Holland Suggestions Read Online Free PDF

away, you know. She had been in some kind of trouble in Wyllis when she was just eighteen. I never did know what that was about; only that she was under a court order of some kind. She refused to talk about it, just as she refused to talk about losing her department store job later, after some employee had poured red paint over the carpets one night after closing. I was an easy out for her, so we got married and moved up near Richmond. She hated that almost as much as she had hated Wyllis. Vivian hated everything. From the beginning, I knew, with the bleak certainty that some men know those things, that it wasn’t working. Knowing it didn’t help. When she wanted to leave, she just left. And when I got in her way she tried to cut my throat with a broken milk bottle.
    I was filling my glass again and Judy was staring out at the gray day. Maybe I could stop here and finish another time; but no, it was coming up like a rotten meal and I could not stop until it was all out. Telling Judy about the milk bottle wouldn’t help her, but at least I had faced it and passed it. Now I could move on to something else. I noticed that Judy was staring at the bumpy scar on my neck, where I was feeling it with my fingers, and I took my hand down and busied my fingers with my glass.
    The Scotch was having a dulling effect on my brain. That was what I wanted, but not too much or too soon. I sipped it and pushed the glass away from me.
    “Where did she go?” Judy asked.
    “I haven’t got the slightest idea. I haven’t seen her to this day.”
    There was a long pause while we both reorganized our thoughts. Nothing came of that, so after a while I asked her if she had more questions.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Is there any more?”
    “A little.” I sat up and opened the first of the Holland folders. “The next part of the story involves an old friend of mine. You know the name Robert Holland?”
    “I’ve seen it on your filing cabinet. I always thought he was someone else you didn’t want to talk about.”
    “I guess that’s true; I don’t know. Robert and Vivian were having a…thing…together. When I found out about it I wanted to hurt Robert, and I did. I did a really lousy thing; it cost him his job and probably would have ruined his life, but he died soon after it happened anyway. Here’s his picture.” I passed her the faded snapshot. “He’s the one in the middle, a lot younger here than when I knew him. They were on an outing in Colorado, I think, when this was made—probably sometime in the middle forties.”
    I leaned over and looked at the picture, upside down in my vision as she held it. Robert, young and beardless, was wearing an assortment of hiking gear.
    “Who are the other two with him?” she asked.
    “The man on the left is Kenneth Barcotti. The guy on the right is Leland Smith. Robert told me they were inseparable, great pals in college. I’ve never met either of them.” I sipped my drink. “Let’s see—Kenneth Barcotti—did I say he was the one on the left? Yes, your left—Kenneth was the explorer, member of National Spelunkers, world traveler; he disappeared on a trip in the Colorado mountains just before Robert died, and I don’t think he was ever found. Leland Smith became a psychologist, like Robert, and moved to the Midwest to teach, or maybe to practice—I don’t know. Like I said, I never knew them, and I haven’t even thought about them for fifteen years. So Leland Smith—well, I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing now.”
    I shuffled through Robert’s papers, found his manuscript on hypnosis, and the small package of newspaper clippings fell from between the pages. It fell face up on the table, and I knew that Judy wanted to pick it up and look through it. Her fingers were twitching.
    “We’ll get to these soon,” I said. “Just contain your natural female curiosity and let’s take it one step at a time.”
    I was really getting tight now, so I pushed my