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

Leni’s husband was out of town for a weekend conference. She went to meet Haden at a café. He needed groceries for his apartment so they went shopping at an outdoor market nearby. The sun was out for the first time in a week; the sky was the blue of a baby’s room. He bought this and that while she tagged comfortably along. It amused her to think strangers imagined them as a couple: this handsome man and his handicapped wife.

At one stand she noticed two beautiful fat avocados and on a happy whim, bought them. When she got home later they were gone from her bag, replaced by a note that said if she wanted to see her avocados alive again, she had to go to this address at a certain hour later that day. It was Simon’s address.

When she arrived, his living room table was laid with a bowl of bad lumpy guacamole surrounded by potato chips and other simple finger food she realized he had bought earlier when they were shopping. They drank two bottles of Barolo wine and never touched each other. She stayed till late in the afternoon. The sky outside was falling into deeper and deeper purple. She hadn’t slept with him yet but that day decided it for her. She wasn’t used to surprises. This experience reminded her of how much she enjoyed them.

Meanwhile, #2 only had to say two or three sentences about their avocado day to jog Haden’s memory. “Ohhh yes, I remember that day.” He was smiling now. “You choked on a carrot stick.”

She stood up. “You bastard. You son of a bitch.”

“What? Why are you so upset, Leni? What’s the big deal?”

Again she patted herself on the chest, only this time hard enough so that both men heard the hollow thump each time she hit it. “Because it was my memory and my life. Now you’ve changed it and there’s nothing I can do about it, you bastard! Now it will always be the day I choked on a carrot stick and you hate avocados. Not the day you stole them from me and made us guacamole. Thank you—you’ve completely ruined a memory, and it was one of my favorites.

“You ended our thing badly, Simon. But you were also the avocado thief and that always made me smile when I thought of you, even afterwards. That day, that memory mattered. You were sweet and thoughtful and we had such fun. After our relationship was finished, when you ruined it by leaving for no good reason, something in me, in here, still treasured that avocado day. It was good—it was almost worth everything else.”

What Leni left out was that experience was also one of the main reasons why she later fell for John Flannery. With seemingly innocuous questions their first time together, he learned how much she enjoyed being surprised by a man, thrown off balance and, well, swept off her feet by imagination and thoughtfulness. Once Flannery had that piece of information, winning her was very simple.

“All right, Leni, fine. So now it’s my turn: Petras. Hmm? Did you get that? I’ll say it again for you—Petras.” Haden spoke in a challenging petulant voice.

She stopped and frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Petras Urbsys.”

Despite the strangeness of the name, it was familiar to her. As if he might be able to help, she turned briefly to her imagined Haden and threw him an inquiring look. He held up both hands as if to say I know nothing. Remember, I came out of your head.

She didn’t like this turn of events. She didn’t like the way Simon had turned this event. It felt like he was doing it to avoid blame. She would humor him for another thirty seconds and then get back to the avocados. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Should I?”

“Petras Urbsys was the man who owned that great strange store I took you to one day in Vienna. Don’t you remember? The guy who was selling his whole life in there? All of his possessions were for sale. I loved that store. I loved it so much that I took you and Isabelle to see it. I even introduced you to Petras. But you don’t remember it, do you, Leni?”

“No.”

“Exactly. So we’re even. I don’t remember your avocados and you don’t remember Petras Urbsys.”

This was wrong—Simon was hijacking this. What he said wasn’t really correct, but then again it was. He’d outmaneuvered her, checkmated her using the same moves. Leni was abruptly left with a mouthful of nothing to say and feathers.

“May I add something to this conversation?” Haden #2 asked sweetly.

Haden and Leni had momentarily forgotten about #2 in the heat of their battle. Now they both looked at him, annoyed at his interruption.

“No!”

“Go away,” she said and like the Troodon before him, #2 evaporated.

“Leni, no matter what you think of me, this isn’t about me. That’s not why I’m here. It’s about Isabelle Neukor.”

Leni had so much resentment in her heart and so many questions in her head. All of them vanished when he said her friend’s name. She immediately asked, “Isabelle’s dead?”

“Worse.”

“What is it, Simon?”

“Come with me and I’ll show you.”

“What is this?”

At that moment Haden was too busy to answer her. Whipping his head back and forth, he kept looking for a break that they might scamper through in the insane traffic rocketing by. He had never seen traffic like this before. It literally never appeared to slow or stop. It reminded him of documentaries he had seen on television showing blood cells rushing through veins. These cars were going by so fast that none of them had real shape—they were all just large colored blurs to his eye.

“What are we doing here?” Leni stood behind him with her hands on her hips. She sensed what he had in mind, but there was no way she was going to try and cross that whizzing flow. With her bad leg? Was he