“Do you see the second book of Atlantis? I heard it just came out. The first one had some adult things in it, and I’m ready for more of that adult stuff now.”
“Um… If I may…” I edge between her and the shelf just a smidgeon, attempting to catch her disjointed attention by sheer physical interruption. It works. She meets my eyes, which almost water when I speak to her. “I just finished re-reading some books that gave me meaning when I first-…started reading that adult stuff. Have you ever read The Vampire Chronicles?”
She scoffs and laughs a little, reaching past me to grab a book off the shelf. Somehow, her eyes had spotted the second book of Atlantis even while they held mine, and she turns it over in her hand, ranting about the plot with a full-lipped grin too beautiful and too masculine for her unmarked young face. Seamlessly, her rant transitions into questions about the Chronicles:
“So what happens in them? What’s sort of conflict goes on?”
I… laugh a little nervously at the frame she hands me. Conflicts?
“Well… He’s trying to find meaning.”
A quick, skeptical glance.
“You see, he doesn’t believe in a God,” I lead, and sure enough, it’s a startling concept to her–one that she oddly seems to absorb as quickly as it shocked her, shrugging almost in agreement. “So the universe is empty and meaningless to him. And he’s trying to find meaning in it. And he thinks maybe he can find it by connecting with other people. …But the he finds that he can’t really connect with anyone.” Was that an… appropriate description of the book’s “conflicts”?
She immediately loses interest, those wandering eyes turning away from me, and I draw breath to launch in front of her and add, “-but then later he becomes a rock star! And there’s a vampire queen!” but she is already standing at the check-out counter, and I can see that Lestat is laying on top of Atlantis.
“Yeah, see, I’m not really into all that hate stuff,” is her response to my description.
I want to leap at her and explain. I want to tell her that she’s confusing nihilism with existentialism, or that Lestat doesn’t /hate/ anybody at all, he just wants to /love/, truly!…but I wake up.
