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  Praise for Rachel Cantor and A Highly Unlikely Scenario

  “It’s as if Kurt Vonnegut and Italo Calvino collaborated to write a comic book sci-fi adventure and persuaded Chagall to do the drawings. One of the freshest and mostly lively novels I have encountered for quite a while.”

  —Jim Crace, author of Harvest and The Pesthouse

  “A Highly Unlikely Scenario is a joyful book, full of the energy of undiluted invention and the thoughtful imagination of a writer to watch. It’s a wild ride and much more—funny, intelligent and entirely pleasing.”

  —A. L. Kennedy, author of Day

  “Part Italo Calvino, part Ray Bradbury, in this extraordinary novel, Rachel Cantor explores questions of self-knowledge, true love and family, all while saving the world—and winning readers—in the past, present, and future.”

  —Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

  “I didn’t know I needed a mystical Jewish Douglas Adams in my life, but Rachel Cantor is it, and her Guide makes me shep naches every time I turn a page. Buy this book, bubeleh! It will surprise you in ways large and small, and it will fill you with delight.”

  —Emily Barton, author of Brookland

  “Cosmic and comic, full of philosophy, mysticism and celestial whimsy. A story of listening, of souls and bodies, that is at once both profoundly wild and wildly profound.”

  —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

  “A sharp, witty, and immensely entertaining debut … Cantor’s skill in rendering complex and highly believable characters makes for an unexpectedly moving tale.”

  —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

  “A dystopian satire, a story about storytelling, believing and listening—A Highly Unlikely Scenario is ultimately a history of our own strange world.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “[A] dizzying fabulist debut.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Ultimately, more than incantations and codes, it’s family Cantor cares about. A Highly Unlikely Scenario is about just that: Familial wisdom and love lost and found and shared anew, finally, conquering all.”

  —The Daily Beast

  “[Cantor’s] imagination is exhilarating—A Highly Unlikely Scenario will appeal to fans of sci-fi and people who just like to laugh.”

  —Cosmopolitan’s 10 Books by Women You Have to Read This Spring

  “A treat for those who like zippy sci-fi paced like the stories of Kurt Vonnegut.”

  —Time Out New York

  “Rachel Cantor joins the ranks of authors who are able to turn philosophical concepts into whiz-bang plots, and make them funny as well. Throw in some family dysfunction, time travel, a librarian ingénue, and the possible destruction of the world, and you’ve got an adventure story replete with nerdy delights.”

  —Tor

  “The book’s plot, which concerns a future where fast food corporations run the world, is deliciously weird enough to work in its own warped way, walking the line between straight fantasy and fiction.”

  —Flavorwire

  “A heroic tale unlike any other: a novel that is not about a quest but about learning that the world—our world—is full of extraordinary, mysterious wonders.”

  —The Kenyon Review

  “This debut novel is a present to both sci-fi and humor fans alike.”

  —Barnes & Noble Book Blog, January indie books roundup

  “In this roller-coaster debut, fast-food corporations rule the world and a peon customer-service worker has to save it … Cantor is in control of her material, and successful dystopian satire makes more sense while you’re lost in it.”

  —Heeb, Best Books of the Year

  “Brooklyn-based writer Rachel Cantor has created a whole new world in her debut novel—a humorous and playful science fiction story.”

  —Brooklyn Eagle

  “Delightful … The sense of excitement in Cantor’s prose, which propels this familiar story of a few silly, frightened people braving their way through a maddening, baffling world, is what compels us to keep reading.”

  —The Rumpus

  “An intrepid debut.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Cantor suspends disbelief and creates a loony world entirely of her own, which is terrifically funny and effortlessly enjoyable … Highly entertaining and adventurous.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] rambunctiously smart, pun-spiked, and sweet dystopian romantic comedy … Cantor’s funny and charming metaphysical adventure and love story is a wily inquiry into questions of perception, knowledge, mystery, legacy, and love.”

  —Booklist

  “Cantor’s novel will be a great hit for fans of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. There’s a lot going on here, and all of it is amusing.”

  —Library Journal

  “The great pleasure of such novels is the world-building, in which the author invents a new universe while playfully commenting on our own. And what Cantor does of this is great, her impish prose and dry wit perfectly suited to the task.”

