A Thief in the House of Memory Read Online Free PDF Page B

at her jade eyebrow ring.
    It was the same colour as her eyes. “Maybe some other time.”
    Vivien flashed a quick smile and returned to her writing. She looked particularly poetic today, in an Indian silk scarf and a faux-leather jacket over a smocked dress that she might have worn when she was six. Underneath it she wore a black leotard and baggy gold corduroy pants. She glanced up and noticed Dec staring at her. “We call the ode
Valley of the Dweebs.”
    â€œWe?” he said. “I didn’t know poetry was a team sport.”
    Vivien tapped herself on the chest with the end of her pencil. “Just me,” she said. “But there’s one letter of the alphabet we do not care to use today. So we are forced to say we.”
    Right, thought Dec. With Vivien there was always something interesting going on. “You’re not using the letter I?”
    She nodded.
    â€œYou’re going I-less?” he said, just to be perfectly sure.
    â€œExactly,” she said.
    â€œYou’re going blind?” asked Richard.
    â€œNot the organ, the letter,” said Vivien. “A poet must learn to expand her vocabulary.”
    Martin McNair cleaned his glasses on his sweater. “To expand your vocabulary by reducing the number of letters you can utilize is a contradiction in terms.”
    â€œNo, she has a point,” said Melody, who never agreed with Martin on anything. “A handicap makes you find new ways of doing things, right? So Viv is going to have to find new ways of expressing herself — words that don’t have an I in them. That’s got to be good for a poet.”
    Meanwhile, Vivien had dug an old book out of her backpack — a novel with a torn cover. “We found a remarkable book at a second-hand store,” she said. She opened it to the first page and handed the book to Dec. “Please,” she said. The crowd drew in close. He read the name on the cover,
Gadsby
, by Ernest Wright. He opened it to the first page and cleared his throat.
    â€œUpon this basis I am going to show you how a bunch of bright young folks did find a champion; a man with boys and girls of his own; a man of so dominating and happy individuality —”
    â€œThat’s full of I’s,” interrupted Richard.
    â€œBut no E’s,” said Arianna, without looking up from her crossword.
    â€œExactly,” said Vivien triumphantly. She took the book from Dec, turned to the front cover flap and pointed at the part she wanted him to read. “It’s called a lipogram,” he announced.
“A composition which contains no instances of a particular letter of the alphabet.”
    The others looked interested. “That whole novel has no E’s in it?”
    â€œNot a one,” said Vivien.
    â€œLipogram,” said Arianna, writing it down on the margin of her newspaper. “Kind of like liposuction, except that you’re sucking out a letter instead of subcutaneous fat.”
    Only Richard Pergolesi was still eating. He stopped.
    â€œHow long are you going to keep this up?” asked Melody.
    â€œI mean, you can’t even say your own name!”
    â€œJust today,” said Vivien. “Tomorrow shall be an O-less day, the next day we shall go A-less, as we work our way up to the greatest challenge of all, E-lessness.”
    Nobody spoke for a moment. Everyone seemed to be trying to imagine an E-less day. No “the,” no “he,” no “she.” But then, as if by unspoken agreement, everyone returned to what he or she was doing. Melody wrote something on the blackboard that Martin immediately erased. Arianna filled in a long word Down. And Langston with a chortle took Richard’s queen.
    Dec rested his chin on the table. “How about U?” he said.
    â€œWhat about me?”
    â€œI mean the letter U. And how about ‘sometimes Y’?”
    â€œBeen there, done that,” said Vivien.