Kindling Good Relations

Edna's husband meant well.

"Happy Birthday, dear.

This E-reader will be so convenient.

Light-weight

It can never take the place of the feel of a real leather bound tome

With dog-eared pages, dust and dreams and pencilled notes in the margin.

The sheer joy of holding history in your hands.

But you'll soon learn to love it.

Oh, you're welcome."

But Edna began to enjoy the E-reader just a little too much.

She was polishing off novels and newspapers in record time.

Her tortoise-shell bi-focals reflecting back at her while her index finger flipped the E pages furiously.

'You're becoming quite a 'nook-worm" quipped Florrie nervously over coffee to Edna one day.

But Edna excused herself muttering something about 'recharging a battery'.

All the neighborhood teens were impressed.

She was constantly, confidently down-loading greedily.

Dickinson, Dickens and Dostoevsky.

Ibsen and Iqbal indiscriminately.

During Weekly Bible study, Edna had already found 47 references to 'Salvation through Works''

Which thrilled Pastor Peter immenesely.

Florrie was still fumbling with the King James' Table of Contents and glanced over at Edna's Faustian tablet miserably.

Florrie wondered if Edna was beginning to.

Well.

Change

What had become of their shared bibliophilia?

Soon ensued strained relations.
Awkward silences, pregnant pauses

Turning in the opposite direction

At the grocery store.

Pretending not to see each other in the rear-view mirror.

At the Portage Avenue intersection.

Florrie's troubled heart knew the cause all too well.

But was unfamiliar with the medical diagnosis.

"Nook Envy"