Read Online A Matter of Life and Death or Something by Ben Stephenson - Free Book Online Page A

look, like kind of serious. I didn’t want to waste any more time.
    â€œWhat I really wanted to talk about was this,” I said.
    â€œBrass tacks.”
    â€œWhat? No,” I said. I took the notebook from my backpack.
    â€œWhat’ve you got there?”
    â€œI found this book in the woods, and someone named Phil wrote it.”
    â€œYou think it’s Phil’s?”
    â€œWell, I know it’s Phil’s,” I said. “It’s got his name on it. And also everywhere inside it.” I held the book out way up high for her to have a look, but she didn’t move her hand to take it from me, and she didn’t even really look at it. She looked like she was thinking, like she was staring at something, and her eyes were moving backward and forward. My arm got a little sore of holding Phil in the air so I stopped reaching and slowly put Phil down in my lap. Mrs. Beckham’s shiny lips were mumbling things under her breath.
    â€œFive, four... well, it’s probably only four or five there, right now,” she said. “I’ll try him!”
    She got up and rushed over to the phone, and then I realized what I hadn’t been realizing yet. There was a person I’d entirely forgotten about, and he was Mrs. Beckham’s son, and his name was Phil Beckham. Once, a long time ago, he babysat me. Just once.
    â€œNo, that’s okay,” I said pretty loudly, “it’s probably not—”
    â€œOh don’t worry about it,” she said, “I was going to call him today anyway.”
    She dialled the numbers.
    â€œYou’ll never guess where he lives now,” she said to me, as if she had something amazingly interesting to say. I didn’t guess.
    â€œ Phil adelphia!”
    She yelped out a bunch of laughs at herself, not seeming to care whether I found it very funny or not. I didn’t, by the way. Then her laughter was cut off by a muffled sound in the top part of the phone.
    â€œâ€”Phil! Hello dear. How’s Phil adelphia today?” She started laughing again, and miles and miles away, I bet Phil Beckham probably laughed too. I’d seen him laugh a couple times.
    I put my head inside of my hands and bent down under the stack of laundry under a small piece of plywood under a round clock under a stack of books under my tape recorder, so that the wall came up really tall between me and Brenda. I laid my forehead down on the cover of Phil’s book, rubbed my eyes and took a bunch of deep breaths.
    On the tape, you can hear Brenda and the impostor Phil’s conversation going on and on behind the wall of stuff for an entire twelve and a half minutes before you hear the loud roar sounds of the tape recorder being stuffed into my backpack. I decided to leave. I sat up in stealth mode and slipped Phil back into my backpack too, zipped the zipper and put it on my back. I sneaked my way out of the kitchen and into the living room while Brenda’s back was turned to me. I stood in there and considered my next move. I could just barely see into the kitchen from where I was, and I could see the curly white phone cord wiggling around in the air, and tap tapping against the fridge.
    A pile of jeans on the living room couch bulged up out of nowhere, and a poofy white cat silently hopped to the floor. It looked at me with its yellow eyes, and then strolled its way over to my feet. He or she seemed friendly enough, and actually started to wrap itself around my legs and go around and around between them, kind of in the shape of the symbol for infinity, which is called a “lemniscate.” While the cat was lemniscating I leaned down and got small, and I touched its smooth back and it shot up like a gigantic inchworm. I didn’t really know that many cats. It sniffed my bare feet, and I felt a bit smelly, but I don’t think it cared, because it started to sort of lick my toes. It licked my big toe, then the next, then the next, then