Little Shneed

The Boston Public Library moved all of their shelves around and rearranged everything sometime between February and now, which I found out when I dropped off a severely delinquent book this evening. The book is Bobos in Paradise and it was the book Chris was reading when he died. I initially brought it back to the library in January but found that I couldn't let it go. Instead, I told the librarian about Chris and asked if I could transfer it onto my library card and check it out. I wanted to know what was inside Chris’ head when he died. It occurred to me that I really never knew what types of books he enjoyed other than David Sedaris. I used to tease him about his choice of books. They were so book-wormy. Chris got excited about reading about JFK, zookeepers, people traveling across the country and so many various topics that I loved making fun of him for it. I checked out Bobos, began reading it (It's actually very entertaining.) but then began reading an onslaught of books on the afterlife and on grief. I never finished Bobos, but kept renewing it anyway because returning it felt like ripping out a piece of my soul and trying to give it away. I even considered keeping it to cherish forever, but my conscience got the best of me and I know Chris would not want me to ruin somebody else’s chances of reading a great book so today, I returned it and had to pay the maximum penalty, which was all of five dollars. When I expressed my surprise and delight, the librarian explained to me that if they just kept adding on penalties, nobody would ever return the books because nobody would ever pay that much for a book that they could just keep for free. Good point.

Afterwards, I began looking for the Dennis Lehane section, but couldn’t find it. After circling the floor, I realized the BPL had moved a bunch of shelves. I found myself in the “G” section and upon further investigation, found that the sections descended alphabetically back to the “A’s” but I couldn't’ find sections “H” and up.

I caught myself thinking “Maybe I’ll find an author that I like in the “C” section.” which caused me to chuckle. That’s exactly the kind of thinking Chris would have laughed about. Instead of finding the “L” section to find the book I wanted, I was ready to settle on some unknown author because I didn’t care enough to look for the section I wanted. He would have laughed and said, “Little Shneed.”, which was one of the most endearing things he ever said to me. God, I miss him.