BooksBarbecue
Back The Dolphin House Save as PDF

The Dolphin House

Audrey Schulman
Contents (45)
  1. ALSO BY AUDREY SCHULMAN
  2. THE DOLPHIN HOUSE
  3. ONE Tampa, Florida Feb. 1965
  4. TWO Aug. 1957 Ogunquit, Maine
  5. THREE May 1965
  6. FOUR March 1958 Orlando, Florida
  7. ARRIVAL
  8. FIVE June 4, 1965
  9. SIX June 4, 1965
  10. SEVEN June 5, 1965
  11. EIGHT June 6–10, 1965
  12. NINE June 11–16, 1965
  13. TEN June 17–26, 1965
  14. ELEVEN June 27–30, 1965
  15. TWELVE July 1–8, 1965
  16. THIRTEEN July 9–13, 1965
  17. FOURTEEN July 14, 1965
  18. LANGUAGE LESSONS
  19. FIFTEEN July 15–17, 1965
  20. SIXTEEN
  21. SEVENTEEN July 18–25, 1965
  22. EIGHTEEN July 26–Aug. 1, 1965
  23. NINETEEN Aug. 2–7, 1965
  24. TWENTY Aug. 8–15, 1965
  25. TWENTY-ONE Aug. 16, 1965
  26. TWENTY-TWO Aug. 17–30, 1965
  27. HOMEARIUM
  28. TWENTY-THREE Homearium, Day 1
  29. TWENTY-FOUR Homearium, Day 3
  30. TWENTY-FIVE Homearium, Days 4–7
  31. TWENTY-SIX Homearium, Week 2
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN Homearium, Week 3
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT Homearium, Week 4
  34. TWENTY-NINE Homearium, Week 5
  35. THIRTY Homearium, Weeks 6–8
  36. THIRTY-ONE Homearium, Weeks 9–11
  37. THIRTY-TWO Homearium, Week 12
  38. THIRTY-THREE Homearium, Week 13
  39. THIRTY-FOUR Homearium, Week 14
  40. THIRTY-FIVE Homearium, Week 15
  41. THIRTY-SIX Homearium, Week 16
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN Homearium, Week 18
  43. THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  45. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cover

ALSO BY
AUDREY SCHULMAN

Theory of Bastards

Three Weeks in December

Swimming with Jonah

A House Named Brazil

The Cage

Europa Editions
1 Penn Plaza, Suite 6282
New York, N.Y. 10019
[email protected]
www.europaeditions.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2022 by Audrey Schulman
First publication 2022 by Europa Editions

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
instagram.com/emanueleragnisco

Cover design by Ginevra Rapisardi

Cover illustration © Xuan Loc Xuan

Gray letters throughout the text are intentional.

ISBN 9781609457464

Audrey Schulman

THE DOLPHIN
HOUSE

THE DOLPHIN
HOUSE

This is a work of fiction based on an experiment that happened in the summer of 1965 at a research facility in St. Thomas.

Although some of the events occurred, the characters are the product of my imagination and not based on real people, living or dead.

ONE
Tampa, Florida
Feb. 1965

At the age of 21, Cora got a job as a waitress in a club in Tampa.
It seemed right that the costume was difficult to pull on. She had to wiggle in and tug it on, then lie down to zip it up. The management required all the suits be cut one size too small. The outfit had ribs that pressed tight against her skin and pushed her breasts up. The result transformed her. Standing up, she was sleek and curved, had a rabbit’s ears and a tail. She did not recognize herself in the mirror.

The things the men said, the things they did, she tried to consider as intended for the rabbit.

The work shifts were long. She developed welts along her sides from the costume’s ribs. Her arms, strong from mucking out her dad’s pigs, trembled by the end of the night from carrying the trays of drinks and dishes.

One plus was, in this echoing hard-surfaced club with the loud music, everyone was partly deaf and had ringing in their ears. Here, she had the advantage of knowing how to lipread. And, since her shift didn’t start until five in the afternoon, she had the whole day to be outside.

She worked here for three months. Rented a room nearby and bit by bit finished paying off her new hearing aids, the ones that masqueraded as cat-eye glasses, no bulky transistor hidden in her clothing. Instead, everything was built into the thick arms of the glasses, a miracle of miniaturization. She was so grateful. Wearing these eyeglasses outside, under the right circumstances, she heard things she hadn’t heard since she was eight. Paper crinkling, a bird chirping, her own gut rumbling. The first time she heard a child laughing, she jerked around from surprise. The toddler, some blond tourist kid, walked by, staring.

Of course, she didn’t wear the glasses in the club. Management didn’t allow that.