Life on the Preservation, US Edition Read Online Free PDF

pictured the giant. What was he, a basketball player? There had been something otherworldly about him, and not Dennis Rodman otherworldly.
    “Something’s going on,” Zach said. “There’s some serious shit going on, and we both know it. We can’t pretend it’s not happening.”
    “Can’t pretend what’s not happening?”
    “Ian. Do that slack mind thing you were telling me about.”
    “Why?”
    “Don’t you feel it? It’s like we’ve been here before – right here . I feel totally buzzed, but not in a good way.”
    “Oh shit.”
    “You feel the buzz!”
    “Maybe.”
    “You do , you fucker.”
    “Whatever. That just tells me we should get out of here.”
    “My skin’s crawling . Like the invisible fence for dogs? You ever hear those dumbass radio ads? We’re not supposed to get any closer. But we got to ignore it.”
    “No we don’t.”
    “You’re in denial.”
    Ian turned away from him and looked directly at the strip joint. It appeared abandoned, condemned, even though they’d just seen the Boogeyman go inside. Zach was right. They had been here before. Right here on this street corner. Ian felt the buzz, all right. It was like being in a dream and more or less knowing it, and not being able to wake up. The intense anxiety of that. The dream looked and felt like the usual reality, but under the surface things were cosmically warped. The XXX GIRLZ sign shifted slightly in Ian’s vision as he released his conscious intent and allowed his presence of mind to go slack.
    Suddenly the quality of light altered. The sun was a few degrees higher in the sky. The breeze ceased. Ian projected forward, like one of those dizzy Hitchcock shots in Vertigo . Without moving he was suddenly much closer to the building, or seemed to be, right in the doorway, and a man screamed, but Ian couldn’t move. The buzz that had been repelling him now rooted him to the spot. The scream cut off. The door started to dissolve. He had been here before, he had been here before...
    Ian jerked free of his trance, or whatever it was. Zach was shaking him. “Dude, snap out of it.”
    Ian worked his mouth, which had gone dry as old shoe leather. He tried to swallow and almost couldn’t. “We are not going anywhere near that door,” he said.
    “But–”
    “Zach, we’re not .”
    Zach grinned. “You did the thing. The slack thing. Tell me what happened.”
    “I’ll tell you at breakfast. Far away from here.”
    Zach looked back at XXX GIRLZ. Ian didn’t like the obsessed light in his friend’s eyes. “I think we have to do something today,” Zach said. “If we don’t we’re going to piss our chance away. Maybe our last chance. Don’t even ask me what I’m talking about. All I know is, we have to do something, man. We have to.”
    Ian grabbed his arm and pulled him around. “Listen to me. We cannot go any closer to that building. I mean it.”
    Slowly Zach began to nod. “Yeah, well, we can’t stand here all day, either. Let’s re-group.”
    A yellow parking ticket fluttered under the VW’s wiper blade, like a trapped bird. Zach grabbed the ticket in his fist and absently crammed it into his back pocket. They re-parked the car closer to the Pike Place Market. A tourist Mecca, the Market was bustling. Cars crawled down the brick street that divided vendor stalls and pocket restaurants. Ian and Zach stepped between the cars, passed under the giant red clock, past the carcasses of salmon, gooey ducks, sole and crabs laid out odoriferously on beds of white ice, and proceeded downstairs to the Sound View Café. Beyond the wall of windows, Elliott Bay gleamed like hammered tin in the morning sun, and the Olympic Mountains sketched themselves out of the western haze.
    Ian took slight notice. The buzz was gone. He felt drained and listless. He didn’t talk about what happened when he let his mind go slack across the street from XXX GIRLZ, and Zach didn’t ask again. Ian picked at his scrambled eggs and barely