GLASS SOUP by Jonathan Carroll (funny books to read .txt) 📕

“Fizz, you don’t hear anything? You don’t hear those insects?”

“Of course I hear them! Is that what I’m supposed to hear—bugs?”

The expression on Vincent’s face changed dramatically. “You do hear them?”

“Sure. So what?” She thought he was joking—how could she not hear that close clamor?

“Tell me what you hear.”

“Cicadas. You know—that high chirring sound they make.”

Staring at her, his face said he didn’t know if he believed her yet. “And it sounds far away?”

“No, right here around us. It’s very loud.”

“That’s loud to you?”

“Yes.” She didn’t like the tone of his voice. “What, Vincent? What’s going on?”

“Those aren’t cicadas you’re hearing—it’s the dead. Some of the ones you brought back with you when you returned from there.”

“How do you know that?”

He looked at her sadly. “Because I remember that sound from when I was dead. It’s one of the few things I do remember about that time.”

The Moon in the Man

“The moon in the man, eh?” was the first thing Vincent Ettrich ever heard Isabelle Neukor say. She said it to a woman she was talking with. Then she threw back her head and laughed with her mouth wide open. Vincent had been brought over to meet her by Flora Vaughn and Simon Haden. This Isabella had a face three or four years past beautiful. That was the first thing that came to mind when he saw her. After being introduced, he pointed to the heavy coat she was wearing and the first thing he ever said to her was, “Do you know what they call a coat like that in France?”

She smiled a little and turned to Simon and Flora to see if this was some kind of joke. Eventually she looked back at Vincent. “No, what would they call my coat?”

“A houppelande.” It cantered perfectly out of his mouth like a dancing horse. “Isn’t that a great word? Hope-eh-lond.”

Normally she didn’t wear heavy coats but that night it was bitter cold outside. She had just arrived at the party and had not yet taken off her ankle-length gray loden cape. The hood on it was so long that it went halfway down her back. That coat along with her blonde hair, large blue eyes, and cheeks red from the cold made her look either like a fairy tale princess or a dancer in the Ice Capades.

“And what is a houppelande?”

“That kind of coat—big and dramatic.”

“A Dracula coat?”

“I was thinking more like Dr.Zhivago.” He liked her already. Women who were quick, witty, and willing to laugh at themselves won him easily.

She began to unbutton the cape. “All right, then I’ve got one for you now.” Her hands were numb and slow from the cold. She cupped them together and blew her hot breath over them before continuing. “Have you ever heard of the tunica molesta?”

“A torture shirt? Sure. Have you ever been to the torture museum in the Sixth District? All kinds of amazing things there: it’s really worth a visit.”

Isabelle looked quickly at Simon Haden, her eyes asking where had he found this guy? She’d never met anyone before who knew about the tunica molesta.

As the four chatted, it was obvious there was strong electricity going back and forth between Isabelle and Vincent. Flora and Simon saw that and it made both of them frantic. But there was nothing either could do about it.

Ettrich told a funny, surprisingly tender story about his father’s prized accordion collection. And how as a boy, Vincent learned to play the instrument only because he fell in love with one model in the collection named the “Mount Everest.”

“Can you really play the accordion?” Isabelle asked.

“Yes, I can. Even ‘Flight of the Bumblebee.’”

She liked that very much, which showed both on her face and in her body language toward Vincent. Isabelle liked people who could do odd unnecessary things—ventriloquism, play the accordion, figure skate, or repair old wristwatches. She’d fallen in love with one man mainly because he taught her to tango.

On a table in her living room were a bunch of prized objects she’d made, found, or bought at various flea markets. None of these things had any real value, but Isabelle cherished them all because they were strange, unique, or memory incarnate to her.

For example there was a red rubber toy man from the 1920s that looked exactly like a figure in a Bruno Schulz drawing she loved. Next to it was a giant tooth from a favorite dog, long dead. A dented Viennese street sign for “Tolstoi Gasse,” a figure of a frog dressed in a ballerina’s tutu, and in an intarsia wood frame was part of a white blotter from her childhood desk. It was filled from edge to edge with a little girl’s drawings, squiggles, cryptic notes to herself… a nine-year-old’s world in her own words and illustrations. Looking at Vincent, this accordion player, this interesting man, she wanted to show him these things and hear what he had to say about them.

What clinched it though was the music. A few minutes later while they were talking, music suddenly came on in the room. Things quieted momentarily while the crowd absorbed it, then returned to their conversations. The song “These Foolish Things” sung by Peggy Lee began. Vincent raised his head and smiled as if recognizing an old friend. And it was an old friend—one of his all-time-favorite songs.

Without hesitating, he asked Isabelle if she would like to dance. She thought he was kidding but he wasn’t. No one else in the room was dancing but he wanted to—right now with her to this song. Isabelle was a terrific dancer but had never been the first one out on a floor, never. She looked at her friend to see what she thought, but Flora Vaughn was fighting just to keep a straight face and not go hurrying from the room in tears. Haden knew about Flora and Ettrich’s past affair and he would have been amused by his old lover’s discomfort now if it hadn’t been for