Chapter 1

I should make a correction. Angie would be highly upset if I left the term “city of Angels” stand uncontested. The full name of the City, after all, is City of Our Lady Queen of the Angels.

I met her when I came out west for college. Although I’d chosen a religious private university, I was a freshman determined to be knowing and experienced. She was the clerk at the circulation desk in the small on-campus library. I was always checking something out; I’ve found a list of the “great books” of the Western world, and was determined to read them all before I graduated from college.

One day, I’d brought up Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday to the desk, figuring I could read them both in a day or so. She looked up, eyes shining. “oh, do you like Chesterton?”

“Well, if I knew that , I wouldn’t be checking the books out, would I? I’ll let you know after I’ve read them.”

“Oh, I though you just might be re-reading favorites. I love both of those, but my favorites are really Manalive and The Poet and the Lunatics.”

“Poet and the Lunatics? Sounds like a weird crime-fighting team, or some beatnik band!” She laughed at that. “So, what, does he put the poets and the lunatics in the same category?”

“Oh, no, not in the slightest. Poetry, romance, and adventure are all cures for insanity. ‘The poet only wants to get his head into the heavens. The mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head and it is his head that splits.’ “

She finished scanning my books and pushed them across the counter. “There you go! Three weeks til they’re due, but I think you’ll have them finished long before them. Chesterton’s a quick read, but not only you’ll easily forget.”

I read both books in a single day. I dismissed Orthodoxy quickly; so glib, so sure of the inner reality of happiness, so childish. Chesterton himself wrote like a child, chasing fireflies every which way. But in The Man Who Was Thursday, I found an almost appalling darkness, a darkness that shocked even me, determined as I was to see the worst in everything. Thursday felt like a descent into darkness, and at the end, when I finally acknowleged my fear of the dark, turned the shadows into a blinding light.

When I returned the books, I dropped them off in the book drop, and managed to avoid her for the next few days. I really didn’t want to talk about what I’d read.

I got caught up in classes; aside from my self-assigned readings, there were regular class assignments, lectures to sleep through, papers to turn in, and general ed to bitch about in the cafeteria.

“So, how many units this semester?” Drew’s words were slightly slurred, due to the triple-decker sandwich he’d just bitten into.

“um…lemme think…” Typical ruse. Pretend you don’t remember how many units you have, so that you can recite your list of classes. “I’ve got Intro to Mediocrity…”—Drew half-choked on his sandwich—“um..University for one unit…Art Depreciation for one unit, three units of Bias-thinly-disgised-as-Scripture, three of Theology, English Comp for another three, Literature for two units, and Intro to Philosophy for a final total of fifteen units.”

“No science classes this semester?”

“Or foreign language? Man, I’m getting all of mine out of the way as early as possible.”

“Nah, I’ll get to the Science later. I did all my foreign language in high school, so I don’t even have to bother with that anymore.”

“Nice. I know that’s the one that’s gonna bite me in the butt later.”

“Ah come on man, you don’t have to get that desperate, you’ll have a girlfriend to do that for you soon enough!”

Amidst cat calls and the sound of several fists pounding the table, I gathered my tray and headed off to class; it wasn’t that I wasn’t comfortable with talk like that—I’d spent a lot of time in guys’ locker rooms, after all. It’s just that…well, I’d expected things to be a little different here.

I got to class only to find a note taped on the door; class had been cancelled due to the professor’s illness. I hitched my backpacked higher up on my shoulders, and headed out across the small plaza. The evergreen tree beside the science building was solitary, so I tossed my load down between two of the roots and settled down in the grass.

“So…Read any good books lately?” I sat up, startled. I didn’t think I was tired, but judging from the shadows I’d nodded of for a good half-hour. Angie was standing at the low brick wall at the near edge of the plaza, cradling a stack of books, and obviously trying not to laugh.

“oh, um..” I scarmbled to my feet. For some reason, Angie made me nervous, and ever so slightly irate. “Class was cancelled, so I thought I’d hang out here for a minute.”

“Alone? I thought I saw you with a pretty big group of people at lunch.”

“Oh…yeah, well, they’re ok, but I’m not really in the mood for hypocrisy today.”

“Hypocrisy? What do you mean?” She hopped over the wall, long skirt swishing behind her, and sat cross-legged on the grass.

