Well Said: Muse lost, muse found

Writer David Rothman on the lengths we take to secure a muse, in this case, a pristine copy of Paul Bailey’s latest novel, Uncle Rudolph:

The express train gone, I turned back to my left to see if a local was coming. As I turned, I lost control of the book and it slid out of my hands and down onto the tracks. Yet when I looked down Uncle Rudolph was gone. Had the book fallen through to the busy intersection below? Had it somehow defied gravity and not fallen when I dropped it? Then I saw its profile, its spine facing upward. The novel had gotten stuck between the platform wall and the tracks. Uncle Rudolph was literally hanging on a thin metal bar, inches from the train tracks. My first thought was to climb down and get it, but the tracks were perhaps fifteen feet down from the platform and it would be quite risky to expose myself like that. I saw a number of people pointing at the hanging novel. A moment later a 7 train rolled by and I held my breath. I was not worried about paying the lost book library fine. I simply couldn’t imagine waiting weeks to find out what happened to Uncle Rudolph and his nephew in London. The train roared by and the novel shook a bit, but didn’t budge. Three more trains passed right in front of my eyes and the book stayed put.

I ran down to tell the station attendant, who nodded and said that “special teams” would meet me on the platform within a half an hour. Who were these people in “special teams,” I wondered. I stood again at the platform, guarding the novel with my stare, as each train came and went, dropping off and picking up anxious passengers. Twenty minutes later, there they were: the special teams unit, three guys in white uniforms running off the train holding long poles with nets. They looked like members of a lacrosse team. “Where is the object?” a man with a French accent said.

I pointed, he swept Uncle Rudolph up, handed me the book and had me sign a document. Then my three heroes in white suits waved good-bye and hopped onto the next train.

Read the rest in Glimmer Train‘s Bulletin 36.

26. January 2010 by Mindy
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