Marisha Pessl by Special topics in calamity physics

Author:Special topics in calamity physics [physics, Special topics in calamity]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Mystery & Detective, Students, Fiction, General, Modern fiction
ISBN: 9780670916078
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2006-09-15T11:20:19+00:00

"I wanted the Coco Suite, but it was taken. I'm sure everyone wants the Coco Suite."

"But-"

"Not a word about the cost. I told you I've been saving for a few extravagances."

I was surprised by the trip, the proposed lavishness, sure, but even more by the childlike zeal that'd overtaken Dad, a Gene Kelly Effect I had not witnessed in him since June Bug Tamara Sotto of Pritchard, Georgia, invited Dad to Monster Mash, the statewide tractor pull in which it was impossible for someone without trucker connections to get tickets. ("Do you think if I slip one of those toothless marvels a fifty, he'd allow me to get behind the wheel?" Dad asked.) I'd also recently discovered (crumpled paper sadly staring out of the kitchen trash) Federal Forum had declined to print Dad's latest essay, "The Fourth Reich," an offense which, under normal circumstances, would have caused him to grumble under his breath for days, perhaps launch into spontaneous lectures on the dearth of critical voices in American media forums, both popular and obscure.

But, no, Dad was all "Singin' in the Rain," all "Gotta Dance," all "Good Mornin'." Two days before our scheduled departure, he came home laden with guidebooks (of note, Paris, Pour Le Voyageur Distingué [Bertraux, 2000]), city shopping maps, Swiss Army suitcases, toiletry kits, miniature reading lights, inflatable neck pillows, Bug Snuggle plane socks, two strange brands of hearing plug (EarPlane and Air-Silence), silk scarves ("All Parisian women wear scarves because they wish to create the illusion of being in a Doisneau photo," said Dad), pocket phrase books and the formidable, hundred-hour La Salle Conversation Classroom ("Become bilingual in five days," ordered the side of the box. "Be the toast of dinner parties.").

With the nervous expectation "one can only feel when one parts with one's personal baggage and holds fast to the shabby hope of reuniting with it after journeying two thousand miles," Dad and I, on the eve of December 20, boarded an Air France flight out of Atlanta's Hartsfield airport and safely landed in Paris at Charles de Gaulle, the cold, drizzling afternoon of December 21 (see Bearings, 1890-1897, Swithin, 1898, p. 11).

We weren't scheduled to meet up with Baba au Rhum until the 26 (Baba was supposedly visiting family in the south of France), so we spent those first five days in Paris alone as we'd been in the old Volvo days, speaking to no one but each other and not even noticing.

We ate crêpes and coq au vin. At night, we dined in expensive restaurants crawling with city views and men with bright eyes that fluttered after women like caged birds hoping to find a tiny hole through which they might escape. After dinner, Dad and I entombed ourselves at jazz clubs like au Caveau de la Huchette, a smoky crypt in which one was required to remain mute, motionless and alert as a coonhound while the jazz trio (faces so sweaty, they had to have been lined with Crisco) ripped, riffed and

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