The inside of the apartment is far from glamorous; the whitewashed metal cabinets are splattered with red sauce, the linoleum floors are scuffed, and the enamel sink is scratched. But the old red chair is faithfully comfortable, and the clock is timely, and wall-to-wall windows on the front of the house provide a panoramic view of the street, sidewalk, and houses beyond. Standing at these windows on a winter night when the steam from your tea condenses and obscures the swirling snow and icicles outside, it is New York City at Christmas time. You catch a glimpse of Kay Adams and Michael Corleone laughing as they approach the newspaper stand. On another night you watch Gabriel Conroy arrive at the Morkans from the frozen streets of Dublin, hands thrust into his pockets, with his head all but buried inside the upturned collar of his wool overcoat. When spring has sprung David Burkett pulls his pickup onto the streets of Old Marquette heading for Au Sable Lake to struggle against destiny. When the summer sun warms the apartment, it shines on Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley walking the sidewalks of Paris and the manicured lawns of Chandler’s Beverley Hills. When the leaves have turned, and the tea switches to whiskey, and Autumn in New York plays over the HiFi, Katey Kontent is getting out of the black bulk of Val’s Cadillac for the first but not the last time. Returning to the old red chair and the clock on the wall, your mind returns to Sophomore English class when you sat facing the door with the clock above it. That was where you first encountered these people, first saw them through your mind’s eye. What it means to see them again…
Seated in the red chair again you open Blue Skin of the Sea and lounge on the beach with Sonny Mendoza or take in Invisible Cities with Marco Polo as your guide. You fall in love alongside Anthony Patch and lose everything with the familiar voice of Murakami. From the red chair, in the heart of the plain apartment, with the clock on the opposite wall you live and die, make love and war, travel the world and the inside of your mind. And when you tire, you put the book on the shelf and waddle off to bed, secure in the knowledge those characters and those places are always waiting for you, only the turn-of-a-page away.
Seated in the red chair again you open Blue Skin of the Sea and lounge on the beach with Sonny Mendoza or take in Invisible Cities with Marco Polo as your guide. You fall in love alongside Anthony Patch and lose everything with the familiar voice of Murakami. From the red chair, in the heart of the plain apartment, with the clock on the opposite wall you live and die, make love and war, travel the world and the inside of your mind. And when you tire, you put the book on the shelf and waddle off to bed, secure in the knowledge those characters and those places are always waiting for you, only the turn-of-a-page away.
