Fine Porcelain and Paper Plates

At my favorite cafe there is a shelf where people can leave unwanted books for others to pick up. A wooden case on the inside wall with four shelves, each to hold perhaps as many as twelve books,  two narrow ones for paperbacks, two wider ones for full size hardbacks, the shelf contents always changing with popular novels, non-fiction manifestos of years past, obscure economics treatises, no romances, thank you, this is a university town, but no Nabokov either. Last week I noticed an old paperback copy of Stendhal's The Red and the Black (it's still there), and one time I picked up a software instruction manual, which I immediately returned seeing that it referred to a computer program release a dozen years old.

Yesterday afternoon, weary of the intensity and relentless sameness of the novel I was reading there sipping my Earl Grey tea, sameness, understand,  not different from any sameness of any novel, long and short, that's just the nature of long books, and so, seeking a temporary change of mental images, I got up, walked up to the shelf, and picked up a hardback copy of what looked like a popular novel from the airport bookstore genre, its dust jacket giving away the category right off, with the name of the author in large, thick typeface at the bottom

Jonathan

Somebody

above it a cheesy picture of two silhouettes on a dim lit boulevard, and in much smaller letters the title in

Two Words

the famous author's reputation sells the book better than the title or anything.

I brought it back to my table and opened it at random on page 178, which by some cosmic coincidence just happened to be the same page number where I had stopped reading my top shelf literary novel, and I began to read.  The hero, named Darryl or Darrell,  I assumed the principal character of the novel, is thinking:  (recreated from memory)

I started out with a woman who loved cooking, prepared exquisite meals, served them with fine wines poured from crystal decanters, the food laid out elegantly on fine china, one hundred year old silverware, monogrammed napkins, candles and incense, she demanded that I wash my hands before siting down,  Haydn playing on the stereo, after dinner teas served in precious porcelain cups, sweet pastries, Italian liqueurs, the works.  

And how did I end up with a woman who hates the kitchen, uses paper plates and cups, yet somehow her sink is always full of dirty dishes, and when she does cook she burns the food because she goes to watch TV in the other room and forgets about it, then has to drive to town to get greasy take out, cheap no-brand beer, television still blasting in that other room, radio blabbering on in the kitchen, cats (three of them) meowing, neighbourhood dogs barking, next door neigbour revving up the engine of his Ford truck.