Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Author:Marisha Pessl [Pessl, Marisha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: coming of age, contemporary fiction, high school, murder, mystery
ISBN: 9780670037773
Publisher: Viking Adult
Published: 2006-08-03T05:00:00+00:00

A Room with a View

The late great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British essayist, lecturer, satirist and social observer, wrote in his autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), “When one travels abroad, one doesn’t so much discover the hidden Wonders of the World, but the hidden wonders of the individuals with whom one is traveling. They may turn out to afford a stirring view, a rather dull landscape or a terrain so treacherous one finds it’s best to forget the entire affaire and return home.” I didn’t see Hannah during Finals Week and only encountered Jade and the others once or twice before an exam. “See ya next year, Olives,” Milton said when we passed each other outside the Scratch. (I thought I detected wrinkles in his forehead hinting at his advanced age when he winked at me, but I didn’t want to stare.) Charles, I knew, was off to Florida for ten days, Jade was going to Atlanta, Lu to Colorado, Nigel to his grandparents— Missouri, I think—and I was thus resigned to an uneventful Christmas vacation with Dad and Rikeland Gestault’s latest critique of the American justice system, Ride the Lightning (2004). After my last exam, however, AP Art History, Dad announced that he had a surprise. “An early graduation present. A final Abenteuer—l should say, aventure—before you’re rid of me. It’s only a matter of time before you refer to me as—what do they say in that mawkish film with the cranky elderly? An old poop.” As it turned out, an old friend of Dad’s from Harvard, Dr. Michael Servo Kouropoulos (Dad affectionately called him “Baba au Rhum,” and thus I assumed he bore a resemblance to rum-soaked sponge cake), had, for some time, been entreating Dad to visit him in Paris, where he’d been teaching archaic Greek literature at La Sorbonne for the past eight years. “He invited us to stay with him. Which we will, certainly; I understand he has a palatial apartment somewhere along the Seine. Comes from a family drowning in money. Imports and exports. First, however, I thought it’d be swell to stay a few nights in a hotel, get a taste of la vie parisienne. I booked something at the Ritz.” “The Ritz?” “A suite au sixième étage. Sounds quite electrifying.” “Dad-” “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

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