The Runaway Restaurant by Tessa Yang

Author:Tessa Yang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 7.13 Books
Published: 2022-08-12T21:47:02+00:00

what do you dream?

They’ve been dating around four months when Neil begins dreaming Marla’s dreams. All the shining wreckage of her childhood scatters itself through his sleeping hours. He wanders the Tulsa ranch house where she grew up, bow-tied teddy bears cackling from high shelves. He watches as her mother—dead ten years now, breast cancer—glides from room to room on a pair of old-fashioned roller skates. He sees Marla’s old teachers, college roommates, ex-boyfriends, childhood neighbors, the half-brother with the mouthful of spotted teeth who never calls. He explores the dream-addled version of the office where she copyedits textbooks (quicksand in every cubicle, tentacles swaying from the ceiling like birthday streamers). He looks on helplessly as the small white bunny rabbit named Pancakes, which Marla had loved as a girl, flops down the driveway toward its death beneath the wheels of her father’s Ford Taurus.

“Pancakes was a brown bunny, not white,” says Marla when Neil recounts this dream fragment over breakfast. “Why would you name a white bunny Pancakes? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” says Neil. He finds himself saying this a lot around Marla, who remains just as mysterious to him now as she was on their first date.

In some ways, Marla is reliably boring, like Neil. She has a boring job, and a large square face that is unremarkable except for her wide-set blue eyes. Sex with Marla is consistent and undemanding. She gets off quickly, without much fanfare. After, she usually wants him to bring her something salty to eat, like Fritos or Pringles. She devours these snacks in bed with a palm cupped under her chin to catch any crumbs, though when she’s finished, she dusts off her hands and the crumbs fly everywhere. Her diet is normal, which is to say, not very good.

In other ways, though, Marla is completely bonkers. From each paycheck, she sets aside twenty dollars to go toward her marble collection. They arrive in tiny square cartons from all around the world. Marla stores them in a jewelry box with a velvet divot for each one, and Neil isn’t allowed to touch them. And her hair! It’s so long she can wrap herself in it like a trench coat. She looks like one of those fanatical Christian women on TLC.

Strangest of all to Neil is the fact that Marla can apparently speak something like twelve languages. She has an insane gift for it. She picks up new dialects on a whim, the way other people pick up hats or shoes. She’ll scold and grumble in French, Arabic, Korean, German, Swahili. Does Neil believe she can actually speak this many languages? Is he absolutely certain she’s not discharging rounds of gibberish in what is either a very drawn-out prank or a more vindictive exercise in belittling his intelligence? No, he’s not certain. Not at all.

This dream business is just the latest in a long list of oddities Marla has brought into his otherwise unexceptional life. As

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