Guy Verbose - The Big Disappearance

It's a dark night in a suburb without streetlights. But on the first floor of a split-level home in the heart of Ravens Way, one man is trying to figure out why he is the way he is and committing what he finds to paper: Guy Verbose, introverted private eye.

 

The Big Disappearance

Cousin ... to borrowing is theft, or rather a sister, and continual companion, an assistant and a principal agent in procuring this mischief as well they know who have custody of public libraries, and who have for this reason to exercise so great a care of their charges, for, as lsaac D’Israeli observes, great collections of books are subject to other accidents besides damp, worms and rats, namely, borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners. 

— "The Book Thief" from The Book about Books: The Anatomy of Bibliomania  

 

Monday, June 8. It was well into the afternoon and hot in Ravens Way. I was supposed to be working, but as usual, I was interested in doing anything other than the job they pay me for. Typically, at such points in the afternoon, I try to steal a little time away from my desk by getting up to make coffee, but on this afternoon, I was replaying the events of a dream I had the night before. 

The dream involved a tarantula my brother owned*, and according to the nocturnal vision, I had traveled to his home in Buffalo to watch the creature for the weekend. As the dream went, the spider seemed to like me, for it took to sitting on top of my head. I had apparently gotten a kick out of this, and I spent much of the dream trying to FaceTime (that's a verb now) my brother to show him what the tarantula was doing.

That's all I remember from the dream, but it was enough for me to want to know more, so I turned to my collection of dream dictionaries and a few symbol dictionaries to find out what dreaming of a spider might mean.

That's when I noticed it was gone: Theresa Cheung's Dream Dictionary from A to Z, the best of dream dictionaries in my possession. While the others treat the symbology of dreams like bothersome gnats that can be disposed of with a quick flick of an answer, Cheung takes her subject seriously. She provides more nuanced answers based on other elements of the vision, such as the dreamer's attitude toward or reaction to the object, or the dream's atmospheric elements. This, of course, is a long way of saying Cheung takes the time to get it right, and her efforts, naturally, are what make her dream dictionary the best.

Yet, as already mentioned, when I reached for the volume in its usual spot on the short shelf by the wall, it wasn't there. No problem, I thought. ("Stay calm, old boy!") I recalled that, some weeks prior, I moved the dream dictionaries to a new location on top of the shelving unit to make room for a speaker. Surely, it must be there. I glanced up to the top of the shelf. Five dictionaries stood at attention, but none was the book I wanted.

I returned my gaze to the old spot. Perhaps the book had fallen behind the others, I wondered. It hadn't. Maybe I relocated it to another shelf? I didn't. Perhaps I found some room for it on one of the other shelves? I hadn't. Maybe I did move it to the top of the shelving unit with the other books, and it fell? Nope, it didn't. Perhaps it fell between the shelf and the wall? (Now I was grasping at straws.) It hadn't. 

Perplexed, I began to think of other reasons the book might be missing, each one darker and more sinister than the last. Had I loaned the book to someone? Unlikely, I don't loan my books, especially my dictionaries, out anymore since the Joseph Campbell incident of 2012. (Besides, no one had asked to borrow a dream dictionary, anyway.) Did my brother take it the last time he was here? Doubtful. He hasn't been at the house in a while, and even if he had been, he knows how I feel about my books. He surely would have asked. Did my daughter take it to use for a school project and "forget" to bring it back? Probably not, but I looked in her room anyway. It wasn't there, which wasn't a surprise given that she's more apt to search for something online than look for it in a book. Did one of the dog sitters "borrow" it the last time we had someone watch the dogs? This, too, was unlikely. There has never been any evidence of these people being in my library, and not one has ever expressed interest in my books, unless it was to remark, "Man, you have a lot of books." Did my nemesis take it? My nemesis being a friend of my wife's who's just the kind of person who would grab something off one of our shelves with "every intention" of returning it as soon as she could (i.e., the next time she found herself at our home). Yet, as capable as this individual is of such behavior, I knew this explanation was doubtful as well. 

For the record, I was aware that, as the reasons for the book's disappearance became darker and more sinister, they became less plausible. This awareness surprised me. In the past, when my reasons for something happening (or not happening) leaned toward the paranoid, I usually doubled down, throwing theories and accusations around like confetti until the evidence supporting a more rational and/or realistic theory became irrefutable. But not today. Today, let the record show that I stepped back from the edge and thought it through. "The book must be here," I said to myself. "I simply must not be seeing it."

And I wasn't. Returning my attention to the cluster of dream dictionaries on top of the shelf, I pulled out my desk chair and stood on it to survey the scene at eye level. That was when I saw it. The book, about a foot or so away from the others, had fallen behind some knickknacks, where it was somehow camouflaged in the clutter. Once discovered, I brought the book to my chest and let go a sigh of relief. Peace was restored, and no wild accusations or pointed fingers had to be retracted. It was the best of all possible outcomes.

Unfortunately, the book didn't have anything useful to say about the spider in my dream.  

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Note:

* My brother does not own a tarantula.