In This Skin Read Online Free PDF Page B

dreams. We are only what might have been.
        Didn't that have to be the most melancholic statement ever? We are nothing.. Less than nothing… no wonder the kid with the stammer had copied the statement onto a card that he kept in his wallet. If you're unable to speak in a world that oils its whole educational, financial and social mechanism with the lubrication of communication, then the stammerers and the voiceless could wind up suffering beneath a profound handicap. Hell, these days if you don't have a cell phone and an email address you're looked down on as if you're the last granddaddy of Stone Age Man.
        ”And shit, I should be sleeping… not pontificating.”Benedict sat up in bed to rub his eyes. They were gritty with rust, due to his acrobatic swings from the satellite dish. Hell, Buster Keaton he was not.
        Benedict guessed he found it hard to sleep because of that nagging concern for the guy he'd seen bleeding all over the Luxor steps. He'd drive over to the address he found in the wallet first thing. Just check that the guy was okay. Already his imagination supplied him with graphic images of the kid lying unconscious with internal bleeding. But he'd been lively enough running away from the Luxor. So maybe the wounds were just skin deep. But then he might have been harboring a ruptured kidney…
        ”Shut up, Benedict,”he hissed. ”Get some sleep.”He settled on the bed.
        Outside, down in the yard, Butch gave a single deep woof. Benedict's imagination roved too freely at night. Maybe he was lonely. How about going down to see the old man in the morning and offering to buy Butch? He liked the dog. He'd be good company. This apartment had become a limitless cache of loneliness. A dog pattering around on the wood floors would make a pleasant change from wall-to-wall silence.
        Good God, you are lonely, old buddy, he told himself. You're getting forgetful, too. It's time you put a woman in your life. Not a dog (even though dogs are fun, funny and loyal). You need love.
        But then he'd had love. For three years he had been blissfully happy with Mariah Lee. Then one day she got cranky like you wouldn't believe.
        He'd never seen her like that before. The next day she'd left their home in Atlantic City where they both worked on web design, back in the good old days when corporate bosses were both terrified of the Internet and yet knew at all costs their companies needed big sparkling web sites.
        Back when he was twenty-four, Benedict had been stuck working the mailroom. He'd pinned a card on the canteen noticeboard that announced to colleagues that he'd build web sites for them. His intention was to put together family web sites so his peers could post wedding photographs and hobby stuff on the Internet. Then one day he'd been called to a meeting with the president and vice-president of the company, alongside a whole bunch of marketing and accounting people.
        Back then there'd been a Bernard West in accountancy Benedict West had been ready to tell them that they'd confused the names and called him by mistake. Instead the vice-president had looked him up and down, studying the lowly mailroom assistant, no doubt wondering if he was an E-popping punk, then cleared his throat uneasily and said, ”Benedict. I hear that you know something about…”He checked the unfamiliar wording on a memo… Web site design?”
        The move from denim and sneakers in the mailroom to a business suit in his own office with web-design manager on the door took less than forty-eight hours. His bosses were as ignorant of designing corporate web sites as they were afraid that a rival might lure their longhaired whiz kid away, so they went into a panicky huddle on the top floor before dispatching the head of personnel to ask tentatively if Benedict would be happy with a fifty-percent raise.
        Yesterday Benedict had been ready to accept with the naive