Audiobook Sample - A House Without Spirits
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Andrew Ivey reading a house without spirits. The pair of wingtips was placed neatly on the sidewalk side by side, nearly touching that style in shoes was more than a little passe though. Maybe it had made a comeback among the hipsters. The shoes were in excellent repair. So it wasn't like they had been abandoned because their owner figured they weren't worth the money that would have been spent at the shoemakers. The care with which they had been arranged was obvious. The wingtips stood at the foot of a telephone pole on a sidewalk that looked stained with tar or oil or even the fluids from some unfortunate mammal, a grease spot on the road, an animal smudge. There was life present in the cat that moved hurriedly past the shoes going somewhere else. More important, the photographer who took the picture seemed to think the shoes were the center of interest. The cat just happened to be passing by. The photographer was right stylish yet out of style in perfectly reasonable shape left on the shore by the human tide. Whoever left them there didn't do it because they were worn out. That was what Laura thought my companion, my partner, the word partner has moved front and center over the past years. And for good reason, it is delightfully ambiguous and says many things at once as well as nothing at all. In my case, it meant the woman I lived with but didn't sleep in the same bed with at least not in any assumed regular way, a way of living that ensures continual suspense. That is the kind of information people don't generally share, but I have decided to move toward the end of concealing someone just kicked off his shoes and walked away in his socks, walked away from his life. I speculated unless he had a second pair with him. I don't know. That seems like a lot of preparation for someone who would leave his shoes on the sidewalk. The pleasure of these shared speculations was the kind of thing that had brought Laura and I together and kept us together. They were our partnership when the word first got popular. I distrusted it the way I distrust euphemisms and like to sneak around behind them to see what they're hiding. My thinking has come around since then. A euphemism is like one of those stretchy rubber Halloween masks that you can put on over any number of faces and it will still fit. It is an occurrence of the rapture. I told Laurie with great certainty. The owner of the shoes past owner now was drawn up to heaven in a woo of air and that's all he left behind. You don't need shoes in heaven. And he knew it. There's a song about that. All of God's Children got shoes, they're gonna walk all over God's heaven. I'm afraid I missed that one. Well, you can't be blamed. We used to sing it at the Christmas concert in grade school. They called those songs, ***** Spirituals. I believe the language has changed since then, Everyone talking about heaven ain't going there. We would laugh at that line. I turned the shoes photo face down and moved on to the next one. A nude. This was not a Robert Mapplethorpe portfolio. So it was a nude woman. Her breasts and bush were in light and her face was in deep shadow but not so deep. You couldn't make out her features if you were attentive and made an effort. That was the genius of the photo. Her body was wholly visible, but her face was hidden and the natural human desire to flesh out what is concealed meant that the viewer neglected the model's naked body as splendid as it was to search for her face. Lord didn't read the picture that way. That's why men want to be photographers to get women to disrobe and exhibit themselves. It could be worse. It's the only one in the file done tastefully, at least in my eyes. People have been doing nudes for quite some time. Now, you could even say it's a tradition. Men have she corrected me while women have been the models. I let the subject lie. I could hardly expect Lord to enjoy looking at a photo of a naked woman and see the tension I saw in it. I would have lingered further with the pitcher, but that would have to wait until I had a moment of contemplation by myself.