Disposition of Remains Read Online Free PDF

I lacked a certain amount of social grace. Evan had isolated me as best he could, and somewhere along the way, I’d stopped resisting and just allowed it to happen. I couldn’t help but giggle, imagining Evan’s reaction if he knew I was in the backseat of a pickup on some remote road in the middle of Arizona, staring at one the most magnificent faces I’d seen in a long time—even if it did belong to a guy named Wilbur.
    “How do you know Misty?” I asked.
    “Paul and I met Misty backpacking through Peru.”
    “Peru…really?”
    “Have you been?”
    “No. I’ve never been much of anywhere,” I sighed.
    How pathetic it felt to hear myself admit that fact. I had all the resources in the world, but had never used any of them to actually see the world.
    “If you could go anywhere, where would it be?” Wilbur asked sincerely, as he gazed at me with his enormous, lashy eyes.
    I glanced up at Misty, wondering if this guy was some continuation of her personal Make-A-Wish thing: Give cancer girl a hot guy for the night as a departure-from-life gift. I made a mental note to mention to Misty that my plight wasn’t to become public knowledge.
    Misty shrugged in my direction as she asked, “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
    “Nothing,” I replied.
    “So where would it be?” Wilbur asked again.
    “I’m a little too tired for soul-searching questions, but if I had to choose right now, I think I would really like to visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and plant myself in front of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus for a while.”
    “Good choice,” Wilbur replied quietly, nodding.
    I loved that painting, everything about it. I’d written a ten-page paper about it in college. I wrote about the colors, the lines, and the beauty of Venus’ ocean birth as a fully grown woman emerging on a seashell, her golden hair blowing in the wind. Just thinking about it made me smile.
    “How about you?” I asked Wilbur. “Where would you go if you could go anywhere?”
    “I think I’d go to the Havasupai Reservation,” he replied with a smirk.
    “Very funny,” I said.
    So funny, I had the urge to slap him senseless.
    Upon pulling into the driveway of Paul’s house, I grabbed my backpack and followed everyone inside. Paul’s tiny one-bedroom shack (or as a realtor would call it, “quaint gingerbread cottage”) looked as though it had been decorated by Norman Rockwell’s grandmother.
    Paul waved his arm around in a mi casa es su casa gesture.
    “One of you can have the floor and the other can take the couch. Let the brawl commence.”
    “I have my sleeping bag so I’ll take the floor,” Wilbur offered.
    “No brawl? Very disappointing,” Paul lamented.
    “Why do you have a sleeping bag?” I asked Wilbur, afraid of his answer.
    Misty poked her head out of the bathroom, her mouth full of toothpaste.
    “For Sedona, honey. I’ll find you an extra one in the morning.”
    “I didn’t realize it was a campout sort of deal,” I replied.
    “Camping isn’t your thing?” Wilbur asked.
    “I’m not sure I have a thing, but I’m pretty sure that if I did, it wouldn’t involve camping,” I said as I slowly pulled off my barely-even -scuffed Prada heels and dropped them to the floor for emphasis. “But, since I’ve never camped before, I guess I’ll find out.”
    I recognized the irony of the fact that I was a Native American who was completely out of touch with nature.
    “Wow, you really haven’t been anywhere,” Wilbur retorted as he expertly unfurled his sleeping bag onto the floor, less than three feet from me.
    I started to stumble through some kind of half-assed rebuttal, but became hopelessly preoccupied as he peeled off his tight black T-s hirt. I tried to play it casual, pretending as if I didn’t even notice those amazing pecs and bulging biceps. I was too dazed to count whether it was a six or eight-pack he was sporting. I was petrified by the thought of him removing his cargo shorts,