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

them that they were nevertheless close to “the Answer,” the key to happiness, the end of the rainbow, Nirvana… whatever. Only a few baby steps more and you’ll be there if you follow my instructions.

Except there was no there there because people were constantly changing and so were their needs and desires. They could never land on one spot and stay—sure that this was their happiness forever. Because mankind had the attention span of a housefly. How many houseflies do you know that have found their bliss and stay at home evenings?

Of course Kyle Pegg knew how to “read in the dark.” It was no more than a parlor trick, a bad magician’s sleight of hand. He could teach it to anyone in fifteen seconds.

For Flora, the Chaeff lecture turned out to be okay but nothing special. Perhaps she would have liked it more if she hadn’t met Kyle Pegg and he’d set her mind spinning before the talk began.

The question-and-answer session at the end was interminable. Flora’s hands were crossed but she wasn’t aware that she was nervously jiggling her sunglasses up and down until Kyle looked over, distracted by the commotion. He looked at the sunglasses, then at her and raised his eyebrows as if to ask if anything was wrong with her.

She made an exasperated face and hissed, “These questions are so stupid. If they’d read his book they’d know all this stuff.”

“Do you want to go have a cup of coffee?”

She was surprised that he was willing to just stand up and walk out on the spur of the moment. She liked that kind of courage and spontaneity. Although tempted by his offer, she shook her head. “We can’t go now—it’d be rude in front of all these people. We’ll go after.”

He didn’t argue. He knew she would say no but wanted her to think he was game for anything when it came to making her happy.

Afterward they sat in the Café Schwarzenberg eating pieces of chocolate and marzipan cake the size of small pianos. Kyle had two. Flora was tickled both by his gluttony and his obvious enthusiasm for her. Flora was a drama queen. She demanded the limelight. If you were willing to accept those two qualities, then she was your best friend forever, and she was a very good friend indeed.

Her husband and children adored her but like everyone else in her circle, they danced to her tune and knew when to run from her temper. She was not content with one lover, so she usually had two. Every one of her men was completely different from the other. She told her boyfriends point-blank that she couldn’t imagine being monogamous, and that included them too. Take it or leave it. Sometimes people did leave. A lover walked out, friends got fed up with her vain nonsense and said no more. Flora Vaughn was hurt by these people but not for long. She was Italian. She was impatient. Life was opera. It was too interesting to her to get stuck on any one thing or person. She knew there were many others she could love and like and get along with, so it was rarely a big loss when someone did say basta to her.

What Flannery/Pegg found most interesting about Flora was her uncanny ability to bring out qualities in people they never knew they possessed. For example from the beginning, she saw him as a sexy guy and took him to bed every chance she got. Big fat John Flannery. He thought it was funny because that went completely against the game plan he had devised to win her heart. But he had to give her credit—she was such a passionate and wanton lover that he had a really good time. Plus she taught him an array of sexual tricks that he immediately put to good use with her friend Leni.

When they first met, Flora’s husband was a brilliant, sweet, dull industrialist who derived great pleasure from ironing his own three-hundred-dollar shirts while listening to obscure Sibelius symphonies. She rolled up her sleeves and tunneled beneath his ironed layers into some undiscovered part of his soul. There she found a suppressed weekend Rambo who, at her encouragement, took up archery and twice bungee-jumped off the eight-hundred-foot-high Donauturm. She was an interesting contradiction, especially for someone as self-absorbed as she was. But Flora was genuinely empathetic and understanding much of the time. It was one of the reasons why her good friends loved her.

Still, there were limits. Leni never trusted Flora enough to tell her about John Flannery. She never told Isabelle either, although she had planned to. The problem with Flora was too often she took off in the worst possible direction with any new piece of information. Told it to the wrong people, or blabbed about it to others when it should have remained secret. She did this only because she was so happy and excited for you, but too often her enthusiasm had caused big problems. Or she would ask intimate embarrassing questions, the answers to which were either none of her business or ones you weren’t ready to give yet.

Soon after they met, Kyle Pegg asked Flora not to tell anyone about him or their relationship. When she indignantly asked why not, he said the perfect thing to shut her up forever: “Because INTERPOL is looking for me. If they find me, I’m cooked.” That was all. His admission was so unexpected and exciting that she locked it inside her heart and never told a soul. Kyle said almost nothing more about it in all the time they spent together. Once he alluded to his “problem” having to do with counterfeiting American dollars in Syria, but no more. She wanted to know everything but the only other bit he admitted to was the fact that his name wasn’t Kyle Pegg, which was sort of the truth anyway. When she asked what his real name was, he hesitated and