– I feel the fuzz of the carpeting against my cheek, along with a kind of numbness which somehow makes the individual threads of the material more present. The light from the upstairs floods down toward me, the way water runs down shingles in a storm. The first blur I make out, upon gaining consciousness, is completely subdued by the kind of shapeless cognizance the light’s flood brings. Everything is shapeless, yet colorful. As I rise to my feet, I feel a different form of lightness. Not the kind of lightness that leaves you without breath and panicking for explanation, for a way of coping, or trying to hold onto the crumbling pieces of an unrealized vision. Rather, the kind of lightness that allows you to breath deeply and enjoy the act of breathing itself. The same lightness which allows rest, having descended from the heavens and through the rafters, to possess you. A smile forms. I instinctively fight it, but it does not relent. I reassess my assessment of the origami book. I think about the shadows and ascend against the flood of light. Suddenly, just as the amorphous colors begin to take on shape, my eyes become assaulted by the falling of shadows.
“Dear guests of The Signified, it is now ten minutes until we must close our doors,” pours out of the speakers, as my eyes adjust. “We ask you kindly make your way to a register with the books you hope to travel with.”
I push against the falling shadows. They are always heavier than the light. My eyes come into focus and I see that the upstairs has emptied. I stand there. The only movement is mine, and the shadows, as they fill in all the spaces the light previously occupied. I make my way to the table. A stack of books still rests there. I am somewhat disappointed. They are just books. They lie there in the dark. No reverse shadow around them or in them, as I flip the pages. But I still feel that lightness. Some of it, as it seems the weight of the falling shadows has weighed down even that. I nod to myself, there in the darkness and decide it may be well worth it. I walk through the clusters of folding chairs, as I make my way back to the stairs. I pause for a minute and notice that there is still a light. Dimmed but there. On the chair from which a patch of shadow was stolen by Mr. Sha Tou. I reach out to it. I feel lighter, but it quickly fills. I smile.
Light in the upstairs fades completely. I descend. The book in my hand. I stand at the counter. There is a woman on the other side of it. An employee of the store. Different from the petite woman who, earlier, introduced the origami master. She is younger. She is taller. There’s a warmth to her. Or, I want it to be there. She smiles. I imagine it is there. I place the book down on the counter and take in a deep breath. There’s the cold stale scent of pages pressed and sealed, of the wood polish of shelves, of votive candles waiting to be lit, and mixed in these the scent of blended floral eau du. I watch as she scans the barcode and places the book in a paper bag. She looks up at me. I smile. Her face breaks and her lips are repositioned into a smile. And she let’s a out a bit of a giggle, or I imagine that too. We stand there in the silence of the store, the shadows flooding most spaces. We stand there so long I wonder if sound still exists. Then her smile crumbles.
I drive and in the whoosh of cutting through time and space, I wonder if it is the sound of shadows in the wind. If, in fact, the fact that there is sound at all in the invisible is simply a fact of the presence of the visible. I listen closely and stare out through the windshield, intently searching for signs. There is darkness and a slight glistening of the sleeked surfaces of the city. The remnants of a night of the clouds disintegrating. These scattered and sparse lost rays of light displace the shadows momentarily. I catch the patches of light as they scatter underneath light posts and neon signs. I wonder if Mr. Tou has already been here. My eyes fall away from their strain against the plated glass before me. The whoosh sweeps in through the cracking vents and fills the cabin with a cold that causes me to shiver. The cabin feels a little darker. I close my eyes and nothing remains but darkness.