Life in Unexpected Places, Page 3

contact with the eternal wisdom: Plato’s world of ideas! All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys!”

  My embarrassment was so apparent it was palpable, and it rose from me in increasingly stronger waves. My eyes never left the spectacle in front of me that was Henry, but I felt others staring at us. I feared I was on the verge of a panic attack.

  In contrast, Henry was unperturbed, and his calm swagger only added to my embarrassment. He was enjoying his fleeting notoriety with the library patrons and staff, soaking it in like a street performer in Montreal. Emboldened by this attention, he surprised me (and I assume everyone else watching) once more and jumped onto the table.

  “And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him!”

  “Henry, can you please get off the table and talk in an indoor voice? Or will the police be getting a call today?” A middle-aged librarian had materialized besides us, a stack of books held defensively against her chest. Her voice had barely risen above a whisper, yet it carried extreme authority with it, reminding me of a bone-tired mother addressing a consistently troublesome child, calm, but with an edge that expected obedience.

  That calmness and her matter-of-fact reaction to Henry’s impromptu play—coupled with the downright absurdity of the moment—drew a laugh from me. The situation, the reality I found myself in, felt surreal—akin to living in fiction—like watching actors act just for me. And laughing just felt like the right thing to do.

  It occurred to me that most of my life had seen me avoiding everyday situations that were considered completely mundane, completely innocuous, and completely “normal.” I accepted that was who I was. I slept comfortably in the bed I made, without complaint. Now I was in the middle of the most embarrassing—and the most comical—moment of my life. And instead of losing my breath to anxiety, I felt giddy. I didn’t want to stop laughing.

  And I wanted something I had never wanted before. I didn’t want the moment to end.

  Henry joined me in laughter, adding his booming laugh to my hesitant one. We sounded like two hyenas that had been inhaling laughing gas all day, much to the annoyance of the librarian. But before she could reprimand both of us, he cut her off, jumping off the table and landing in front of her.

  “My apologies, madam,” he said to her in a convincing Irish brogue. “I was merely teaching the young scholar a short lesson on literature, of how the spoken word is sometimes easier to understand than its written counterpart.”

  “I do not object to what you are trying to do, Henry Williams, only in the method you are doing it in.”

  “As the lady commands,” he said with no trace of sarcasm. She stood and stared at him, trying to discern if he was mocking her or just being Henry. They stared at each other, neither one breaking eye contact. Convinced the worst was over, she finally left us to our own devices, turning back once to threaten us with a glare.

  And just as sudden and as unexplainable as life can be at times, I no longer felt anxious about sharing a moment with someone, was no longer afraid to share my thoughts, was no longer worried about what I always worried about. I don’t know what did it, what magically clicked inside, but I was no longer afraid.

  With the departure of that long-held fear, a new feeling took hold.

  Determination. I was determined to actually live my life, not pass through it like a slowly fading ghost. Aware of it or not, Henry had pulled me through the ether, the luminal void between life and death, and breathed new life into my damaged soul.

  Henry was not what I had learned to expect from people. He was much more than the unfortunate man I had pegged him to be. He was a fortunate man, one who feared nothing others could do to him, having had the worst already done to him. Having nothing had given him everything, and I was envious of that.

  “Henry, I just want to thank you,” I said lightly, choking up.

  “You’re welcome—but for what?”

  “I wanted to thank you for coming over and forcing me into a conversation—though I was resistant at first.”

  “You don’t need to thank me for that,” he protested.

  “No, I do. You see, you were right about me. I never really engage with people—in conversation, debate, laughter, joy. I mostly leave them to themselves and go my own way. Needless to say, I don’t have many friends here. Well, truthfully … I don’t have any.”

  I stood up and offered him my hand. Without hesitation, he took it and vigorously returned the handshake.

  “I just want to thank you,” I continued, dropping my hand from his. “In the ten minutes I’ve known you, you’ve taught me something about myself. Something …” I paused, collecting myself. “Something it seems only you could have taught me.”

  “I don’t understand what I taught you.”

  “That life is too short to willfully remove myself from it. I had always come to expect the worst in people, expected them to disappoint, to betray, to selfishly pursue their own ends. You’ve proven to me that even expecting it, one still needs to be a part of it, regardless.”

  He scratched his head in bewilderment.

  “Instead of who I was this morning—someone afraid of people—I now feel determined to actually find out if I should be afraid of them. Living life afraid of it isn’t living. It’s dying slowly.”

  “Well … I’m flabbergasted. At a loss for words for the first time in a long time.”

  I smiled. I understood.

  It was the first time, I reflected, that I did not fear interacting with a person or fear the potential pain it could bring. It dawned on me—what mattered was the companionship Henry had freely offered—the camaraderie I had been missing because of my fear. It pained me to think of all the time I had already wasted in my life, but in the same breath, it gave me hope for all the time I had left.

  “Well … geez,” Henry said to break the silence. “I could start quoting Shakespeare. That ought to make you start fearing human interaction again!”

  We both shared a subdued laugh.

  ****

  Though our laughter eventually withered away into a comfortable silence that day, our camaraderie did not. We became steadfast friends and continued meeting at the public library every couple of days while I still was in college.

  The greatest lesson he had ever taught me was his first, the one he hadn’t intended on teaching me. No matter how much you struggle against it, life has an implacable will of its own. It can appear in unexpected places, and the wise ones jump in and see where it takes them.