Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Twenty-five minutes later, I was dinging into the Food Mart.

“Look who’s come back from the dead,” announced the intercom. “Beginnin’ to think ya bought a car. Beginnin’ to think you didn’t like me.”

Behind the bulletproof glass, he crossed his arms and winked at me. He wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off that read, CAT! CAT! Next to the batteries stood his latest girlfriend, a string-bean blonde in a short red dress eating potato chips.

“Senorita,” he said. “I missed ya.”

“Hi,” I said, hurrying to the window.

“What’s goin’ on ? How come ya haven’t come seen me? Ya been breakin’ my corazón. ”

String Bean surveyed me skeptically, licking salt off her fingers.

“How’s high school?” he asked.

“All right,” I said.

He nodded and held up an open book, Learning the Spanish Language (Berlitz, 2000). “Been doin’ some studyin’ myself. Came up with a plan to break into the film industry. You stay here, you gotta do it from the ground up, too many people. Go to a foreign country? You can be a big fish in a little pond. I decided on Spain. I hear they need actors—”

“I need your help,” I blurted. “I–I was wondering if I could borrow your truck again. I promise to have it back in three or four hours. It’s an emergency and—”

“Typical chica. Only comes to see ya when she wants somethin’. Can’t ask yer pops cuz things are rough with him — you don’t have to tell me. I pick up on the símbolos. The signs. ”

“It’s not about my father. It’s something that happened at school. Did you hear about the teacher who died? Hannah Schneider?”

“Killed herself,” said String Bean through shards of potato chips.

“Sure,” said Larson, nodding. “Been thinkin’ ’bout that. I was wonderin’ how yer pops was. The male species mourns different from women. Before he left, my pops was datin’ Tina who worked at Hair Fantasy, took her out only a week after my stepma died of brain cancer. I had a fit. But he sat me down, told me people show their loss different, is all. Got to respect the mournin’ process. So if yer pops starts datin’ again, can’t hold it against him. I’m sure he’s upset. A lot of people come through here, all different kinds, an’ I can spot real love like I kin spot an actor who’s not in the moment, just readin’ lines—”

“Who are you talking about?”

He smiled. “Yer pops.”

“My pops.”

“Figure he’s pretty broken up.”

I stared at him. “Why?”

“Well, yer girl ups and dies on ya—”

“His girl? ”

“Sure.”

“Hannah Schneider?”

He stared at me.

“But they barely knew each other.” As soon as I said it, the sentence sounded absurdly frail. It curled, began to fall apart like an empty straw wrapper when a drop of water falls on it.

Larson didn’t continue. He looked uncertain; sensing he’d stumbled into the wrong stairwell, he couldn’t decide if he should keep going down or back the way he came.

“What made you think they were a couple?” I asked.

“Way they looked at each other,” he said after a moment, leaning forward so his freckled forehead was an inch from the glass. “She came in here while he waited in the car once. Smiled at me. Bought Tums. The other time they paid for gas with a credit card. Didn’t get out of the car. But I saw her. Next thing I know her picture’s in the paper. Her face was so pretty, it gets etched in yer mind.”

“Are you positive? It wasn’t a — a woman with yellow-orange hair?”

“Oh, yeah, I saw her. Crazy blue eyes. No. This one was the one in the newspaper. Dark hair. Looked like she wasn’t from around here.”

“How many times did you see them?”

“Two. Maybe three.”

“I can’t — I have to”—my voice was scary, coming out in clumps—“Excuse me,” I managed to say. And then, all at once, the convenience store became highly inconvenient. I whirled around, because I couldn’t look at Larson’s face anymore, and the whole place looked smeared, out of focus (or else all gravitational fields had gone limp). As I turned, my left arm smacked the display of greeting cards, and then I crashed into String Bean, who’d left her position by the batteries to go get a cup of scalding coffee the size of a small child. It erupted all over us (String Bean screaming, wailing about her burnt legs), but I didn’t stop or apologize; I lurched forward, my foot hit the rack of beaded eyeglass chains and angel air fresheners, the door dinged and finally, the night jammed into my face. I think Larson might have shouted something, “Make sure yer ready fer the truth,” in his chainsaw accent — but maybe it was the screeches of the cars as they honked to avoid hitting me, or my own words as they skidded through my head.

Ifound Dad in the library.

He wasn’t surprised to see me — but then, I can’t remember a time when Dad was ever surprised, except when he leaned down to pet June Bug Phyllis Mixer’s chocolate Standard Poodle and the thing leaped into the air in an attempt to bite his face, missing it by half an inch.

I stood in the doorway for a minute, staring at him, unable to speak. He put his reading glasses in their case with the air of a woman handling pearls.

“I gather you didn’t watch Gone with the Wind ,” he said.

“How long did you date Hannah Schneider?” I asked.

“Date?” He frowned.

“Don’t lie. People saw you with her.” I opened my mouth to say more, but couldn’t.

“Sweet?” He leaned forward slightly in his reading chair, as if to better observe me, as if I were an interesting principle of Conflict Resolution scrawled across a blackboard.

“I hate you,” I said in a quivering voice.

“Excuse me?”

“I hate you!”

“My God,” he said with a smile. “I — this is an interesting turn of events. Rather ridiculous.”

“I’m not ridiculous! You’re ridiculous!” I lurched around, yanked a random book from the bookshelf behind me and hurled it at him, hard. He deflected it with his arm. It was Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce, 1916) and it fell open at his feet. Instantly, I grabbed another, Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (Bicentennial ed. 1989).

Dad stared at me. “For God’s sake, get a hold of yourself.”

“You’re a liar! You’re an ape!” I screamed, throwing it at him. “I hate you!”

He deflected that one too. “The use of the phrase, I hate you, ” he said calmly, “is not only untrue, it’s—”

I threw A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens, 1859) at his head. He deflected it, so I grabbed more, as many as I could hold in my arms like some mad, starving woman ordered to grab as much food as she could from a cafeteria buffet. There was The Strenuous Life (Roosevelt, 1900), Leaves of Grass (Whitman, 1891), This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald, 1920), a very heavy, green hardback— A Description of Elizabethan England (Harrison, 1577), I believe. I launched all of them at him, rapid fire. He repelled most, though Elizabethan England hit him on the right knee.

“You’re a sick, sick liar! You’re evil! ”

I threw Lolita (Nabokov, 1955).

“I hope you die a slow death riddled with unbearable pain!”

Although deflecting the books with his arms, and sometimes legs, Dad didn’t stand up or try to restrain me in any way. He remained in his reading chair.