Treasure Island!!!

gnats.” I told myself I was a circulation librarian, not a cleaning service, and I consoled myself with small liberties—being slow to feed the fish, for example (
they
can’t complain), or dipping into Nancy’s Post-its supply and taking notes on Chapter XXV: I Strike the Jolly Roger.
    “But you have to be careful,” Lars said when we talked about it over burritos. “If you lost your job, what would you do? Unless you want to borrow money again from your parents.”
    I didn’t want to get into a money discussion with Lars. I was pretty sure he had more of it, though it had taken me a while to catch on since he works a low-paying job at a computer help desk and spends next to
nothing
on his clothes. “How’d you get
that
?” I’d said the first night I stumbled drunkenly into his condo. Turns out that behind even a slightly bedraggled guy there can lurk a Bang & Olufsen sound system. “What kind of music do you like?” he answered and further discussion got muffled in the make-out moves. Since then we had managed to dance around the big ugly sinkhole subject of money. I knew that two years ago he’d backpacked in Guatemala and had immediately paid off his debts for the trip by cleaning a foundry. I suspected he had a work ethic I wasn’t interested in exploring.
    “
Treasure Island
,” Lars mused. “Ever worry that if you only read one book, you’ll get scurvy of the brain?”
    “You can learn a lot by reading deeply into one book. In fact, in Japan, that’s how literature is studied. People read one book all year. It’s only the stupid Americans who skitter around.”
    “
Who
reads one book a year?”
    “Japanese literature majors.”
    He looked skeptical. “I’ll ask my friend Yusuke.”
    “No, don’t. We’re off the point. Weren’t we talking about my lousy job?”
    Lars paused to ingest some refried beans. “I’m reading this book about the Beslan school siege. In Russia, remember? When Shamil Basayev sent those jihadists to slaughter school children in North Ossetia?”
    “Excuse me?” I muttered. “I’m eating.”
    “Okay, maybe you wouldn’t like it. The situation is
so
fucked up. The violence alone—”
    “I don’t know what you think
Treasure Island
is, Lars, but people do kick it. Heads roll.”
    Lars smiled. “
The Federalist Papers
,” he went on. “That was the last thing I read. No, no—it’s good, but I think you might find it a little dry. You prefer fiction, right? I know: the new Nora Roberts! You ever read Nora Roberts?”
    I sighed. “I’m not
looking
for a book, Lars.”
    “Did you ever think about joining a book club, though? My office mate, Chelsea, does a reading group, and she might have room for another person. They meet at The Flying Saucer. I’ve seen the books on her desk—history, linguistics, science stuff—it’s pretty broad. Chelsea says they read
great
books.”
    “Great books? Great books? Lars, would you know a great book if it hit you in the ass with its registration papers?
Treasure Island
is a great book!”
    I dropped my burrito into its soggy bed of shredded lettuce. Was Lars capable of recognizing
merit
? The lanky brown hair, the smudge on his glasses, the inability to intuit I was too sophisticated for some geeky co-worker’s book group. A stray thought wandered into my mind and swished its mangy tail: should I dump him?
    “Have you even
read
it yet, Lars?”
    “I’m going to.”
    “Yeah, that’s what Rena said, too. But now she’s all caught up in some dutiful tome on global warming.”
    I pulled
Treasure Island
out of my backpack and nudged his plate aside, so that the volume lay before him on the Formica table. Something about the tableau reminded me of the time Aunt Boothie parked me in front of her photo album so I could get the blow-by-blow on the Senior Singles Mississippi Riverboat Tour.
    “Okay,” I said, “of course, I’m not going to force this down your throat,” and refrained from pointing out the passages I deemed most important.
    “Are you saying you want me to read it now?” Lars said.
    “I’m tempted to read it
aloud
to you, but I don’t want to be a control freak.”
    “No, don’t,” he said quickly, and we agreed he could wade into the book at his own pace. Which turned out to be deadly slow if not downright chicken-shit. It was a book; what was he afraid of? I ate a basket of chips while he lingered on the frontispiece: a dull brown map of the island, porcupined with lines