  —The Telegraph (UK)

  ALSO BY RACHEL CANTOR

  A Highly Unlikely Scenario

  GOOD ON PAPER

  Copyright © 2016 by Rachel Cantor

  First Melville House printing: January 2016

  Melville House Publishing

  46 John Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  and

  8 Blackstock Mews

  Islington

  London N4 2BT

  mhpbooks.com facebook.com/mhpbooks @melvillehouse

  ISBN 978-1-61219-471-4 (ebook)

  Design by Adly Elewa

  v3.1

  For my parents, who taught me most of what I know about new life

  How many nights must it take

  one such as me to learn

  that we aren’t, after all, made

  from that bird which flies out of its ashes,

  that for a man

  as he goes up in flames, his one work

  is

  to open himself, to be

  the flames?

  —GALWAY KINNELL, from “Another Night in the Ruins” (Body Rags)

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Also by Rachel Cantor

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE: THE CALL CHAPTER 1: THE CALL

  CHAPTER 2: NOT WHAT YOU THINK

  CHAPTER 3: THE SINGULAR PILGRIM

  PART TWO: THRESHOLD CHAPTER 4: NEW LIFE

  CHAPTER 5: BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD

  CHAPTER 6: COMFORT ZONE

  CHAPTER 7: ODOROUS OBJECT

  CHAPTER 8: BILLBOARD ARTIST OF THE HEART

  CHAPTER 9: Y2K POETRY

  CHAPTER 10: A FAIRY TALE

  CHAPTER 11: SLEEPING WITH NANCY DREW

  CHAPTER 12: SLUMBER PARTY

  CHAPTER 13: TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

  CHAPTER 14: SECOND COMING

  CHAPTER 15: THRESHOLD

  PART THREE: DECEPTION CHAPTER 16: A MOST SPIRITUAL COMMUNION

  CHAPTER 17: TRADUTTORE/TRADITORE

  CHAPTER 18: REAL PEOPLE

  CHAPTER 19: MORNING PEOPLE

  CHAPTER 20: WITHOUT YOU, WHO KNOWS

  CHAPTER 21: GHOST IN THE ANNEX

  CHAPTER 22: THE ALL-IMPORTANT COUPLET

  CHAPTER 23: OH HAPPY DAY!

  CHAPTER 24: MYSTIC CLAM SHACK

  CHAPTER 25: STUNNING VICTORY

  CHAPTER 26: RITALIN FOR THE HEART

  CHAPTER 27: FALSE FRIENDS AND TRUE

  CHAPTER 28: MIRACLES ARE POSSIBLE

  CHAPTER 29: ROSH HASHANAH, MY ASS

&n
bsp; CHAPTER 30: INTO THE ITALIAN SUNSET

  PART FOUR: MUSE CHAPTER 31: WATCH THE DING DONG, DEAR

  CHAPTER 32: SECRETS OF THE CONFESSIONAL

  CHAPTER 33: BALD DONUTS

  CHAPTER 34: THE CHARMING CHIASMUS

  CHAPTER 35: WHAT COMES AFTER ONCE UPON A TIME?

  CHAPTER 36: RIGHT! WRITE!

  CHAPTER 37: BY A CLEAR STREAM

  CHAPTER 38: ALWAYS WE RETURN TO DANTE

  CHAPTER 39: GOOD ON PAPER

  PART FIVE: DEATH CHAPTER 40: YOU DON’T THINK THE APOCALYPSE CAN HAPPEN

  CHAPTER 41: THE HERO’S DESCENT

  CHAPTER 42: HEAD OF THE CANONICAL CLASS

  CHAPTER 43: LIFE FOR DUMMIES

  CHAPTER 44: NINE LIVES

  CHAPTER 45: UNDERSTANDING

  CHAPTER 46: THE FLAME OF LOVE

  CHAPTER 47: THE ENEMY WITHIN

  CHAPTER 48: A BRILLIANT SOLUTION

  CHAPTER 49: TOPEKA

  PART SIX: TEST CHAPTER 50: THE FLYING GIRL

  CHAPTER 51: THE HERO DEFEATED

  PART SEVEN: RETURN CHAPTER 52: ICARUS DEFEATHERED

  CHAPTER 53: NOT AS HE WAS, AS HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN

