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

was the word celadon in neat block letters the exact color of the word. She gasped, closed her hand into a fist.

Ettrich began to smile. “That’s it. It means that color.”

“What does?”

“Celadon. It’s the color of those letters.” He pointed to her hand. His smile was twice as big as before.

“How do you know that, Vincent? You just said—”

“I know, I know. Hold on a minute, Fizz. I have to think this through.”

Frustrated by what had already happened that day, she was now almost angry at him for pulling this bizarre stunt and then not explaining it to her. In her irritation, Isabelle could think of nothing else to do at the moment but look again at her palm and the unfamiliar green word that had appeared there. Celadon. She wanted to rub her hand on her pants and get it off.

Vincent was silent a long time. She kept looking at him both directly and sneaking peeks to see if he was ready to say anything yet. But he continued staring out the window and didn’t look at her once.

Isabelle grew increasingly more fidgety and exasperated as the minutes passed. Her temperature rose but so did her curiosity. What was going on? She looked at the word on her palm, she looked at Vincent, she looked out the window. She did not have a clue about what was happening. But neither did she have a clue about how they were going to get out of this fix. Perhaps Vincent did know, or would when he emerged from his silence. Maybe he was really onto something that might help.

Reaching into his pocket, he took out his wallet. He removed a scrap of paper from inside. She saw a list of single words written on the paper.

“What’s that?”

“Give me your hand again.”

She frowned but did it. He looked at her and after glancing at his piece of paper, asked, “Do you know what the word hermeneutics means?”

“Herman what?”

“Perfect.” He put his open hand over hers. Again she felt that heat or tremble or whatever it was there. Nothing to make you jump or get scared, but something definitely felt.

Ettrich smiled and said, “It means interpretive, explanatory.”

“Huh?”

“Look at your hand.”

Written where celadon had been a moment ago was now hermeneutics in celadon-colored block letters. She snatched her hand back and pressed it to her chest.

Ettrich pointed to the paper. “Whenever I’m reading and come across a word I don’t know, I jot it down. When I have a chance, I look them up in a dictionary. Sometimes there’s a whole bunch of them.”

Isabelle looked at his list and saw that hermeneutics was the first word on it. “You didn’t know what it meant till you did that hand thing with me just now?”

“Exactly.” Ettrich said it encouragingly, hoping she would understand without being told what was becoming clear to him now.

“And you didn’t know what celadon meant either?”

This time he said nothing, letting her go with it, letting her think it through out loud.

“So it’s us, Vincent? Us together—not you alone, or me. Answers come when we’re together, when we’re connected?”

“Yes, I think that’s exactly what it is, Fizz.”

“Do it again. Try another.” She took the vocabulary list out of his hand and slowly read the funny-sounding second word on it. “ ‘Borborygmus.’” She stuck out her hand palm up and wiggled her fingers at him. “Come on, take it—try again.”

Ettrich took her hand and said the word. And then he laughed. “It means stomach gas. It means when your stomach rumbles because you haven’t eaten, or because it’s upset.”

“Stomach gas?” Pulling her hand away, she covered her mouth with it because she was giggling now too. When she got around to thinking about it, she took her hand from her mouth and looked at it. Written in celadon in the middle of her palm was borborygmus.

“Let me try. Let me try.” She grabbed Vincent’s hand and said, “Hudna.” Her eyes were all expectation.

He didn’t hesitate. “It’s an Arabic word. It means a temporary ceasefire. Where did that come from?”

“In an article on Israel and Palestine I read yesterday. I love that word; love the way it sounds. I kept saying it to myself—hudna, hudna.”

“But so you knew what it meant already?”

“Yes Vincent, but you didn’t. Let me do another. I love this. Anak.”

Ettrich laughed again. “Shit. It means shit in Eskimo.”

“Right!” She looked at her hand and written there was that Eskimo word for shit. “No more, that’s it. I want to keep this one.” Like a little girl, she stuck her palm in his face so he could see anak there too. He took her hand and kissed the palm.

“This is beginning to make sense to me now. Remember back at the cemetery when I saw you and Petras in his store the day he taught you how to come and get me after I died? Do you remember how that happened?”

Isabelle said, “I touched his gravestone—”

“No honey, we both touched his gravestone at the same time. Do you remember? At the same time. That’s what this is all about. Together. Two. You and me and not each of us separately.”

“But I didn’t do anything, Vincent. I didn’t do anything to make it happen. Did you? It’s not like we waved our magic wands together and things started happening. We weren’t in control of anything.”

The truth of her statement took some wind out of his sails. “You’re right, you’re right… But put that aside for a minute and only think about this: together somehow, we make these things happen. I lived for a while in your past today—I was actually there. I saw every detail and heard every word of your conversation with Petras. Then there were the definitions to those silly vocabulary words that neither of us knew before. They came as soon as I touched your hand—as soon as we were joined. Get it? When the two of us become one, things happen. Things we can’t do alone. I