Jim and the Flims Read Online Free PDF

Val’s last words: It’s all your fault . I’d ruined everything.
    That evening I noticed the charred little sample sled was gone from my desk. Poor Val’s zapped DNA. For all these months I’d left it on the corner where I’d put it right after the lightning bolt. Evidently Skeeves had stolen it at the reception, sinister creep that he was.
    The next day I made an attempt to find Skeeves and ask him about that sample sled. But nobody around town seemed to know where he was. And Ira had disappeared as well. For whatever reason, they were lying low. Ira had always had a crush on Skeeves—perhaps the two men were together. Never mind, never mind, I needed to let go.
    Crying while I worked, I dismantled the scanning-tunneling microscope. I smashed the parts with a hammer and put them all in the trash.
    The wheel of the seasons rolled on. I missed Val’s voice all the time, and the way she’d smile at me with her eyes. It was terrible to sleep in an empty bed. And always I had the guilt and remorse, right at my side, every hour of the day. Whether or not it made sense, I was sure that I’d killed Val with my stupid scanning-tunneling microscope.
    That winter there was a nasty murder on Lover’s Bluff. Two guys axe-murdered a couple and set one of the victims on fire. They’d burned that body right down to ashes. And the murderers had slipped away. It was one of those stories so sick and strange that even the newspapers didn’t want to talk about it for long.
    Actually, in the state I was in around then, I’d feel a twinge of envy whenever I heard about someone dying, no matter how. If you were dead you didn’t need to keep it together anymore. You didn’t need a career. You could rest. You’d be off the hook. Free at last. Gone to a better world. Merged. Not that I felt actively suicidal. I was numb, floating along like a jellyfish.
    I could have moved away and looked for a new life. But I couldn’t get it together to do anything that drastic. I had a feeling that—without Val—everywhere I went would feel just as blank and dull.
    Around May, the Post Office put me on furlough, which was a sanitized way of saying they were busting me down to a three-day work-week. I didn’t care. If I pinched my pennies, I could still buy pot and pay the rent.
    As it turned out, it was good for me to be working less. I finally turned the corner on my grief and self-loathing. I got back into hiking along the bluffs, taking Droog along. I started reading again, and going out to clubs.
    The dog had been sleeping on my bed with me ever since Val died, but now, as a real sign of change, I sent Droog back to his cushion in the kitchen. I was ready to stop being a depressed loner.

4: The Portal

    O ne day that summer I decided to stroll downtown to eat a cup of ice cream. It was one of my numerous days off work. I hadn’t gotten around to having lunch yet, and there wasn’t much in my fridge. I like to think that ice cream is a complete food, what with the sugar, the fat, the milk proteins, and the bits of fruit flavoring.
    Val and I could have had an enjoyable debate about this—and I was perfectly capable of imagining it, but I’d learned not to get into long mental conversations with her ghost. I was even starting to think about finding another woman.
    Not that I had any good prospects. A big problem with Santa Cruz is that so many of the people who live there are stone cold crazy. They aren’t bad off enough to be in the nuthouse, but they’re crazy just the same.
    Take my landlady Diane Simly. Diane liked to sit on her porch every afternoon, waiting to see if any of the high-school kids happened to throw a cigarette butt or a gum wrapper onto her front lawn. That was her idea of what to do with her time—and she was always sure that she was right .
    On the crucial summer afternoon that I want to tell you about, I’d finished rummaging