  CHAPTER 54: THE INDISPENSABLE PIVOT

  CHAPTER 55: HE’S BACK

  CHAPTER 56: LET’S MAKE A DEAL

  CHAPTER 57: LOVE, OUR HARROWING

  CHAPTER 58: THAT AWESOME FLYER

  CHAPTER 59: SHUVI, SHUVI HA-SHULAMIT

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE

  THE CALL

  1

  THE CALL

  Twelve thousand envelopes wanted stuffing, there were twelve thousand labels to affix. Mr. Ferguson, Administrative Manager of Legs-R-Us, had particular ideas about proportional folding, and straight affixion.

  Affliction? Durlene asked.

  Affixion! I said.

  Never heard of that, Durlene said.

  Exactly! I said.

  Why are you whispering? Durlene asked.

  I was hiding in the supply closet, but Durlene didn’t need to know that.

  You need to airlift me out of here, I said.

  You need to stick it out, Shira. I can’t keep placing you if you keep quitting jobs.

  I never managed to stick. I couldn’t look at the walls of the schlock gallery, I couldn’t bear the boss who kept telling me to smile or the funny smell in the church-office lunchroom.

  I blamed Clyde. We’d gotten together last spring, as Good Scents prepared for Winter Wonderland. As a joke, the flavor techs threw a holiday party, complete with an inflatable Santa, and a menorah for me and the ancient receptionist. Clyde explained over imitation-raspberry-flavored eggnog that a woman’s sense of smell is more acute than that of a man. Allowed to sniff a variety of sweaty T-shirts, a woman will naturally be attracted to the one with the most compatible DNA. It was only when he dabbed soy sauce behind my ears that I realized I was being seduced. We French-kissed under the mistletoe: I guess I liked what I smelled.

  But that was spring. By summer, Clyde’s Gal Friday was back, and I was let go: a temp is a temp is a temp, after all; there’d been no talk of us or tomorrow.

  Really? I’d asked while buttoning my top.

  If the girl needs time off, I’ll ask for you, he said.

  I felt shabby, then, and out of sorts.

  Since then, there’d been Falafel Dynasty, the Workers’ Museum, the doll importer, and now the proportional-folding system.

  I need something different, I told Durlene from the supply closet. Really different. A new start.

  That’s what you said before: I got you a charity!

  I know, I said. Prosthetic legs, they’re important.

  Sticking is important, she said. Sticking means temp to perm. You do want something permanent, right? You’re not one of these folks who thinks the world’s going to end with Y2K, are you?

  It was then that I got the call.

  It was Ahmad. Friend of my youth, roommate, co-parent.

  Gotta go, Durlene! Sorry!

  Shira! I need you to stay! Do not quit this job!

  Other line! I said. Gotta take it. Could be my kid!

  Do not quit this job, Shira!

  You shtupping your boss? Ahmad asked when I switched lines. Your voice has that breathless quality.

  I’m not breathless, I’m whispering. Is Andi okay?

  Of course Andi’s okay, but you won’t believe what I have in my hand.

  Don’t play with me, I said. You interrupted an important meeting.

  Ahmad laughed. I couldn’t help laughing, too.

  You’ve got a telegram.

  A what? I asked, even though I’d heard him perfectly well. (A telegram? Was there even such a thing anymore?)

  A telegram, he said. Shall I open it for you?

  I don’t believe it, I said.

  I assure you, Ahmad said. It is here in my hands. The young man who delivered it was quite delectable. We have a date—tonight. We’re going bowling.

  You sure it’s not about Andi?

  Andi is three blocks away. If something happened, science camp would call.

  Wait, I said, and leaned back against a wall of copy paper, and told myself to breathe.

  A telegram could mean only one thing. My mother, MIA since I was seven. She’d found me. Or she was dead and someone else had found me.

  Don’t open it, I said.

  Ahmad didn’t speak.

  I mean it, Ahmad! Don’t open it.

  I heard a tearing sound.

  Don’t open it! I shrieked.

  Oh! Ahmad said, and then silence. You won’t believe this.

  I hung up, then pleaded Emergency and left for the day, even though, as Mr. Ferguson reminded me, envelopes don’t stuff themselves. I pulled Andi from science camp, whispering to her Enrichment Facilitator that Andi’s aunt Emma had died, wishful thinking on my part.

