Lit in Progress

Lenore saw her come in, lowering her head as she walked around a young couple laughing at a cover on the Bestseller’s table. The woman glanced over the titles on the other side of the table. She pulled her woven green handbag to the other side and vanished into the stacks.

Lenore smiled at the man across the counter, took his books, took his money. Gave him back the books. As he walked away, she placed her hand against the side of her abdomen absentmindedly and felt the baby press against it. She leaned back against the shelf behind her and sighed.

Lenore noticed her, the unfamiliar woman, again, picking up a book that had fallen in the Classics section, her long hair falling over her shoulder. A few minutes later, she was next in line.

Lenore smiled at her. “Is this all you’d like today?” She asked kindly. The woman nodded. As Lenore scanned the barcode, she glanced at the title. Madame Bovary. “Mm, Flaubert. Have you read it before?”

“No,” the woman said, shaking her head. “It’s for my sister, Flo. She likes to read and is going to France this November.”

“I’m sure she’ll enjoy it,” Lenore said. “Where at in France?”

“I’m not sure. Um. Not Paris. Somewhere in the south. She’s been there before.”


Lenore wished the lady a nice evening and watched her leave, the plastic bag crinkling in her hand.

The woman was back the next week, then three weeks after that; Lenore saw her come in, looking windblown. She watched the woman, her name was Marienne, take a book off the Science Fiction shelf. Leaf through it with a studious expression. Move on to another section.

She smiled at over the counter, handed across another volume. “How are you today, Marienne?” Lenore asked. “Fine. Well, pretty good,” she said, and smiled.

They met for coffee after Lenore got off that evening.

Lenore sat three rows from the back, resting her elbows on the pew before her. The pale wood felt smooth and cool on her skin. The music played, rose, swirled around the ceiling, fell back to the congregation in waves and bubbles. Some were standing, she could see in front of her, below her. Some were sitting like her, patting the pew back with their hands, their arms draped around an imaginary seatmate.

The praise team looked, she thought, like wooden dolls in a music box, turning very slightly back and forth with the rhythm of the song. She’d been in churches with riotous dancing, and also in churches were even smiling was discouraged. She breathed in, holding on to the smell of the clean, well-lighted sanctuary, where it was understood how much to clap, how loud to sing, whether or not to tap one’s foot. She exhaled.

Marienne sat beside her, still and folded. She let the sound, the incandescent glow of sameness surround her. She watched as the pastor, a youngish-older man, with bland features and a blue tie, walk up the steps beside the alter and turn on his lapel mic.

“Doesn’t it feel good to be in the house of the Lord this morning?”

Lenore sighed deeply, her hand on the chair’s worn arm. Her eyes felt dry and sticky. What had she been dreaming of?

Her feet were longer, with fewer toes and no toenails. She walked on all fours to the side of the mound, then dove into a thick, smooth liquid like melted chocolate. Down, down she went, as the walls of the chasm her weight created rose around her. Though immersed in the flow, could smell it and feel its heat, the fluid remained apart from her body. She stretched her fingers towards the wall of thick, dark whatsit. The membrane, pearlescent, insubstantial, stretched almost to breaking but held. The opening above her, or below or beside her, drew slowly closed like a drawstring purse. She was suspended within; the last rays of light narrowed, spun, and were gone.