Leo 26. In a bookstore, a chance meeting of long-lost friends.
Upstairs, in a back room where tomes filled walls and lay stacked and unsorted everywhere, he had gone in search of obscure authors, the rare and forgotten who might be in need of his appreciation, maybe someone he might have overlooked, even in the midst of all his patient literary searching.
As he glanced up from a first edition of “Death’s Jestbook” by Thomas Lovell Beddoes which was open in his hand, he noticed a man he hadn’t previously seen sitting across the room on the floor, who, feeling his gaze, turned to look back at him. So long it had been, and both had aged, their faces each layered with its own accumulated histories. Saying nothing, (for there were already enough words in the room) they only smiled, their gazes laying against each other, touching like two books, the essence of whose stories were seeping into each others’ pages.