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

4:08, they read. Trembling, he reached into the darkness toward the spot above the numbers where the light switch in his bedroom had been.
    What appeared resembled in its sparseness the bedroom Jen had had redecorated five years ago. He was lying on a bed raised just a few inches above the bare floor, and he was twisted up in a white comforter. Other than the bed, there were few landmarks in the room for Lyle to seize on. "I see this room very Zen," the decorator had crooned, before removing every throw pillow, every scrap of chintz and bit of color, even the framed photographs of their two children. The only purely decorative object that she'd allowed, an amorphous chunk of granite, was perched on a stand and lit with a halogen spot. Lyle recalled how he had been cowed into approval by the enormous price tag.
    He glanced again at the clock: 4:10. Time didn't pass in eternity, did it? Still, he couldn't shake the sensation of being outside his body, a chill awareness as though his eyes were video cameras. Though he recognized every surface and object in the room, they were drained of the pulse of the familiar. He had the disturbing suspicion that if he were to step through the bedroom door, it would open back onto the nightmarish maze of corridors. That was what felt real: the looming conference room doors that had evaporated once he was inside, acne-blotched Dave Whitsop snickering at his discomfort, his wife's placid composure when she told him to go to hell.
    Lyle remained motionless in bed and watched the sluggish advance of minutes until the clock read 6:00. Then he disentangled himself from the bedding and forced himself to his feet, mimicking as best he could his usual morning routine. Brush teeth, shower, shave, select a suit and shirt from the closet. Each closet and drawer that he opened contained exactly what it should have, though this did not soothe him. The reflection in the mirror when he shaved looked like the face of someone he knew but couldn't quite put with a name. And when the door opened and Jen glided into the room, a strange voice leaped out of his throat, squeaking with hysteria.
    "Where were you? You were gone. I thought you were gone."
    Jen glanced at him, her eyebrows arched. "I slept in the guest room. You know, if you could hear yourself snore, you'd do something about it." He reached out to touch her, but she was disappearing into the bathroom.
    "I had a nightmare," he said, but there was only the hollow thrumming of the shower.
     
    He couldn't shake it. Lyle moved through the days and then weeks, enveloped in his nightmare. Driving to work on that first morning, he noted that the river of red lights snaking toward downtown Seattle in the predawn looked evil, like brimstone, and the air venting into his car smelled distinctly of sulfur. By the time he arrived at the glass monolith where his office was located and circled, level by level, into the concrete bowels of its parking garage, dampness was trickling from under his arms and down his ribs. He sat in his assigned space on Level 6 for nearly ten minutes, gripping the sweaty wheel and repeating like a mantra, "wake up and get ahold of yourself" before he was able to will himself out of the car, up the elevator, and through the reception area of Stickel, Porter, Rathburn amp; Webb. After that, he stopped parking underground and found a lot five blocks away.
    Slumped in his leather office chair, he would stare out the window at the skyline, shrouded in the perpetual drizzle of February. Occasionally, he would swivel around to again scrutinize the paper on his desk, but everything seemed to be written in code: "… except as provided in subsection (c) of this section, the trustee may avoid any transfer of an interest of the debtor in property to or for the benefit of a creditor, for or on account of an antecedent debt owed by the debtor before such transfer was made…" Somehow he would manage to decipher some of the scrit and even to construct