The Impossibly by Laird Hunt Read Free Book Online Page A

that was patched up. Then I went and found John who told me to go away because he was busy thinking pleasant thoughts. Instead of going away, however, I asked him if he could quote something, something in the style of what he had quoted that time in the restaurant, or that time at the event. Go away, he said. I went away. But then, he called me back. How about this, he said, I just thought of this—nothing that hurts shall come with a new face. Good one, I said. Yeah, it’s pretty good, isn’t it? he said. It was, and in fact I was saying it to myself a few minutes later, when she came across the room toward me. Hi, I said. Hi, she said back. That afternoon we spent out in some nearby fields acquiring things. I did not know the words for any of these things, but that no longer mattered, I now think. Or perhaps it did matter, but it was no longer essential, and anyway, thinking about it now, I remember that in the cases where I did not know the words for things, way before we went out in the afternoon in the field, before even the event and the decision to take the trip, before all that and we were sitting in the park and it was warm and she professed interest in acquiring, for example, a quartz crystal, and I said I knew neither the word for quartz nor for crystal, that did not stop her from managing to get one, and without finding out the word from anyone else. We collected a whole new shelf full of dead insects and dead insect parts especially wings, and who could, as one or both of us articulated, know all those words anyway? She tried to explain to me where she would put this new shelf, “this shelf of insects, etc.,” she called it, but I could not quite picture it. My memory of her apartment was a little confused, and to tell you the truth, even then, it was not a pleasant confusion. But perhaps I am misremembering and am subconsciously overlaying what it is I remember now onto what it was I remembered then. In fact, when I was still in the process, some years ago, of actively learning, or of actively acquiring knowledge, I once read that this overlaying process was not possible, I do not say difficult, I say not possible to avoid. We then set about collecting a shelf’s worth of vegetable matter, then one of moss and soil. Did you really plan on shooting that guy? I asked, scooping a handful of organic detritus into a small plastic bag. I did shoot that guy, she said, he just didn’t die. We had brought along a blanket, and even though it was a little cool and the ground bumpy, we, getting cozy, etc. Later, we lay on our backs looking up at the blue sky. I’m sorry I called Deau a big fat bitch, I said. Deau is a big fat bitch, she said, and incidentally, they’re fake. What are? And recent. How long have you known her? A couple of weeks. We lay there. Birds and clouds and insects went by. I think I’m in some trouble, I said. How so? she said. It would be interesting to know how she would have responded had I told her. I suddenly realize I have forgotten to relate something about the event. Something connected to earlier and / or later portions of this narrative. It involves a magician and a magician’s assistant John found in one of the apartments down the hall. He had knocked on the door to ask if he could borrow a can opener, and a woman in a green sequin-covered leotard with a tail of peacock feathers and bits of blue glitter around her eyes answered. Behind her, sitting on the edge of a couch in front of a coffee table was a not-too-handsome, very-earnest-appearing individual in an undershirt. The magician. To get the can opener John had to go through a trick. It was pretty good. The magician swished his hands around a few times, and the can opener appeared. The magician then asked John if he needed to borrow anything else. John told the magician that as a matter of fact he was short a hard-boiled egg. The magician turned around for a second, then turned back and pulled one out of his mouth. I mean out