The Map Room

Paper for Cycle Two

This is mainly a description exercise for me… because I suck at description. So sorry, but no dialogue here. I might continue it, but I’m not sure.

The Map Room

Years ago, there used to be an out-of the way building in downtown Memphis that housed a niche—a sort of gathering place—that writers, scholars, students, and the occasional professor would gravitate to. Not many people were aware of the place, but those who did find there way there tended to go back again.

The place was called the Map Room. Walking in, you would see a mahogany bar stretching across the back of the room. Behind it, an enormous map of Europe before the wars spread across the wall. The door leading to the basement stairs was positioned in the only blank piece of wall on that side of the room. More maps covered the other five walls—the room was not an ordinary square, but a sort of asymmetrical hexagon. In the far left corner were couches, chairs, coffee tables, and bookshelves that covered any space that maps did not. Lamps and coasters were scattered everywhere, and two lazily clicking ceiling fans took the place of the delinquent air conditioning system in the summertime. At night, the small windows high up on the walls barely showed the dim lamplight that stayed on late into the night as regulars stayed as long as they could—which often meant as long as they wanted to stay. During the winter, people would congregate in the basement, where the oldest maps lay in atlases and albums and were framed on the walls. There was a cabinet entirely devoted to sextants and charts and other navigating tools. When its doors were opened, it was easy to imagine the smell of salty ocean air.

The Map Room was easy to fall in love with, and more than one couple had fallen in love in it. It was an old-fashioned place, with an air of nautical navigation, of musty books waiting to be read, of endless opportunity to explore and no end of time to explore in. It was a kind of sanctuary—walking into it was like walking into a different time, a pocket of time that—despite the ceiling fans and telephone and electricity—seemed not to have changed for a very long time. It was very much separate from the rest of the city, and once you entered, it was easy to forget everything but that which was in the room. Making conversation was easy, and the conversations would often last for hours, sometimes with long, comfortable and contented pauses between. For those who went there, the Map Room meant peace.

The Map Room is gone now—as are many old-fashioned things. A mall stands in its place, and the maps are scattered between storage boxes, the old regulars of the demolished place, the former owner, and buyers that came to the auction. The mall is much more popular than the Map Room ever was, but the timelessness has been lost.