, your dog and your budgie, he does it in such a charming and disarming manner he has every single one of them eating out of his hand.
When Louisa realised Frank was a serial collector of intimate friendships, (keeping some on the back burner just in case he found himself one day without) she didn’t respond as she imagined. After all, this was a familar pattern for her. In any close relationship she’d ever had, there were always others lurking. So much so, she suspected that in a past life she must have been one of six mormon wives, or part of a sultan’s harem.
So she didn’t go off in a huff when she realised she would have to share Frank with his other ‘lady friends’ even after working out that if he was revealing all the other ladies’ secrets to her, he was surely divulging hers to them. And that the circle of intimacy included not just the two of them, but all the others he collected along the way.
The thing is, Louisa Greene didn’t care. Their conversations were already so thrilling it just added an extra dose of reckless abandon. Like the danger of having sex with out a condom and imploring your lover not to withdraw because you are so close to coming you are willing to risk all the consquences that will follow. (Even though a distant memory, Louisa Greene recalls such moments as if they happened yesterday).
For no pleasure is as exquisite as the joy of being heard, and Frank as well as being an excellent conversationalist was a good listener. Not only did he listen, but his intelligent and witty comments offered without judgement or mansplaining, displayed a sensitivity that she had in the past only attributed to her best female friends.
Nothing was taboo, as their delicious banter ranged across all topics: books, authors, poets, art, artists, creativity, music, movies, love, fear, shame, trauma, childhood, depression, food, health, religion, life, death….
that is nothing
except sex.
In some kind of unspoken agreement Louisa and Frank knew that neither of them wanted to go there. And while stripping yourself bare in conversation could be construed as a type of sex, Louisa was relieved to find there is indeed a term to describe it: sapiosexual.
'For people who are sapiosexual, the way another person thinks is a highly appealing quality. It is the intellect that stimulates sexual attraction. If you are sapiosexual you prefer deep conversations, value an intelligent mind over a hot bod and your ideal first date is a cosy bookstore or the library.*
Oh phew, that’s good, LG sighed. Isn’t it great that there is a term for everything these days!
But there was one question that still troubled her…
If the telling of secrets equals intimacy
what about the retelling?
And when told again,
to whom, does the secret belong?
© Jan Cornall 2024
* https://www.verywellmind.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-sapiosexual-5190425
Comments welcome!!
Awwww, I felt so many feelings with your incredible story as I also have a Frank in my life. Mine is unfortunately long distance now, but still there for each other. Thank you for sharing this.
Enjoying the reveals into Louisa’s journey. Great visual of the tea cosy singers 😁 Best wishes as you travel to Japan on yours ❤️