Falling From Grace Read Online Free PDF

streamed from the slope of his hood and dripped off the end of his nose.
    I unzipped the door of my tent wider and held the flap open. “Get in here,” I ordered. “I’ll make room.”
    He disappeared back into the bivy sac, the cocoon writhing about on the ground like a giant worm. Could he breathe? “What are you doing?” I couldn’t make out the muffled answer. He stood—a shiny teetering phallus in a sheath of nylon—hopped across the clearing and wriggled out of the bag into my tent, naked but for a pair of briefs, bare skin luminous in the diffuse light. He drew his sleeping bag out of the sac like a rabbit out of a hat and spread it, still dry, in the space I had arranged between my bedding and my gear.
    â€œWhat took you so long?” I zipped up the tent door, shutting out the weather.
    He chuckled, his long body sliding back into his sleeping bag. “Are you sure you want to know?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI had to find my underwear.”
    â€¢ • •
    â€œWhat do you think about this protest?” he asked once settled.
    â€œI don’t know,” I answered, acutely aware of his body next to mine. “It’s possible. Environmentalists have been fighting clear-cutting on the island for decades. Remember the blockade at Clayoquot ten years ago?”
    â€œI was in Australia. Big news down under,” he said. “Lots of arrests.”
    â€œI’ll ask Roger about the pamphlet,” I said. Roger Payne, the PCF forester, had helped me select our sites in the buffer zone. “He’ll know. But I bet it’s nothing.”
    Paul drifted into sleep. I lay awake on my side, facing him, aware of his breath, the gentle hiss in and out of his nostrils, the smell of rain on his skin. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could make out the contours of his face, the high, smooth forehead, his odd nose with its narrow ski jump bridge. I knew the acne scar on his right cheek, the way the trough of his upper lip vanished into moustache, the colour of his beard, a riot of red, blond, and brown shifting from long to short depending on his mood. After two years of working together in the canopy, Paul and I had formed a close friendship; I trusted him with my life. I worked hard to keep myself from wanting more from him. Not only was I his boss, but Paul collected women. A continuous string of smart, gorgeous women—tall women—who never lasted, their demise a faint hope for me at best. After long stretches of time together in the field, I had become his confidante.
    â€œI don’t know what I did wrong,” he’d moan over the latest loss.
    We’d mull over the possibilities, the insecurities of the woman in question, the nature of his work. Or the one I never brought up: his lack of resistance to a shiny new treasure passing by.
    â€œSome women don’t appreciate nice guys,” I would assure him, unable—or unwilling—to complete the logical progression of my statement. The right woman will come along one day.
    â€œThe right guy will come along for you, Faye,” he would say in response to my few unsatisfying stories about men. Les, my date for high school grad, an IQ of one sixty and an inability to maintain a conversation for longer than thirty seconds. A desperate and mismatched couple for one brief night. Bob, the brother of my one university friend Laura, who disappeared overseas to do aid work. Laura passed on the Dear Faye letter, a short hand-scrawled note I interpreted as, “I needed to go halfway around the world to avoid you.” Will, who asked me to dress up in child’s clothing the third and last time we slept together. All average-height men. I’d never met another dwarf in spite of the urgings of my mother. “There are organizations,” Grace had insisted. I hadn’t dated anyone since graduating with my bachelor degree. A master’s. PHD . Post-grad work and a