Excerpt: All My Friends (tentative)

...I headed downstairs to the other story within my town home and make myself some liquid motivation. Some people have reasons to get out of bed in the morning, a wife waking them to kiss them on the cheek, kids wanting their dad to pour them cereal and watch cartoons, people going to work to make a difference in the lives of others. Mine was the smell of coffee. Coffee got me going in the morning, It made the day seem lively, and enjoyable. My eyes awoke every morning to hear the automatic coffee maker, which I nicknamed Midas, come to life and drip its golden liquid into the pot below. Nothing would get me going, and be able to get through the workday like my coffee. The smell would lift me from my bed and have my toes twinkling in the air to get to it as fast as possible. My ‘Ode to Coffee’ would be sung every morning, as the black liquid would hit the bottom of my mug, to the theme song from “The Beverly Hillbillies.” I was never able to face a day or deal with people without it.

...The door is always left unlocked, it was well known that you were not just supposed to enter the house without knocking, but you did not have to be answered to enter, it was just meant to give some warning that you would be coming in. The interior of the house was even more absurd than the outside. The house consisted of four open rooms downstairs, each divided with a large doorframe so you could see into each room without leaving the one you were in. You enter into the living room, and behind that in the back of the house was the dining room. To the left of the dining room was a kitchen, and in front of the kitchen, to the left of the living room, was a little study. The house smelled strongly of pipe tobacco, and had very little light coming from the windows. The beams of light streaming in were visible from the lingering smoke and dust within the room. The first thing you see upon entering is the thousands upon thousands of books leaning on bookshelves, piled up on top of each other, sitting in mounds on the floor, even a couple on top of a ceiling fan in the middle of the living room. In every room there were books wherever you looked, with a few pieces of furniture sparsely placed about. There was a couch and desk in the living room, a chair in the middle of the study, a table and chairs in the dining room, all containing large stacks of dusty hardbound books, except the chair in the study, which contained a man. “Hi Dodge.” I said.
Lewis Robert Dodgeson, or Dodge for short, was a friend of Jeremy and I, from our days in college, when we went abroad to England for a semester to study at Cambridge. He was a student there, and when we found out he was already living in the city we were ecstatic. Lewis was one of the most intelligent people we knew. He was an intellectual through and through, and as far as we knew, could tell you anything you ever wanted to know about anything. He was an English Professor by trade, and a Novelist by skill and by the time he was twenty-seven had published two novels, which were very well received by the literary elite, and ignored by the public. He wore a tweed suit and was smoking a curved tobacco pipe. He sat there currently reading a large red hardbound book by the light from a small lamp on the table beside him. He was known for his knowledge and love of books, and would constantly be reading. He would leave books everywhere, and read them in no particular order. Wherever he would sit down, he would pick up the book he had been reading last time he sat there and continue reading it until he moved from that spot. He was reading Tolstoy in the study, Dickens in the living room, Homer in the dining room, Amy Sedaris in the kitchen, and Hemmingway on the front porch. Of course that is just one of the books he read in each spot, as he had a stack that he was going through at every location. He would even leave books at different locations he frequented around the city. I know that there were a few left at my house, and a couple at Tunnicliffs, I even found one in the bathroom of the bar one night. It was strategically placed so no one could take it among the extra bathroom supplies.

...He opened his refrigerator to grab some chilled water, and I saw a few books scattered among the cheese and vegetables. I asked him,
“How would you catch up on your reading if the light in the fridge went out?
“It doesn’t matter too much, it is only a light snack.” He joked