The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    But Nathaniel was older than Marbie, and seemed to have forgotten school. She herself remembered junior high as a cacophony of shrieking bells and thudding teachers’ voices. All day she was distracted by images of Listen quietly dissolving in the noise. Papers drifted out of Marbie’s hands, and ink slipped from pens and stained her fingers.
    She phoned Listen at home as soon as she could, to ask about her first day, and was strangely relieved to hear that the girl still had a voice.
    Thursday morning, running late for work, Marbie almost stepped into the path of a semitrailer. A pencil seller shouted a warning just in time.
    She phoned Nathaniel at the Banana Bar to tell him about it. She liked to phone Nathaniel at work, especially when he was busy, surrounded by customers. It was then that his voice took on the edge that it had when she first met him.
    Actually, when she first met him, his voice had been jocular, like someone playing tennis. They had met in a hotel elevator in Melbourne, and had spent the next few days drinking coffee together, while Listen danced around their table.
    It was not until they were all back home in Sydney that he began to telephone.
    He carved off an edge of his voice for the phone calls, making it cool and restrained, which caused her to press her forehead to the wall, hushing even her breath so she could hear.
    â€œAre you there?” he would say, in his nonchalant voice.
    â€œUh-huh.” And then she would fall silent at once so that his voice would go on in that way.
    Friday, Marbie was not late for work, and she met the aeronautical engineer.
    Tabitha (Marbie’s supervisor) had arranged for an aeronautical engineer to visit the small boardroom, the one with bowls of mints on the sideboard and views of Darling Harbour. He was there to demonstrate the tendencies of airborne cars.
    They were always dealing with airborne cars in their work. Cars seemed to leave the ground at the slightest suggestion: a tap from a semitrailer; the bark of a dog on the side of the road. One claimant even said that her car took flight when she changed the radio station.
    Marbie and her colleagues tended to be dubious about these claims, but Perhaps, they often said, we are wrong.
    Fridays at work, everyone was cocky and buoyant, saying cheerful things with their heads tilted sideways. The aeronautical engineer arrived with his swinging paisley tie and purple shirt, and right away he recognized their Friday mood. He put both hands to his closely shaved head and said, “To begin. The airplane!” Then he asked for a page from Marbie’s notepad and showed them how to make a paper plane.
    They spent the afternoon making paper planes, paper fans, or paper swans, and drinking all the wine from the small boardroom fridge, while the aeronautical engineer wandered around with his hands behind his back. He praised Marbie’s fan exuberantly.
    Toni got the key to the big boardroom, and came back with seven half-bottles of white wine, and the aeronautical engineer praised her, which made Marbie slightly jealous, so she showed him the paper turtle she’d been working on. He didn’t understand what it was but praised it anyway. Then Rhamie interrupted with a handful of toy cars, and the aeronautical engineer remembered why he was there and made them throw the toys at one another to demonstrate the tendencies of airborne cars.
    It was wonderful.
    At four o’clock, everyone decided they had done enough work for the day, and they invited the aeronautical engineer to join them at the Night Owl Pub for their Friday drinks. He said he had to run and move his car because he had just that moment remembered it was in a one-hour parking spot! Oh no, they cried, you could have parked in our building! They wanted him to park in the building now, but he had a meeting in Chatswood and maybe didn’t even have time to have a drink? He’d try to join them for five