  Just in the nick of time, Andi muttered, dragging her Pretty Princess backpack behind her. We were learning about tectonic shifts. If the crust of the earth is moving, she said, shaking her braids, I don’t want to know about it.

  Indeed, I thought, and squeezed her, and suggested she take off her lab coat so we could be off to see the Wizard, which to Andi meant a trip to Kmart. Which earned me a hug.

  I love you when you buy me things, she said.

  2

  NOT WHAT YOU THINK

  Our apartment, lent to us by Ahmad’s university, was a stately brick affair at the junction of Broadway and West End. By Manhattan and possibly other standards, it was enormous: come the revolution, it would be divided among three, if not four, proletariat families. We called it the Den of Propinquity—joking, because the place was large, also not joking, because some days it seemed hardly large enough.

  The Den was decorated largely to Ahmad’s taste: elegant and minimal. Large earth-toned kilims, comfortable leather couches, Chinese vases on sleek teak tables. My room, next to Andi’s, was rather bare, though I’d lived in Ahmad’s apartment since before Andi was born: a few posters tacked to the wall—Corot’s Isola Tiberina, Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew. A single bed (natch), the obligatory rag rug. I’ve never invested much in things: any day—or so the theory went—we might move on.

  Andi wanted to show Ahmad the satin clothes hangers I’d gotten her (her choice), but he wasn’t in his room, and he wasn’t in the kitchen. Which meant he was in his studio, where he painted when he wasn’t teaching undergraduates about Depression Economics and the Economics of Change: fantasies that combined Indian gods, images iconic of the materialist West, and the Italian forms we grew up with—a haloed Ganesh squatting behind bars at the zoo, Ahmad, a donor in robes, kneeling before him. It was the one place neither Andi nor I could ever, ever go. I joked that Ahmad could keep the blue beards of his conquests there, if only his conquests were old enough to have beards, ha ha.

  Put the hangers on the dining room table, I told her. He’ll look at them
later.

  On the table, a note: You won’t be sorry. Under it, a folded telegram.

  Again that grinding in my belly. I turned toward Ahmad’s studio.

  Mom! Andi called out, horrified, but it couldn’t wait.

  Ahmad was in a far corner, drawing on an architect’s table—so intently, he hadn’t heard me enter.

  Mom! Andi hissed at me from the door.

  Ahmad looked up.

  My hands were shaking.

  Tell me, I said. Tell me what it is. Unless I shouldn’t know. Unless it’s something I don’t want to know. Do I really want to know?

  Sweetie! he said, and stood, noting Andi past my shoulder. You’ve got it all wrong! and he grabbed me. It’s okay, he said, then whispered so Andi wouldn’t hear: I promise it’s not what you think. I promise!

  My whole body was shaking.

  Are you sure? I murmured into his ear.

  I should have just told you. It’s a job. Go! Look.

  Why is Mommy crying? Andi asked, still standing at the doorway.

  Because she’s been offered the most amazing job in the world, Ahmad said. Anyone would cry. Go! he said, giving me a little shove. Look.

  I got satin hangers for my dresses, I heard my daughter say. Look!

  Let me guess, Ahmad said. They’re pink?

  They’re pink! Andi exclaimed.

  •

  Damn it, I thought. Thirty-five years gone and still you do this to me?

  I looked around for my mom-bag, where I kept the MOM! handkerchief Andi had embroidered, but couldn’t find it. I settled for my sleeve.

  Please, the telegram read, you do to me the pleasure of translating my work. I am calling to you soon. Grazie. Romei.

  Romei? As in the poet, winner of last year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, the only constellation in my sky for one sad moment in the eighties? Had Ahmad not said what he’d said, I’d have assumed the joke was his. (Last month, “Sonny Mehta” called, asking if I’d translate jet-engine specs for an anthology tentatively titled Heaving on a Jet Plane. I retaliated by having a barista leave messages from “Ollie North,” asking if Ahmad could keep a secret.) Ahmad didn’t approve of my underemployment, not when (according to him) the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, located in Rome for reasons best known to history, would pay me good lire to translate reports on wheat varieties and integrated pest management: he knew someone who knew someone who definitely knew someone!