No Book but the World: A Novel by Cohen Leah Hager

Author:Cohen, Leah Hager [Cohen, Leah Hager]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

II

DENNIS

WHEN AVA ARRIVED HOME after a week in Perdu, she looked physically reduced in a way Dennis couldn’t put his finger on. Less like she’d lost weight than like she’d lost density. When he lifted her in an embrace, it was like lifting pumice.

“How are you? I missed you.” He set her back down and peered into the pale oval of her face. “Hey,” he said. He touched the corner of her mouth as if it were the location of a secret on-button. That was an old joke between them, and she smiled. “How was your drive?”

She considered the question, did not answer, and after a moment went on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

“Are you hungry?” It was eight. He’d already eaten: first a hamburger and later some leftover antipasto and then some salsa and chips. With Ava away, he’d been sort of drifting from snack to snack all week; now he tried to think what real food they had in the house.

“Just tired.” She bowed her head and leaned slowly forward until her face landed on his chest. He could feel her nose pressing into his sternum. A pantomime of tired: this was her little slapstick.

With one hand he lifted her hair off her neck, with the other traced the knobs of her vertebrae there. “Do you want some tea? A drink?”

She straightened. “A shower.” She said this apologetically, also determinedly, and headed up the stairs.

They had talked little while she was away. Once a day or every other day, but briefly, and even then in conversations punctuated by silences. He knew she’d met with the lawyer, knew she’d managed to visit Fred twice. She said the cell reception was spotty up there, that the landline at the inn wasn’t private. She said it wasn’t even really an inn, more just someone’s house.

“Like that B-and-B we stayed at, that time in Maine?” Dennis asked. “With the Weimaraners and those zucchini pancakes?”

No not really, she said. Not like that.

“And Fred?” Dennis asked. “How did he seem?”

This part of the conversation occurred a few hours later as they lay in bed, her head, still damp from the shower, resting on his shoulder, spreading a circle of chilliness through his undershirt. “Ayv? How was it seeing him?”

She said something tiny beneath his chin.

“What, Ayv? I didn’t hear.”

“Bad.”

“Why bad?”

She nipped him through his shirt, and despite the gravity of the topic he smiled. It was a classic Ava reprimand: nonverbal, to the point.

“I mean bad in what way?”

But now she rotated her head so her face lay flush against him, her mouth effectively stoppered in the crevice between his chest and his arm. This gesture, too, he felt, was not without some bleak humor. Ava had little gift for verbal jousting or repartee, really for witticism of any kind—except a particular strain of deadpan physical comedy. It had taken Dennis a long time to pick up on her latent clownishness, and when he realized it for what it was, it had sent his growing affections for her through the roof.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.