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

cars, she understood why their colors never changed. She checked every passing Mercedes after that just to make sure. On the rear window of each in exactly the same place was a decal of the cartoon character Asterix and his big friend Obelix. Leni recognized the decal because she had put it on the car window herself when she was twelve and had read every Asterix comic book numerous times.

Every one of the vehicles on this particular Highway to Hell were the cars Leni Salomon had had in her lifetime. The Opel Kadett, Volkswagen, and Mercedes were her parents’ cars; the ones she had grown up with until she was old enough to have her own. Those later cars were here too—the yellow VW bug she’d gotten as a high school graduation present, the black BMW 320 with the “Rapid” soccer club decal on one of the rear windows. She’d had sex in the backseat of that car with Simon Haden. She wondered if he remembered that. A gray Lancia she’d once owned and wrecked when she was going through her phase of driving too fast. And her red Honda Civic. The car she owned when she died.

“It’s me in there, isn’t it? In every one of those cars it’s me. I always drank Coke with three slices of lemon. And the green fingernails—”

“You’re warm.”

“What do you mean warm, Simon? Is it or isn’t it me in there?”

“You’re warm, you’re close. Keep going.”

“Close? This isn’t a game.”

More to himself than to her he said, “No, it’s your Ropenfeld.”

“What? What did you say?” Another horn honked nearby.

“Nothing, Leni. You’re really close now. Look again. You’ll get it.”

She wanted to ask him what Ropenfeld meant but this was more important. Now that she had an idea of what was going on, she watched the scene with different eyes. But squinting and concentrating as hard as she could, she still failed to see anything concrete inside those cars—only forms. No matter how hard she tried to shape them into a person or a face, she could not. This world around them, although entirely her creation, was indifferent to her. When she went into her deepest heart and asked for help, it offered none.

A smell shoved its way between everything else and up to the front of her mind. Leni didn’t notice certain of her senses when she was concentrating on others. Staring hard at something, she would forget or take no notice of the smells in the air, the sounds all around, her cold feet, or a sour metallic taste in her mouth. But this smell was so pervasive now that it refused to be ignored. It hung around until she became fully conscious of it.

A wet dog—it was the smell of wet dog. Animal, thick, not nasty but not nice either. When she came around and focused her attention on it, she recognized what it was. She knew what it was and it both surprised and shamed her.

It was the smell her body had given off all of her life whenever she was very afraid. It had followed her into death. As fastidious as she was, she nonetheless exuded this odor in varying degrees whenever she had been genuinely frightened. One doctor she consulted said it was only a minor hormonal aberration she could not change. Besides, it was only body odor that disappeared whenever the threat disappeared. He said a surprisingly large number of people had the same problem. Unsatisfied with that prognosis, she visited two highly esteemed endocrinologists who told her essentially the same thing. The irony was that in most difficult situations Leni was the calmest, most reliable person around. But whenever this singular odor began to rise off her skin, she knew it was her body’s way of saying Run away!

The smell was unmistakable now, but there was something wrong this time because she wasn’t afraid. Curious, yes. On edge and wary of what was happening… But not the kind of frightened that in her past had always caused the smell.

It grew stronger but that was because she was fully aware of it now. The cars flew past a few feet away. Standing nearby, Simon Haden remained silent.

The answer came when those lemon slices in the cup led her to suddenly remember a name—Henry County. He was the boy Leni had dated on and off throughout high school. He was American, wickedly clever, and manic-depressive. She never knew whether she really liked him or was just sort of spellbound by his erratic character. But he did have his own odd compelling gravity that kept pulling her back to him for a while.

Once toward the end of their relationship he’d gotten angry at her while driving them to a movie. She was drinking Coke out of a paper cup. He snatched the cup from her hand and threw it out the window. A Coke with three slices of lemon in it. The speed and wildness of his gesture frightened her and the smell came right away.

The day she had painted her fingernails green with Flora and Isabelle, a man followed her home afterward. He sat across the aisle on the 35A bus but moved over and sat down next to her. He started a conversation by asking too many questions about her “interesting” fingernails. She stopped answering them after the fourth and pretended to look out the window, trying to ignore him. He would not be ignored. Fortunately they arrived at her stop and she got off the bus. But he got off too and followed. When she paid no attention to him, he tried to touch her arm.

“Get away! Don’t touch me.” She spoke in a strong angry voice. He hesitated, thinking she was bluffing. When he realized she wasn’t and could make real trouble for him, he took two giant steps back and smiled. Leni didn’t look at him again as she walked the remaining blocks to her house. Fearful that he might still be somewhere near,