“I dunno…” I reluctantly related the comment from lunchtime. “I’m not sure why it bothers me. It just seemed so crass.”

"Really? Hmm….that’s interesting.”

“Why ‘interesting’? Are you saying that you expect me to be crass and vulgar?”

“Oh…no, not exactly. It’s just that…” She laughed , and sat up a little. “When I was in high school, I always mocked anyone who wasn’t comfortable with nude models. I still think nude models are fine, and beautiful, and so on and so forth. But when I first encountered other people who were fine with nude models, I was uncomfortable. It took me awhile to realize why, but I finally determined that it was because I couldn’t feel superior anymore. I’m glad you’re not like that!”

I was suddenly grateful for the shade of the tree, since it hid my sudden blush. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that I had been wanting to feel superior, but it was true nonetheless. I had expected everyone here to be so afraid of sex, so ashamed of their humanity, that they would be afraid to joke about it. But when the guys at the table showed no such fear, I was irritated, because I couldn’t feel more worldly and sophisticated than the others anymore.

Angie stood, brushing the grass and pine needles off her skirt. “Well, I need to get to work. Stop by and let me know what you think of Chesterton!’

I should have known she wouldn’t let me get away without a book report!

I began to stop by her desk nearly every day when I went into the library. Some of the guys insisted that this meant I had the hots for her, but that wasn’t it. She wasn’t, in any sense of the word, my type. Not that she wasn’t pretty, in her own way, she just wasn’t someone I was interested in like that. And she certainly felt the same way about me.

So while this sort of friendship was a little difficult to explain to others, it did make for a comfortable casualness when we spent time together. I hadn’t really realized before how all of my friendships with girls had been skewed by sexual tension. Did so-and-so like me? Did I like her? What if she thought I liked her but I don’t? What if I like her but she doesn’t know it? My friendship with Angie was never like that; it was sort of like stepping into a cool calm building after walking on a hot, bustling city street.

I finally did stop by her desk to talk about Chesterton. I’d been unable to get his books out my mind, and decided to read a few more. Naturally I decided to ask Angie which ones I should read.

“Oh, I can recommend some! Here, come on, I’ll show you the ones I think you’d like.” She left her desk and come out onto the main library floor, and headed for the stairs.

“Yeah, I know, the lunatics one, and something about Alive?”

“Ha! You mean The Poet and the Lunatics, and Manalive? They’re my favorites, but I’m not recommending them just yet. I think you’d do better with The Secret of Father Brown, The Everlasting Man, and The Club of Queer Trades.”

“Why not the two that you like best?”

“Because they’re not the right ones for you right now. I think you’d probably laugh at them.” She smiled, and turned right at the top of the staircase. “You’ll do better with some of Chesterton’s harder works right now. You can always go back to the other ones.”

I couldn’t really argue with that. I hadn’t liked the lighter passages in Orthodoxy very much; they struck me as childish and simplistic. But I had liked the intense Man Who Was Thursday, so maybe some of the other stories would have more of that aspect.

“By the way, Jason, I hope you don’t mind if I ask…”

She stopped in front of the Chesterton selection and turned towards me. “why are you trying to read your way through all these books? I know it’s not schoolwork, and you don’t seem to be enjoying the books so much as…” She paused, searching for a phrase. “So much as trying to win a challenge.”

“Well, I guess it is a sort of challenge. I’m trying to read the “great books of the Western world” before I graduate. Partly I guess it’s a bragging rights then. Partly I just want to know what’s in them.”

“Oh, ok.” She hesitated. I could almost see her debating with herself whether or not to push me on my answer. I guess she decided not to, since she turned towards the bookcase. “Here’s the rest of the Chesterton books….Let’s see here…Secret of Father Brown…Club of Queer Trades….hmm….Ah! Everlasting Man!” She piled the books on the nearest empty shelf, then handed the stack to me. “I’ve got some reshelving to do, but I guess you know where to go from here!”

I resisted the urge to just settle down in the nearest beanbag chair with the books; I didn’t want to appear too eager to read them. And Angie had given me something to think about; not through the words she said, but through the ones she left unsaid.

Why was I doing all this reading? She was right, I wasn’t enjoying most of it. I blew through each book in quick succession, but what I had I made of any of it?

I checked out the stack of books at the self-check station and headed off to class. It was a little bit early, but I figured I could sit and read until class started.