Cut-up

The book is sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by small scraps of paper. Some have whole sentences on them. Some, merely a word.

‘What’s this?’ I say.

‘It’s your book,’ the book says. ‘When I said about leaving it in the drawer, I lied. Again.’

I stand for a moment looking down at the book. I notice how absorbed it looks, the childlike joy in its eyes. ‘Fancy joining me?’ the book says.

‘I take it this is the only copy?’ I say. ‘The sending version I was working on?’

‘Hmm, hmm,’ says the book, without looking up.

‘The book. My book. Which you have now ripped up.’

‘Which I have cut up,’ the book says. ‘The better to read it with. Most of it was dreadful. Not your best work at all. Did you know you had twenty-six instances of the word ‘moon’?’

‘I did not,’ I say. ‘I never write about the moon. It’s the rules.’

‘Well, according to this,’ the book throws up a little drift of paper, ‘you hardly wrote about anything else. Dreadful,’ the book says again.

‘What do we do now?’ I say.

‘We put it back together again,’ says the book. ‘Same words, different order. So far I’ve got ‘Moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon, the’,’ says the book. ‘And that’s just the first line.’

‘Do you think it will work?’ I say.

‘I think it already is,’ says the book.