The Book of Speculation: A Novel

“It’s just weird that you have it. You should send it back to that guy—I know you won’t. You should also forget about the house and leave, but you won’t do that, either.” Her hand twitches, a quick jerking motion, half wave, half threatened slap. “Why does talking with you always end with me being pissed off? I’m gonna get Doyle. We should check in with work today. And,” she adds as she stops down the hall, “you need to talk to Alice.”


Doyle is on the bed in her room, cross-legged, and meditating. The tentacles on his neck ripple with each breath. Enola says his name and his eyes flutter open. “Hey, Little Bird. I heard you guys talking so I figured I’d just…” He pops his neck. “You guys should talk more, right? It’s good when people talk. Brothers and sisters especially.” He says this as though it’s profound.

“Yeah. Sure,” she says. “Thom’s going to want us to come by. We should get going.”

“Right. Gotta keep an eye on the work situation,” he drawls. He says sitchyation and stretches, moving like a man who needs to scratch. “We should talk to Thom about your brother, yeah?”

She nods.

“I have some things lined up. I’ll be fine,” I say. Sanders-Beecher checking references is a good sign. And the half a job lined up with Frank might tide me over—if Alice forgives me.

“Whatever,” she says.

Seeing Enola and Doyle in her room makes me realize how small it is, a child’s room. She rummages under her bed, bones and sinew thrown together in jeans and a dirty paisley skirt. I’ve never understood women who wear skirts and pants at the same time. She stuffs her foot into her shoe, shoving it over a mangled backstay. I stare at her other naked foot. She scrunches the toes up, a habit to hide a deformity, a slight, fleshy webbing between each digit.

“When will you be back?”

“Not sure. Swing by if you feel like getting out.” She looks around her room. “Hell if I know how you stand this place.” Without looking at it, she points to a deep gouge in the wall. To Doyle she says, “I did that.” She began digging that gouge after Dad died.

“Really?” His forehead wrinkles, scrunching the dark ink that crosses his scalp.

“I liked really picking at something hard, you know? When I was pissed off I’d dig at it with a quarter.” I let her lie to him. She used to eat the chalky lumps of drywall. When I came home late I’d check on her and watch as she dug at the wall with her littlest finger and licked the dust.

Things were that bad. They must have been.

“You want us to bring you zeppole?” Enola asks as we walk back to the living room.

“Huh?”

“From the carnival. You used to like them. You should come. If it’s a slow day and George is bored he might share his weed with us; the Fat Man gets good weed. You want?”

“Thanks, no.”

“Suit yourself. Come by, though, okay?” Enola pulls hard at the door, bracing her foot against the wall, yanking until it pops open.

“Do you think Thom would talk to me about his book?”

Doyle slinks an arm around Enola’s waist. Maybe it’s the light, but she’s so thin that if she turned sideways she might disappear. She isn’t well.

“Stop it with the book stuff,” she says. “I know you want to think it’s something more, but maybe it’s just that we’re sad. Maybe Mom was unbearably sad. It doesn’t have to be more than that. Being that sad is enough.”

And then she walks away. Doyle looks over his shoulder at me as they head to his car. For a moment I think he’ll say something, but he rests his hand on her hip and walks with her. As they’re pulling away he leans from the window and shouts, “Dude, just come.”

Two steps from my desk a crack rends the air; my left ankle rolls and my knee buckles. Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m shouting, falling. The floor gives way and the lower half of my leg is swallowed by breaking boards, wrenched and wrong. I crash onto my back, skull cracking against the floor. The quickest flash of memory—Mom, pressing her lips to a bump on my head after I smacked it against the corner of the coffee table.

I’m close enough to the couch to press my shoulders into it and leverage my weight. Shimmying the leg from the hole adds splinters to the pain. I shout to Enola, Doyle, but they’re already gone. My calf is chewed up and my ankle is bloodied and twisted. A dust cloud makes the air dirty. Papers fall from my desk, floating like leaves.

I could just lie here, couldn’t I? Just for a little while. I look down at the hole. It’s a decent size, a fair amount of damage, I thought it would be foot-shaped but it’s no specific shape. The disturbing part is that there’s a noise, lapping waves from the void below the floor. I stare into the hole. Is that sand? It could be sand. There shouldn’t be sand down there. I put my belly to the floor and peer down through the hole. That can’t be sand. I stick my head into the blackness. Only it’s not entirely black. Light is leaking in.

With Enola and Doyle gone I call Alice, hoping pain will breed sympathy.

“Please don’t hang up.”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” she says.

“Because my floor just broke, maybe my ankle, too. I’m stuck by the couch and I’m sorry.”

I hear her closing a desk drawer and remember that she color codes her pens. “You made it to the phone just fine.”