One Page #44

We were sitting in her living room and she was reading me paragraphs from her latest book. I was across the room from her on the couch watching her as she stood by the window overlooking the busy street. The streetlamps shone on her face, but I could only see the curve of her jaw since she was mostly turned toward the window. Her reflection mimicked her face as she read, animated and involved. I spent more time watching her face than listening to her words, and I knew I would pay for that mistake soon enough. She was nearing the end of the first chapter and I knew she would turn around at look at me, her eyes questioning what I thought. I would have little to say but could have told her in detail how her expressions changed as she read. It wasn’t her story that prevented me from hearing her words. I could say that it was mostly because I am a visual reader and need the page in front of me, my eyes reading the lines, to actually absorb the content. But this wasn’t entirely true. Mostly, I was captivated. I couldn’t stop looking at her face, and I was distracted by the curve of her lips that undulated as she spoke and I thought of wild horses racing off through fields of wheat. I watched her hair bob gently back and forth as she moved her head around in emphasis of the words, and I thought of trees bending in the breeze. Not just any trees, but trees that were embedded deep in the forest where few human feet passed by and songbirds chirped in a rowdy chorus. I watched her nostrils flare when the one evil character entered and significantly bowed and tipped his top hat, and I thought of wild turkeys screaming at their enemies with open jaws and snapping teeth. Her face created a story that I could watch, like a film, whereas her written story, however intriguing, were words that whispered into my ears and then blew back out in a swirl of dust and feathers. There was a pause, and I saw her face grow still in her reflection. The streetlamps twinkled in her eyes that swam with the effort of reading aloud, something she didn’t normally enjoy but made her anxious and her breath come quickly. She turned. She looked at me with questioning eyes. I smiled back at her and clapped my hands with vigor, a grin spreading wider on my face. She blushed, and grinned back at me. But I was applauding not for her story, which I am sure was articulate and engaging, but for the transformations that changed her face with every second, with every word that she spoke. I clapped for the blowing wheat and the whispering trees and the screaming turkeys and her breath the fogged the window with steam that made me hot. She bowed and promised to read the next chapter tomorrow.