The House of Discarded Dreams Read Online Free PDF

until eight p.m., and she left the house late.
    Vimbai shrugged. “Who cares,” she said. “There’s that thing in our phone. I think it wants to get out.”
    “Of course it does,” Maya said, her rich voice acquiring a soothing tone as if speaking to a cranky child. “Don’t worry, we’ll get it out. Just as soon as Felix wakes up. Come on, I’ll make coffee.”
    Vimbai sat at the kitchen table as Maya went through the ritual of brewing coffee. They didn’t bother with grinding whole beans, and Vimbai was getting used to the taste of coffee that came out of the can or a more fancy bagged variety—when it was Vimbai’s turn to shop, she went for shade-grown and fair trade, more out of habit than any conscious choice. This is what her mother always bought. The clinking of the carafe and hissing of steam, the smell of coffee felt comforting, and with every passing minute Vimbai was more and more willing to believe that the Psychic Energy Baby was just a product of fatigue, cold, and bad reception.
    The coffee bubbled and poured in a fragrant stream, and Maya sat down. “This ought to wake Felix up,” she said. “He’ll get that baby out of those wires. Poor thing.”
    “How?” Vimbai said. “What is Felix going to do?”
    “What he always does,” Maya answered. “You don’t think he earns rent money by sitting around all day, do you?”
    “I don’t know what he does,” Vimbai answered, and poured herself a cup. It warmed her hands and instilled a sense of serenity.
    “Well, I’ll tell you. He’s a freelancer. Only what he does, no one else can. He separates things.”
    “Oh?”
    Maya laughed and drank her coffee. “Things you can’t see, like that baby in the phone. Felix says, they sometimes contaminate the things you can see, or the other way around.”
    “People pay him for it?”
    Maya nodded. “Uh-huh.”
    “Like exorcisms?”
    “Not those, the Catholics do them. Felix does more simple stuff. Like junkies with invisible insects under their skin, or amputees with phantom limbs.”
    “He amputates phantom limbs?”
    “I suppose he does. In any case, we’ll see what he can do, huh?”
    Vimbai nodded. Somehow, the fact that Felix had an unusual occupation was easy to accept, and once accepted, any strange occupation seemed as reasonable as the next one. So if Felix made a living untangling the invisible babies out of the phone wires, what business it was of Vimbai’s? Who was she to judge? She felt only intense curiosity, and the weakest pang of guilt for missing her classes.

Chapter 3

    Felix stumbled downstairs just before noon. His terrible eyes were mercifully closed, and his hair hung into his face in tangled clumps. Vimbai gasped—the long strands didn’t just obscure parts of his forehead, but rather seemed to consume them entirely. His face seemed streaked by darkness, fractured like a tiger hidden in shadows. Her encounter with the Psychic Energy Baby had jolted her enough to realize that what she assumed was hair—had no other option, really, but to assume that—was a conglomeration of darkness, of absence of light; a black hole, emptiness of outer space, a jagged nothingness. It spilled over Felix’s face, threatening to consume it and retreating when he tossed his head and smiled at Maya.
    “Can I have some coffee?” he said.
    “Of course,” Maya said. “Help yourself.”
    Felix raked his insane hair out of his eyes, and his hands disappeared in blackness up to their wrists; he extricated them somewhat hastily, and his left eye rolled to look upward with a troubled expression.
    Vimbai tried to think of a question to ask, but came short. She could only round her eyes and shrug at Maya.
    “Felix,” Maya said the moment Felix took his seat by the table. “Vimbai found a ghost in the phone wires, think you can get it out?”
    “It depends,” Felix said and winced at the too-hot coffee. “Does it want to come out?”
    “I think so,” Maya said.