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

the color of this table… Simon changed everything when he reimagined his life after he died: us, the colors, the furniture. Nothing is the way it really was. He must have hated everything, Isabelle. There’s so little left of the real us and the life we lived together. Simon changed it all when he died and created this world from his memories.

“In this world we’re the way he always wanted us to be, but not the way we were. Like this table—it was never white, it was green. Our kitchen table was green. I even remember the day we bought it on sale.”

“Why are you allowed to tell me this?”

Beth shrugged one shoulder exactly the same way she had in Vienna that day. “Because you’re not Simon. Every one of his creations here knows the truth. He’s the only one who doesn’t. This place is full of lies and illusions and tricks and mirages… but they’re all Simon’s illusions. Until he realizes that, he stays trapped here.”

Isabelle had nothing to lose so she said exactly what she’d been thinking to Beth. “If you were a terrible mother, then Simon has every right to change you here. It’s almost a compliment—he still wants you in his thoughts. But not the woman who hit him when he didn’t come to dinner on time. I’d change you too if I were him. Sometimes lies save us.”

Instead of answering or defending herself, Simon’s mother only stared at Isabelle and after a while slowly nodded.

When Vincent Ettrich rang Flora’s doorbell two hours after the funeral, she was alone in her living room sitting on the couch in brand-new La Perla silk underwear and listening to Otis Redding sing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” Flora had several ways of ridding herself of tension and these happened to be two of them. She loved expensive underwear. She loved the feel of it, the naughtiness that went along with buying some when she knew a new lover’s eyes were going to see her in it, the sheer sinful indulgence of spending a preposterous amount of money for something that weighed as much as a sparrow and took up about as much space in the universe. In most other aspects of her life she was unexpectedly practical and thrifty, but not when it came to her underwear, especially “stress underwear” as she referred to it. Sometimes when she was in a good mood she would even buy some and store it away for a bad day. Like today: the first thing she had done on returning to her empty house was take off her clothes and change into the unworn lingerie she had bought in Rome three months before. “Whenever I feel a nervous breakdown coming on, I buy lingerie,” she had said many times. This retail therapy must have worked because Flora had many bras and panties but not one nervous breakdown.

And listening to the music of Otis Redding was like an antibiotic for her soul. She felt her problems were a joke when compared to those of anyone who was singing that sadly. Invariably after listening to one or two of his albums she felt the clouds lift from her heart.

Flora was the kind of uninhibited woman who had no compunction about answering the door in her underwear and that’s exactly what she did now. When she saw who was there she made a face but felt no embarrassment about her exposed body. God knows, Ettrich had seen her in less. “Vincent.”

“Hi. Nice underwear. I used to know a woman who owned a lingerie store. Can I come in?”

“It’s really not a good day for a visit, Vincent. I’m sure you understand with the funeral and everything.”

He looked at her coldly and gently pushing Flora out of his way, stepped into her house. “We have to talk about your friend Kyle Pegg.”

When Ettrich left the cemetery that morning he knew what glass soup meant, but did not know where he was going. He would insist on that later when asked to recount exactly what had happened. He saw Leni hold up the sign with those two words on it and immediately knew that he must leave the cemetery. He could not say why; he only knew that he had to go.

But what about Isabelle, what was she going to think about his abandoning her in the middle of the funeral? That was a problem but there were other, more pressing concerns that needed to be handled first. She would just have to trust that he’d left for a good reason.

On reaching their car he took out the keys but while unlocking the door he stopped, frowned, and raised his head. From afar it looked like someone had called his name and he was reacting—except for the fact his eyes were closed. Ettrich had heard a voice inside himself distinctly say Go into the woods. Nothing more. When he opened his eyes it was to look at the forest directly across the road.

The village of Weidling is at the very beginning of the Wienerwald, the Vienna Woods. To this day they are fairy tale woods—dark, deep, and endless. They cover five times more land than the combined boroughs of Manhattan. It is easy to get lost in them despite the fact they are only a half-hour drive from downtown Vienna. Both Vincent and Isabelle loved walking there together and often did. The starkness that the shadows and silence of the forest evoked was a perfect contrast to walking there with someone you loved.

Ettrich did not question why he heard this voice now or the order it gave. He dropped the car keys back in his pocket, crossed the narrow country road, and walked toward the woods.

More than ever before, he had grown to trust this inner voice as well as his instincts and hunches. He had been brought back from the dead by Isabelle. Why? Because of their unborn son Anjo. Perhaps it was Anjo