In a Perfect World: A Novel by Laura Kasischke

Author:Laura Kasischke [Kasischke, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychological, General, Fiction
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2009-10-05T23:00:00+00:00

They stopped at a little hut.

The roof sloped nearly down to the ground, and the door was so low they had to creep in on their hands and knees.

There was no one at home but an old woman, who was cooking fish by the light of a train oil lamp.

“Sam?” Jiselle whispered after another page or two.

No answer.

He was asleep.

She closed the book and snapped off the flashlight. It surprised her how total the darkness was. And how quiet. From the girls’ rooms there was no sound at all, and outside there was nothing but the tick-ticking of icy rain on the deck. She closed her eyes, and after what seemed like a long time listening to the sputter and hiss of rain on wood, she fell asleep, dreaming of sitting beside the old woman from the story, who was cooking a fish. The fish glowed with a kind of reflected light from the oil lamp beside the woman—silvery, like a moon in the shape of the fish—and she was leaning over it with a knife when a sudden, brilliant, digital, pealing music slammed into the silence, and Jiselle’s eyes snapped open, and she caught her breath and sat up fast, recognizing her cell phone theme, “The Blue Danube,” and found herself jumping, moving toward it instinctively, still mostly asleep—but where the hell was it?

Stumbling toward the music into the family room, she banged her shins against the coffee table. “Fuck.” She got on her hands and knees and scrambled toward the music, which was apparently coming from somewhere deep in the couch—a tiny technological box with a relentless orchestra stuffed inside it. “Shit.” Sara must have taken it when they’d gotten back to the house in the dark, talked on it in whispers in her room. This happened every few weeks, when, Jiselle suspected, Sara’s own monthly minutes were used up. Afterward, she’d stuff it into the cushions of the couch so Jiselle would think she’d misplaced it herself.

Jiselle felt around among the upholstery and crumbs until she touched something solid and cold, pulled it out, opened it, and held it to her ear. “Hello? Hello?”

“Jiselle?”

“Mark?”

“Jiselle, I—”

“Mark,” she said. “Where are you? The electricity’s gone out. Completely out. What do I do if…” She did not know how to finish the question, so she just listened, waiting for an answer, which didn’t come. In the silence, however, she thought she heard Mark sigh. She did hear him clear his throat, she was sure of that, but still he didn’t speak. Finally, to the silence, Jiselle said, “Mark?”

Crackling between them, she suddenly understood, was an ocean. She could hear the waves. There were ships on that ocean, she thought, listening to the silence. Ships bearing good news and bad. False documents. Stowaways. Silk flowers. Parrots in cages. Diamonds in felt sacks. But before the static of all that ocean was yanked away and replaced by the true silence of a connection gone completely dead, Mark said, “Jiselle, I don’t know when I’ll be back.

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