I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 2, 2024] “The Hookup”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

Ten years of stories! Yikes, where does the time go?
When the first Short Story Advent Calendar launched, in 2015, we frankly had no clue we’d still be sitting here today, continuing to offer up batches of tasty stories fresh from the oven. To celebrate this milestone, we’ve packed the 10th SSAC with a mix of new and familiar names—ideal company for those chilly winter nights ahead.

The author of this story was Katherine Heiny.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.  And this one opens:

It’s December 2. Katherine Heiny, author of Games and Rituals, saves the good china for the CIA.

This story is about a Hungarian family living in the United States.  I have recently started working with a Hungarian woman, so this was a really fun story to read right now.

The family is comprised of three generations, a grandmother, her son and the grandson, Boti, who is 17 and is the protagonist.

The story is primarily about Bodi’s father and one of Bodi’s teachers.  But we learn a lot about Bodi as well.  Like that he has a girlfriend Rebecca (his grandmother says REB-bikka) who is incredibly smart and doing fantastic in school.  This annoys Bodi because he is smart but not as smart and because Rebecca has no intention of ruining her future and will therefor not be having sex with him.

But the thrust of the story happens when Bodi answers a knock on the door and there are two CIA agents standing there.  I loved the way he describes them–one looks like he ought to be working the register at Chick-Fil-A and the other looks like a lame entertainer from a childhood birthday party–Balloon Wizard.

They are there to speak to his father.  His father is full of bluster and is overfriendly–clearly he is guilty.  But of what?

Bodi’s grandmother is a hilarious character–negative and suspicious of everyone.  She refuses to get rid of any furniture and refuses to allow anything new into the apartment until she has come to accept it first.  Bodi has recently come to realize that she is crazy, and the things she implied were normal were absolutely not.  Like that the UPS man had stolen her reading glasses, that you must cover the TV with a towel when you aren’t watching it, and that McDonald’s workers hated Hungarians.

Bodi is sure that whatever the FBI are after has something to do with Kibbles.  Kibbles is one of his teachers (the story of this nickname is pretty good).  Upon learning tha Bodi was Hungarian, Kibbles befriended Bodi’s father.  There is nothing more embarrassing than that.  They would sit in his father’s office and drink (his father rarely drank alcohol).  He determined that Kibble was dangerous.

This was a really enjoyable story.