A Guilty Glimpse

Christmas 2010: After several hours of partying at our firm's holiday dinner, a group of coworkers and I decide that we're not quite ready to head home for the evening. Instead, we go to my coworker's flat, where we can end the night with red wine and a dance marathon to Guns N' Roses' November Rain. After we finish cheering the guys' air guitar renditions, though, I get distracted by my coworker's bookshelves: they're teeming with books. I never knew. I end up asking -- okay, declaring -- that I'm borrowing two books and walk out of his flat with them tucked in my bag.

I've finished one of them: Junot Diaz's Drown. It's a collection of his short stories, and it's incredible. But that's not the point of this post.

My co-worker had underlined a single snippet in the book: "You can't be anywhere forever." It's not even the full sentence -- just those five words, highlighted by a single blue line.

I can't get the phrase out of my head. And, more than that, I find myself wondering why he chose to underline that particular phrase: was it because, as an American expat in London, he could relate? Maybe he disagreed with it? Or perhaps it made him think of someone he knew?

It's funny: I probably would have read the sentence without a second thought had I been reading a clean copy. Instead, it's haunted me for weeks now, and in a way, it makes me feel guilty, making me wonder if I'm now privy to thoughts that weren't supposed to be shared.