Confessions Of A Falling Woman And Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

Room J. He poked his head into the room and saw maybe a dozen people seated around an enormous mahogany conference table. Apparently he had interrupted a meeting, for the conversation ceased and all heads turned toward him. He was about to apologize when he recognized the faces: Chad Rathburn and two of the attorneys from Estate Planning, and his wife, Jen, was there also, looking very cool and pretty in a pink wool suit. Next to her, Dave Whitsop, Lyle's biology class partner in the ninth grade, squeezed Jen's arm and leaned in to mouth something in her ear. Around the far end of the table, he saw his friend Bill, a woman he had dated briefly in college, and his father, which was puzzling because the latter had been dead for eight years. He started to say something, but his father pursed his lips and shook his head almost imperceptibly, and suddenly it occurred to Lyle that he had done something wrong.
    "Lyle" – Chad Rathburn broke the silence – "come in."
    There were no empty chairs around the table so Lyle shut the door behind him and remained standing obediently just inside it.
    "We'd hoped to give you an opportunity to explain yourself, but frankly" – here Chad glanced meaningfully at his watch – "frankly, we've already wasted a lot of time here and I've got a three o'clock. And I think your actions pretty much speak for themselves."
    "Actions?"
    "Well, not to put too fine a point on it, it's certainly not the kind of performance we expect."
    "I, I don't understand." Lyle felt panic like heat rash prickling over his body; he couldn't remember preparing for this meeting.
    "Okay, I won't mince words. After giving a good deal of consideration to the question of your future, and I think I speak for everyone here" – Chad slicked a palm over his balding skull – "there's not much evidence."
    The room rippled and swelled as though underwater. Lyle's eyes darted around the table; the faces, lit from beneath by small banker's lamps, glared back green and implacable. He noticed his daughter, still five or six years old, doodling on the legal pad in front of her.
    "You're going to kill me, aren't you?" The question popped out of his mouth as unexpectedly as a goldfish.
    "That boat's already sailed, Lyle. I thought you grasped at least that much." Eyebrows lifted in amusement, and Dave Whitsop smirked and muttered something about the pope's being a Catholic.
    "Pay attention, son," Lyle's father ordered.
    "Actually, I think that about wraps it up." Chad began gathering together a sheaf of papers spread out in front of him. "You can leave that way, Lyle." He nodded toward a glass wall at the far end of the conference room. Lyle could see, through the panes, a bruised gray sky – no other buildings, nothing at all. He felt himself sliding involuntarily toward the window and when he peered out, he saw that the building was suspended in a roiling fog. He turned to Jen and pleaded with her; get me out of here, he heard his voice saying, but she returned his gaze impassively.
    "Don't be dramatic, Lyle. Just go to hell."
    Lyle was falling, a horrible blind free fall that turned his insides to water. Toppling backward, he flung out his arms like broken wings, desperately clawing at the rush of space, and he felt the sickening sensation of air moving right through them. He plunged down and down, endlessly through the void, his body and mind displaced by gaseous terror. At the outer fringes of his reeling, he heard a sound. It was the screeching alarm of crows.
Caw, caw, caw
. And then his eyes jerked open and he recognized the sound as his own strangled whimpers.
    He was in hell. He was sure of that much, though he couldn't see into the blackness. Something was wrapped around his torso like a winding sheet, preventing him from moving his limbs. He listened to his heart stutter frantically and replayed the horror of falling. Slowly, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he noticed blood-red numbers blinking slowly out of the black: