Fugitive from the Library

Hi, I’m Huey and I’m a bookaholic.

Once I had a life. I was an investment advisor in fine art. I was good. I was rich. I lived in an exclusive neighborhood. Everyone loved me. I loved myself. That's all over now. Fate has played a cruel joke on me. I keep myself alive doing various odd jobs in the places I stop, but I can never stay long. I must keep running, always running trying to stay one step ahead of my pursuers. You see, I'm a fugitive from the library.

It started simply enough, keeping those James Michener novels until the due date. It was a head rush, and satisfied me for a while, but soon I found myself hoarding Hemingway and Faulkner until the third day of the three-day grace period. It wasn't long until I was into the harder stuff; Dostoevsky, Rousseau, Thomas Hardy. I knew I was in trouble the night I woke up at 3 a.m. with The Brothers Karamazov in my hands, and Jude the Obscure all over the living room. I had been unconscious for at least two days. God knows what other novels I might have consumed in that time.

There was never enough time to finish them. Soon I took that fateful step that would lead me to the state I'm in today; I stopped taking them back. I knew the consequences of my actions, but my need for novels had grown so intense that I would literally do anything to possess them.

The cards started first. You know, the `'Please return The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad so that others might enjoy it" card. I ignored them. I was too deeply into novels to think straight. I was up to four Charles Dickens a day. I knew I needed help when I started Turgnev, but there was no turning back after Fathers and Sons.

Then it happened. I was right in the middle of a collection of Marcel Proust, when I heard a knock at the door. I'd been inside for days devouring the complete works of Jean Paul Sartre, so I was pretty high. The knock came again. Unfortunately I might have to answer the door, and in my state of mind that was not a good idea. I went to the window and looked out just as the knock came again, but with a voice this time.

“This is the library police. You can't escape we've got the place surrounded. Now come out with your Vonnegut's up and nobody will get hurt.”

My God. The library police. The Gestapo had actually rejected their tactics as too cruel and unusual. My mind was racing. What should I do now? Should I give myself up and throw myself on their mercy? What would William Shakespeare do in a situation like this? Probably have a ghost appear on the battlement, but I didn’t have a ghost or a battlement for that matter.

“You’ll never take me alive copper,” I found myself saying. I knew I would regret using that Mickey Spillane.

Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I ran to my bedroom and took out the gun in my drawer. Then I grabbed a copy of The Seaqull and threw open the front door.

“All right,” I yelled at them. “Nobody moves or Chekhov gets it!”

"He's not bluffing," said the officer in charge, "Everybody stay back."

"Here's the way it's going to work,' I said. 'You’re going to stand back and let me get in my car and drive away from here, understand?"

'Do what he says boys," the chief cop said. “He means it"

I got in my car, and drove off with Chekhov. He was my security. As long as I had Chekhov they wouldn't try anything.

We were on the road a few days when it happened. I saw a used book fair and I knew I had to fix soon. I locked Chekhov in the car and went to take a look. When I came back with some Goethe and Plato I was feeling very high. Then I saw it. The broken window and Chekhov was gone.

I threw Goethe and Plato in the backseat and got out of there as fast as I could. I knew it wouldn't be long before Chekhov brought the police. I didn't know how much of a head start I had. Soon I was out on the highway, each minute taking me further away from trouble.

I got as far as San Antonio before the car broke down. I left Goethe and Plato with it, and continued on foot. I would have taken them with me but I knew I could travel faster alone. I'd read a lot of Faulkner so I headed for California. They had jobs there, but even more so they had big libraries, with lots of novels. I knew I'd need to keep fixing.

I was able to hide from the authorities for several years. But I was unhappy. I don't know when, but I decided I needed to seek help. I think it was the day I woke up with the taste of a Harlequin Romance on my lips that I knew I had to seek a cure for my addiction. I enrolled myself in the Danielle Steel Clinic for those addicted to literature.

I was OKAY for the time being, but I would always be a bookaholic! And I was still a fugitive from the Library Police, but I knew how to handle them now. I knew the most powerful phrase in the English language: ”and they all lived happily ever after.”