My girlfriend has one of those bags.
She's sat on the edge of the bed right now, searching through it for her glasses.
A lot of girls have bags like that nowadays; it is nine feet wide, a hundred and twelve feet long, and sixty three thousand five hundred and seven feet deep. On the outside it looks like any other brown leather bag.
It’s the kind of bag that absorbs normal everyday items, the kind that makes you question your own sanity. It gets you looking in the back of the freezer or under the rug in the living room for a glasses case that otherwise might take a generation to find.
I lie there staring at her naked back with the morning sunlight glinting off her shoulder. She's making quiet exploration sounds. I think about offering her a compass, a stout pair of boots, a flask of coffee and sandwiches wrapped in paper so she can get to the search seriously.
She stands up looking like you wouldn't believe and gives a faintly exasperated, but quite delicious sound. She walks over to the bedroom door and wraps a robe around her cool white body. Without her glasses she looks like a librarian on her day off who intends to get drunk and sleep with strangers.
I hear her go into the bathroom and start looking for her glasses under the toilet seat.
Then I hear sounds downstairs and I know that she's looking for her glasses in the kitchen cupboards. Right now she's looking in the tin that holds the sugar from the top shelf of the cupboard by the refrigerator, like the glasses are a hidden treasure in a desert of white crystal sand.
I hear birds singing and my immediate reaction is to look down at the bag. There could be birds down there.
She comes into the bedroom carrying two cups of coffee and a pair of glasses on the bridge of her nose. I ask her where she found them and she tells me that these are her spare pair, and that the other pair must still be in her bag and will turn up sooner or later.
I swear, sometimes she opens that bag and the smell that comes out of it is like someone just lit a camp fire. I remember the day we bought it from a second-hand shop, and lie there wondering about all the people that might already be lost inside.
She's sat on the edge of the bed right now, searching through it for her glasses.
A lot of girls have bags like that nowadays; it is nine feet wide, a hundred and twelve feet long, and sixty three thousand five hundred and seven feet deep. On the outside it looks like any other brown leather bag.
It’s the kind of bag that absorbs normal everyday items, the kind that makes you question your own sanity. It gets you looking in the back of the freezer or under the rug in the living room for a glasses case that otherwise might take a generation to find.
I lie there staring at her naked back with the morning sunlight glinting off her shoulder. She's making quiet exploration sounds. I think about offering her a compass, a stout pair of boots, a flask of coffee and sandwiches wrapped in paper so she can get to the search seriously.
She stands up looking like you wouldn't believe and gives a faintly exasperated, but quite delicious sound. She walks over to the bedroom door and wraps a robe around her cool white body. Without her glasses she looks like a librarian on her day off who intends to get drunk and sleep with strangers.
I hear her go into the bathroom and start looking for her glasses under the toilet seat.
Then I hear sounds downstairs and I know that she's looking for her glasses in the kitchen cupboards. Right now she's looking in the tin that holds the sugar from the top shelf of the cupboard by the refrigerator, like the glasses are a hidden treasure in a desert of white crystal sand.
I hear birds singing and my immediate reaction is to look down at the bag. There could be birds down there.
She comes into the bedroom carrying two cups of coffee and a pair of glasses on the bridge of her nose. I ask her where she found them and she tells me that these are her spare pair, and that the other pair must still be in her bag and will turn up sooner or later.
I swear, sometimes she opens that bag and the smell that comes out of it is like someone just lit a camp fire. I remember the day we bought it from a second-hand shop, and lie there wondering about all the people that might already be lost inside.
